Kirsten Powers: Liberals' mob ruleThis is the latest entrant in the "Mozilla is liberal fascism" derby. Apparently some folks wanted to use the Kickstarter crowdfunding platform to fund their Kermit Gosnell horror movie; Kickstarter had some trouble with the gruesome marketing copy that was to appear at Kickstarter's website -- not with the movie, though Powers labors to make that hard to notice -- and tried to work something out with them, which the filmmakers, who apparently know a great PR angle when they see one, found unacceptable.
Kickstarter's attempt to censor film about convicted abortion doctor is another example.
Thus, Powers says Kickstarter was "blocking the movie," because they love abortion. My favorite nonsense phrase in the story is "Kickstarter, like too much of the news media, wants only one version of the late-term abortion story told." That's really a tell: By bitching about liberal bias in the media, these guys have made major press outlets too shit-scared to assert anything without letting a wingnut rave alongside it in the name of "balance." Powers seems to think the same racket -- show up, fall down, start crying, collect settlement -- will work elsewhere. So she talks about this incident as if setting guidelines for service is media bias. The company's not just supposed to provide its offered service, it's supposed to tell the filmmaker's "story," and any limitation on that is censorship.
The connection with the Mozilla bitchfest is obvious, but I also see a relationship with the religious-freedom cases the brethren have been crying about, in which a few bakers and wedding photographers have been sued for not serving gay couples. These guys hear the civil rights, public accommodation arguments against denying someone services based on their sexual orientation, I'm guessing, and think, "Oh, well, so we'll go where you libtards work and make you do what we want."
Now I understand. What they really want is the freedom to be assholes. Religiously.
ReplyDeleteThe Gosnell case does not, of course, demonstrate the horrors of abortion, only the horrors of illegal abortion and that freedom of choice without Republican-legislated roadblocks is the only true path to safe abortions. I suppose these people are too addled to see how their focus on Gosnell undermines their precious "story".
ReplyDeleteJust to underscore this a little:
ReplyDeletehttp://wonkette.com/546123/yes-red-states-not-expanding-medicaid-is-actually-killing-people-but-you-knew-that
Powers seems to think the same racket -- show up, fall down, start crying, collect settlement -- will work elsewhere.
ReplyDeleteIt works in basketball, Roy.
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"a few bakers and wedding photographers have been sued for not serving gay couples."
ReplyDeleteHave any lawsuits actually been filed?
By bitching about liberal bias in the media, these guys have made major
ReplyDeletepress outlets too shit-scared to assert anything without letting a
wingnut rave alongside it in the name of "balance."
Is that really what's going on, Roy? Take the Washington Post (please!).
I don't think they're shit-scared about anything. They'll take any excuse they get to whore for the people with all the money, and wingnut screeching works as well for them as anything else.
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These guys hear the civil rights, public accommodation arguments against denying someone services based on their sexual orientation, I'm guessing, and think, "Oh, well, so we'll go where you libtards work and make you do what we want."
ReplyDeleteTry as I might, I couldn't figure out a way to work this into the "I don't come down to where you work when you're busy and knock the dick out of your mouth" format. So I'm left with just imagining their puzzlement when they show up at the gay florist's and tell him they don't like gay people but they want him to provide the floral arrangements for their wedding, and he just looks at them quizzically and says, "Ok."
Fortunately, the invisible hand of the free market will take care of this...by letting Kickstarter flourish, because people really like that service. In any event, the abortion film likely would have failed to meet funding goals. If only the Atlas Shrugged trilogy could have met the same fortune.
ReplyDeleteYes, in a couple states that have more robust anti-discrimination laws. They're not going real well for the bakers and photographers. The proposed Arizona law was an attempt by bigots to get ahead of the curve--gays are not a protected class under current law
ReplyDeleteHey, I go to the same church!
ReplyDeletePut that baby on Kickstarter!
ReplyDeleteMaybe not in the same way, being a sociopathic idjit is every American's birthright.
ReplyDeleteSo Atrios gets to write in the USA Today once in a while, and the price we pay is to have Glenn Reynolds and Kirsten Powers in there, too. Fucking liberal media.
ReplyDelete(I may be missing something though; USA Today isn't part of my daily regimen.)
It's the one that's written in crayon and decorated with glitter and macaroni.
ReplyDelete"It reminds me of what Paul Fussell said about the Iraq war. If it doesn't piss you off, you don't deserve to live."
ReplyDeleteSo, what did Fussell say? I might as well find out the truth about myself.
Okay, I'm actually going to treat Powers's argument as though it had merit for a moment. Her case (and I'm sure we'll be seeing this elsewhere over the next few days) is that Kickstarter is inconsistent in that they've hosted projects that feature offensive content with no problem. And you know what? Kickstarter is inconsistent in how it applies its rules. There have been other cases, other frustrated parties (none of whom cried censorship) and other controversies. For example, the Kickstarter rules forbid projects that feature sexual violence, and there have been a number of campaigns that were canceled for that reason - including a Hentai-themed card game that actually drew a lot of backers before Kickstarter cut them off. But there have been other cases where they've let projects slide on the sexual violence issue. There was an infamous case from last year involving a roleplaying supplement that featured content built around sexual domination and some extremely repulsive artwork to go with it, and that one went through. So there is a history of inconsistency.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that Powers is assuming that this is political, and I don't see any reason to think that. In my opinion, these inconsistencies are a result of the Kickstarter staff handling more projects than they were prepared for. Wikipedia had the same problem at various points - there's too much content for the central staff to handle it all, so you get a lot of individuals making judgment calls. Kickstarter isn't as big as Wikipedia, of course, but they're standards are also a lot less clear (one of the reasons I'm still skeptical of Kickstarter, incidentally). I don't see these inconsistencies as anything but the bugs in the shakeout phase of a large website.
Of course, it is possible that whoever made that judgment call was acting out of his or her personal political beliefs. I doubt it, given that their only problems were two lines in the copy and they worked with these guys to fix it, but it is nevertheless a possibility. I do have one question: How is it that the conservative movement is going to insist that private businesses should have the right to refuse service to people they don't like, and then turn around and insist that it's "censorship" for a different private business to refuse service to people that they don't like? You guys don't really have a good excuse to be inconsistent, is all I'm saying.
AN ABORTED BABY YOU MEAN HAHAHAHAH
ReplyDeleteExcuse? It's not like they've ever needed one.
ReplyDeleteI expect some troll to show up to argue that ideas should be freer than people, but that's really what it comes down to. They're not being inconsistent in that they've always been in favor of discriminating on the basis of identity. And they've been pretty consistent in terms of insisting that liberal ideas, thoughts, etc. should be censored while conservative ones should be given free promotion. So I doubt they would be able to grasp your very pertinent point, even if they were intellectual or honest enough to consider it.
Well, the punchline is that Kickstarter would have worked with them to set up a well, what-the-fuck-ever, that didn't have blatantly graphic/offensive content so that they could proceed. I've had students who grew up in warzones to PPT presentations with incredibly graphic violent content that made students seriously upset and one student have to go vomit. (I teach university in Eastern Europe.) After that I made all students submit their slides ahead of time. Never once have I had a serious fight with a student if I said, "you can't show that to the class." These are bullheaded 19 and 20 year-olds and they are willing to sit down and come to a decent agreement. These RW fuckheads can't because they want martyrdom. Fine. Give it to them.
ReplyDeleteAnd then calls his to wife to order in some more flowers.
ReplyDelete"major press outlets" "Washington Post"
ReplyDeleteI think I see the flaw in your argument.
The point is to be provocative, though, and to make people want to vomit.
ReplyDeleteDo what now?
ReplyDeleteReally, Pope Z?
ReplyDeletePick another. Show me the difference.
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or, Ass-Holy, as I like to call 'em.
ReplyDeleteNo, it is currently represented by a large blue ball if I am not mistaken.
ReplyDeleteOver the past few months I've been turned down by five grad schools and one freelancing art job. Not complaining, (well maybe a little) just noting that if Kirsten Powers was in my shoes, she'd still be going on about how she's being silenced and conspired against for her beliefs. Sometimes the all-rage-all-the-time lifestyle looks as pathetic as it is, but sometimes I think how nice it must be to never have to admit that you're wrong or that you're not as important as you think.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I play the "how will history view today's issues 50-100 years from now game" (it's actually quite relaxing in terms of providing perspective and understanding-assuming to begin with you think we'll still have a functioning planet and society by then). I wonder what historians will make of the truckload of primary sources from conservatives that they're being silenced and oppressed, compared to the other truckload of right-wing blogs and sites where they all made those claims.
And from the, well, "artistic" side, how much money do they think it will take to make a movie like this? It's a documentary (in theory) focusing on one guy, and I assume it wouldn't be much more than interviews with anti-abortion talking heads and a scene where they badger Gosnell all the way to his front door with a cellphone camera and use his refusal to talk as proof that he's Mega-Hitler. Get someone minimally competent at photoshop to make the abortion-kills-more-people-than-cancer bar graph, throw in some B-roll protest footage over the credits and you're good to go.
ReplyDeleteGiven how zealous the abortion absolutists usually are, I'm kind of surprised they couldn't get all the money they needed from fundraisers on their sites alone. I know it's some combination of right-wing bloggers aren't as influential as they think, and activists are neither as passionate nor as charitable as they claim. I'm sure they half-assed the funding attempt for the sole purpose of being able to cry foul, because they know that will get more attention than actually working hard on their own to drum up funding for their movie about, as they themselves will tell you, the greatest moral travesty of the modern age.
"I hope you like Dracunculus stinking arums."
ReplyDeleteIsn't that a Kliban cartoon?
ReplyDeleteThis is all of a piece with the incessant "Hollywood hates conservatives, and that's why they don't make conservative movies" rant. The fact that the invisible hand of their beloved free market consistently gives "conservative" movies (like Atlas Crapped) a thumbs down doesn't enter into the equation here. Just as conservatism can never fail, so, too, can it never be rejected on its merits.
ReplyDeleteif Kirsten Powers was in my shoes, she'd still be going on about how she's being silenced and conspired against for her beliefs
ReplyDeleteIf you walked into every interview and proceeded to forcefully state your political views, you'd likely not get the position even if the employer was sympatico with your views. Most employers don't want conflict in the workplace, and bringing in someone who's a loudmouth about their politics is guaranteed to get the rest of the employees on edge.
Yet, rightwingers either just can't keep their yaps shut ("I understand this is a bookkeeping job, but I think a baby is not a choice!"), or they just can't accept the "We've decided to go with a more qualified candidate" way that business does business.
Wingnuttia's pro-coathanger stance has always been more about being anti-progressive, anti-women and anti-humanity than it is about abortion itself anyway.
ReplyDeleteThey are waaaayyy more interested in crying about how librulz is killing babies and librulz is sqashing their silly movies and librulz is just plain having too much godless fun and librulz isn't feeling guilty enough about being happy well-adjusted humans and don't even get me started on librul women slutty slut shame...
This documentary crapola is just more of the same. An excuse to wheedle about progressives, and that's all it is.
If they really wanted to get this doco done, you know, for the babies, they'd get-the-fuck-on-with-it and wouldn't let anything get in their way.
.
Here's my best guess: There is no movie nor plans to make one. The reason it is so important that Kickstarter show their gross images is because that's all they gots.
ReplyDeleteIf it isn't, it should be.
ReplyDelete's far as I can tell, they don't have a good excuse for ANYTHING.
ReplyDelete"Mob rule enforcing groupthink is as illiberal as it gets, and yet it was liberals demanding uniformity of thought — or else."
ReplyDeleteI believe what they're "demanding" is uniformity of civil rights, unlike Eich. Someone who alleges to support same-sex marriage should recognize the difference, n'est-ce pas?
Oh my word. Is Powers the latest "I used to be a liberal, but then my first paycheck from Fox News" story?
ReplyDelete-----Perhaps they couldn't be consistent, or coherent, even if they tried. Perhaps they don't care about consistency or coherence. They simply argue for their "side" in every instance, and let the libs complain about the inconsistency and incoherence and the fussier of their brethren worry about finding some means, however unpersuasive and ad hoc, of distinguishing like cases from like.
ReplyDelete------Rod Dreher, a fussbudget if ever there was one, falls back of stuff like, well, "that was about abortion, which is life and death, while your thing is about gay marriage, which, while important, isn't THAT important..." Of course, since we are getting all "meta," it is not like he would import that reasoning when it came to life and death stuff like the death penalty, war in Iraq, "stand your ground," etc. No, it just takes the level of inconsistency back one level, and into the shadows. Or, he will say something like, "Oh, that was at Liberty college, whereas this is at Stanford or Brown, and the latter are really important, while the former are not." Besides being disingenuous on its face (other times he will have nothing but good things to say about Liberty), it is false in that his special rules for his side, for his what's-mine-is-mine, what's-yours-is-negotiable argument, excuses Notre Dame and Georgetown just as much as it does Liberty.
------And so it goes. You can have total yahoos who wouldn't even understand the concept of intellectual honesty, of across the boards consistency of rationale, even when the shoe is on the other foot, or you can have slighter smarter, but smarmier hacks like Dreher, who, in the best traditions of Christian apologia, make ad hoc distinctions on the fly and hope no one notices that their slips are showing.
If the film project is just a way to swindle elderly and/or gullible conservatives, it wouldn't be the first. Probably wouldn't be in the first 100.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I wonder if a lot of conservatives are just trying to make liberals admit that they are blocking and sabotaging them at every turn (just as they do with liberals) so that they can banish any lingering doubts of being noble, persecuted idealists.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that by and large, liberals enjoy the smug moral superiority of Being Tolerant far more than they enjoy sticking it to their enemies (a failing, if you ask me, but then I long since realised that I'm not a liberal, I'm a conservative who just happens to agree with liberals about very nearly everything :P ), so conservatives keep having to clutch at straws.
Kickstarter is Collectivist!
ReplyDeleteNo, really, it is, and collectivism generally works.
These people are right-wing loons, how did they strike out with Kochstarter, the real right-wing money pipeline?
ReplyDeleteI would like to gently and lovingly force-feed this comment, and all those it has spawned in the reply thread, a 10 pound casserole of kimchee, Jerusalem artichokes, cashews and sweet corn, washed down with a gallon of prune juice.
ReplyDeleteSee, from my European perspective, it looks like those kids are auditioning for the Italy national soccer team.
ReplyDeleteThey need to work a little harder. Sure, their falls are impressive, but your true Azzurro can do that without the other guy gettting within a metre of him.
Yes and Kickstarter isn't the only crowdsourcing organization out there so they aren't exactly exploring all avenues.
ReplyDeleteI'd say I'm surprised there is no Right Wingdamentalist version of Kickstarter only I'm not surprised because a) Right Wingdamentalist money gathering organizations take money in, they don't give it out, b) It seems all of their discussions about creating a Right Wingdamentailst internet thingee eventually becomes a grumblefest about how you can't find sufficiently pure web designers and 3) It is easier to whine that the mean old liberals won't let you play (proof of liberalness being anything that thwarts a Wingdamentalist).
Maybe ultimately this is a way to solicit donations without KIckstarter's icky mean fascists oversight and fees. "Waah they were mean to us and now we have no MONEY to make our anti-abortion movie because we don't have enough MONEY because they were mean to us MONEY! WAAAH! LIBERALS MONEY WAAH!"
But that's assuming any of the potential donors have any money left after giving to various campaigns to fight gay Obama sociomuslimism and heeding the daily call to buy guns.
It would be awesome if this inspired someone to do an unbiased documentary on Gosnell and the fact that illegal abortions will become more common under Wingdamentalist rule.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised there is no Right Wingdamentalist version of Kickstarter
ReplyDeleteThey don't need such a thing. Actual "worthy" projects (say, allowing fracking platforms to be set up in the middle of the municipal water supply) can get all the money they need from the Kochs or Adelson or Scaife. Everything else in Rightwingistan is about grifting the believers (e.g., The Virgin Ben's endless on-line petition efforts that are really just meant to harvest email addresses he can sell to other Rightwingistan grifters).
Upvoted for "Kochstarter".
ReplyDeleteYou take the Koch's shilling, you do the Koch's shilling
It's not like the op ed page of the New York Times is much better. No one has a gun to their head to make them run David Brooks, Ross Douthat, Maureen Dowd, and Thomas Friedman.
ReplyDeleteThat's the whole point, isn't it? Any small business can figure out a way to turn down business they don't want to take on in a way that doesn't overtly discriminate. These guys want to be able to turn away business from gay people AND get the satisfaction of expressing their hate openly without consequence.
ReplyDeleteI have to wonder if their kneejerk hostility to collectivism extends to their personal life, and if on, for example, moving day, they rent their own truck and do it all themselves.
ReplyDeleteAnd really, what's going to be the story-line of this movie? We've got the blood and gore, but, really, what's the dramatic arc?
ReplyDeleteIf I were to write a film about Gosnell, I'd say it's that poor desperate women, unable to access safe legal abortion, are forced by circumstance into the Gosnell clinic. Sounds like a great argument for improving access to legal, early abortion.
What would be the alternate storyline here that would support the wingnut cause? I can only imagine - will the women be cast as villains, too? Who is the hero, a conservative who might give these poor women support and help? (oops - sorry, that character was written out of the script as too implausible.)
There's too much competition for money in wingnutistan. How are you going to support an abortion documentary when you've given your last dime to Franklin Graham or Sarah Palin?
ReplyDeleteif Kirsten Powers was in my shoes, she'd still be going on about how she's being silenced and conspired against for her beliefs.
ReplyDeleteAnd do note that Kirsten Powers' rant about being silenced for her beliefs is published in USA Today. When every single hotel guest in the country has your rant delivered with breakfast, you're not being silenced.
Collectivism DOES work, and the Right knows it as well as anyone. Almost everyone can see that there is strength in numbers.
ReplyDeleteThe Right just doesn't want the "little people" to band together, that's all. They have no problem with corporate mergers or media consolidation. They simply reserve the word "collectivism" for groups they don't like.
Good point. Raising money to promote Rightwing projects has never been a problem.
ReplyDeleteFOX News is a good example. They lost $90 million a year for their first five years of operation. It's easier to get things off the ground when you never have to worry about lack of funding.
Drama? I think that will peak in the scene when the evil doc yanks a Cabbage Patch doll from between Star Parker's legs and repeatedly stabs it in the neck with a pair of scissors.
ReplyDeleteDesperate, flawed-but-with-heart-of gold woman saved from terrible mistake and gory death by the pro-life heroes.
ReplyDeleteYes and Kickstarter isn't the only crowdsourcing organization out there so they aren't exactly exploring all avenues.
ReplyDeleteActually, they might well be. They're just not passing on an opportunity to shriek about their martyrdom in the meantime.
I'd upvote every comment in this thread if I weren't so lazy, so consider yourselves all upvoted. Not a lot to add, really, except that just about all you need to really know about the filmmakers is that they've previously used KS to fund a pro-fracking movie--no, really--and that their antiabortion movie is already a quarter funded on Indiegogo, so obviously The Man is keeping them down.
ReplyDeleteI'm old enough to remember when Roger Ailes shitcanned Eggs Drudge for wanting to waggle a photo of a fetus on the FOX News Channel.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPcap/1999-11/15/021r-111599-idx.html
Powers is too young smart enough craven enough to pretend she doesn't.
The man is always keeping them down and silencing their views. I read that in Kirsten Powers' op ed that was published in USA Today.
ReplyDeleteHandsome, square-jawed bachelor protester standing outside the clinic. "Don't murder your baby!" he screams in her face whispers compellingly. Their eyes meet....
ReplyDeleteThis is just another set piece for the ongoing "I'm more martyred than you are" campaigns that fundies love to engage in. It does show something that many have suspected though: the big money boys don't want abortion to become illegal because it is so useful for riling up mouth breathing voters. If the kochs wanted abortion gone, it would be by now.
ReplyDeleteJust what would a "conservative movie" entail, anyway? Most movies I see feel fairly right-wing - all the action-oriented ones are all about killing the shit out of lots of faceless criminals/foreigners who are all pure evil, all the romantic ones are about how unthinkably horrific the prospect of never getting married and breeding is, all the ones with supernatural content are about how trusting in science instead of in religion (or folksy wisdom) will lead you to be messily butchered... I just don't see a lot of liberal sentiments in movies. Except for the super-artsy ones that deal with the Serious Problems of Our Time, I suppose, but those tend not to be particularly fun to watch. :P
ReplyDeleteTo the dismay of some on the Left!
ReplyDeleteThis is central to their point!
ReplyDeleteSomeone had to have put a gun to their head and pulled the trigger. Thats the only way to explain how Dobthat got his job.
ReplyDelete"I'm a bigot, but for the Left"
ReplyDeleteAs has been noted, while the people who make up "Hollywood" may personally be liberal, the businesses they run, like all businesses, are Conservative. So they make a conservative product they know sells. And that product is, like you say, a fairly right-wing narrative albeit one dressed up in liberal clothes sometimes. Audiences dont seem to want anything too far in either direction, and the Studios are happy to oblige them.
ReplyDeleteOh, yes. And I don't see what's so wrong with that. If you're going to hate and oppose a group of people, then you should be willing to use every dirty trick in the book to wear them down and bring them to their knees. If you are not willing to do that - if they are not harmful and dangerous enough that it seems warranted - then you should not be fighting them in the first place, but trying to get along with them. That's how it seems to me.
ReplyDeleteWhat can I say, I don't think in quite the same way that most people do.
Todays entry in the long-running game of "Who the Fuck Are They Kidding?": Do they really think us libtards believe Gosnell was a good guy, or do they know we think he was a murderous SOB and are feigning ignorance so as to better sell the evuhl lie-bruhl story to the rubes?
ReplyDelete...to the dismay of some on the Left.
ReplyDelete