On Sat, Jun 3, 2017 at 9:29 PM, Kevin M. <[email protected]> wrote:
> > On Sat, Jun 3, 2017 at 6:11 PM Bob Jersey <[email protected]> wrote: > >> >> Brad Beam, to moi: >>> >>> *>*James Burgos has the context on the 'toob >>> <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Xdx5XQkA2g> (link), NY Times >>> <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/03/arts/television/bill-maher-n-word.html?_r=0> >>> (link) among others adds HBO and Bill offered separate mea culpas, *>*and >>> the line will be edited out of repeats; still, tweetboxers called for his >>> head. >>> >>> >>> See if Kathy Griffin is a tweetboxer – she may have a few spare heads >>> lying around. (Odd that Billo only had a fleeting reference to Ms. >>> D-List last night. I figured he’d jump on her free-speech bandwagon.) >>> >> >> She's (understandably) parking any social-site use. >> >> > The only people I see defending her are other comics, and nearly all of > them start by expressing disapproval of what she posted but defending her > right to post it. > > I've said before that freedom of speech doesn't mean freedom of > consequence. It merely means the government cannot censor her. Deserved or > not, Griffin can't be oblivious to the charged climate. And whereas Obama > (and every prior potus) rarely reacted to such public displays, Trump was > practically guaranteed to react exactly as he did and his cult of followers > react as they did. I'm in no way defending their reactions, but they were > predictable... if Griffin fears for her life or fears her career is over, > that is literally the consequence of freedom of speech. > > This is also Maher's big failing. He delights in having the worst humans > on earth as guests on his show as a celebration of the 1st Amendment, > because he fails to comprehend that people can be personally offended by > speech. Wealthy white guys with a history of inflammatory speech are going > to face consequences if they use the n-word as a punchline on live TV. The > backlash is predictable and easily avoidable. Maher can't just do one of > his Jack Benny "aw shucks" lookaway takes and move on with his life. > > Just because you can legally say or do something doesn't mean you should. > And in a capitalist society, the free market can dictate consequence. > A thought that repeatedly occurred to me last summer and fall was that the president to be elected would be the last baby boomer to lead the country and could quite possibly define the generation for history. It was previously said that Clinton and Bush the Younger were the two presidents to represent the generation when Gen-Xer Obama got elected. But there is a stubbornness in the Boomers where they will not step aside and accept a succession, either in politics or culture. A lot of us on this list grew up in a time where the Boomers were the rebels who metaphorically gave the finger to the squares. Those squares are now gone or aged and those rebels are now older people. Those rebels include Griffin and Maher. They use their obnoxious attitudes and willingness to cross the line to show that they are rebels but they are not in the generation where we currently seek rebels. What they both did reflects their being out of step more than speaking truth to power. What Griffin and Maher have in common is that neither knew the audience for their performance. Whether each did it for their fans and ignored the public at large I do not know. And either might have gotten away with it if it had been in a theater show for a paying audience and nobody else. Doing it where everybody could see it was a sign of ignorance about who the public is and what their sensibilities are. -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
