Ex-Gay Watch follows up on a previous post that…er…Questions PFOX…
As a follow-up to our previous post on this matter, we have gathered more information in our investigation of claims made by Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays (PFOX) here.
Yesterday, we spoke with Jackie Abrams, Vice Chair of the Arlington County Fair. According to Abrams, no physical altercation occurred, police were never called and no one was ejected from the fairgrounds – she was emphatic and certain. “I was in radio contact with the other board members during the Fair, and definitely would have known if the police had been summoned. It did not happen [her emphasis],” said Abrams. She added that her calls to PFOX, and specifically to PFOX president Regina Griggs, had gone unanswered.
They got it out there…why on earth would they want to help anyone prove that it was bullshit? The faithful now have something to bark about…that some wicked militant homosexual activist had attacked their peaceful respectful effort to educate people about the truth of homosexuality…and just you never mind that it never actually happened. Since when does an organization that was born on lies, built on a bedrock of lies, and does nothing but lie through its teeth about homosexuals and homosexuality constantly, meticulously, relentlessly, suddenly stop lying?
???
Of course they lie. Does a bear shit in the woods? Is the pope Catholic? Does PFOX lie? Yes…it’s good, it’s necessary, to expose their lies whenever, wherever they pop up. But on the other hand if by now it’s surprising you that someone from PFOX would make such brazenly false accusations about something involving homosexuals, then I guess it must also be a constant surprise to you that the sky is blue and water is wet.
Meanwhile…via Ex-Gay Watch, Truth Wins Out has some food for thought for all you parents out there, thinking about sending your gay kids off to ex-gay camp…
Truth Wins Out is reporting that Chris Austin, a longtime ex-gay counselor from Irving, Texas, was convicted today of sexually assaulting a client. Austin, a previous speaker for both Evergreen International and the National Association for the Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH), has been accused of sexual assault on a client before. In 2001, Mark Hufford made similar accusations:
Hufford accused Austin of engaging in improper sexual behavior that included “oral copulation and fondling” during counseling sessions that spanned more than a year. The psychologist, who also teaches in the church’s Sunday School, had convinced Hufford to participate in “touch therapy.” The therapy gradually progressed to nude sessions and physical intimacy, he said.
I’m assuming the victims in both cases were legally adults, but it’s worth bearing in mind that outfits such as Evergreen and Exodus and Love In Action all claim to be ministries so they don’t have to submit to the licensing and oversight regulations that real hospitals and doctors must. Literally Anyone can claim to be a professional in the treatment of Same Sex Attraction Disorder. It’s like being a palm reader, only you get to make your customers tell you their sexual fantasies and participate in touch therapy…
The Fine Art Of Inciting Violence While Preaching Decency
Of course you knew that it isn’t only gay folk that the mayor of Fort Lauderdale is contemptuous of…
"Atheists and Criminal Lobbying Union" regarding the meaning of the acronym ACLU.
New Times, October 26, 2000
"I’m supposed to subsidize some schlock sitting on the sofa and drinking a beer, who won’t work more than 40 hours a week?" (On a proposed affordable housing ordinance)
Sun-Sentinel, May 20, 2006
Regarding a proposal to reduce greenhouse gases, calling it "hate-America stuff" concocted by "a bunch of scientists meeting in Paris who’ve had too much wine.”
Sun-Sentinel May 9, 2007
“The Scum-Sentinel is an advertising tabloid newsblog. They hire reporters and they make them churn out stories without making them get into anything in depth. They do that to feign a resemblance to a real newspaper so that they can sell advertising. And the Sentinel tries to lecture me about affordable housing? I tell people that the day I take advice from a company that has vagrants selling their products in the middle of the street, we’re all in trouble."
New Times, April 21, 2006
“I think a strong rope and a stiff tree would be better than wasting all that electricity.”
New Times (Broward Palm Beach Edition), October 26, 2000
As they say, scratch a homophobe and you find a rat’s nest of assorted other prejudices and cheap bar stool conceits. And given his steady and sure record of flipping the middle finger to his critics, I sorta figured he’d make some aggressive asshole comeback to the county commissioners act last week, of voting him off the tourism board. What I didn’t expect was that he’d surround himself with men dressed in paramilitary uniform, calling for a cleansing of sin from Fort Lauderdale…
Anti-gay Mayor Jim "250K robo-potty" Naugle has so polarized matters in Fort Lauderdale that press conferences and demonstrations are getting tense, according to Jeff Black of UNITE Fort Lauderdale, which is sponsoring a Faith Press Conference today, will feature speakers from many denominations and religions to discuss unity, inclusiveness, and acceptance.
Inclusiveness was not on the agenda on Tuesday as members of homophobic black churches, stood with Mayor Naugle at City Hall preaching they are going to take back the city, removing the sin and sinners. Religious men — in paramilitary gear — were also standing aside the mayor bleating that "the depth of sexual sin in Broward County necessitates an old-fashioned spiritual revival." From Jeff’s email to me:
They escorted me from the front door to the elevator when I entered the building today for this press conference, and stood ‘post’ at the elevator lobby. The video is frightening, worse was I was standing in the room with these people and worried what was going to happened next.
An initial check into who or what the Koinonia Worship Center is, turned up only a MySpace page…
I tried to find out information on the group but was only able to find a MySpace profile which included an audio track. The audio track is of a military leader talking to a subordinate and explaining how they are in the battle to take back what they have lost for the black man while in the background you hear gun fire and battle sounds.
What I’m hearing on this page is scary. "Special OPS (operations) Units" of the church. References to "Exercising Spiritual Authority"?
Nice. Until today I thought Naugle was just another homophobic barstool buffoon. But no…he’s a thug; a grown man with a schoolyard bully’s sense of justice and the moral scruples of your average drug syndicate gangster. Watching that video, there is no mistaking what he’s doing in it for what it is. Bracketed by men in paramilitary uniform calling for spiritual warfare, saying they will "take back the land" and that "God hates the act of homosexuality" and telling the mayor "we will fight with you", James Naugle stood in the mayor’s office and made a threat. He said to the Gay community, and to any heterosexuals who might be thinking of standing in solidarity with us, get off my back faggots…or you’ll be sorry.
Six months after raising the curtain on their gourmet coffee shop in the beachside Indian Harbour Place shopping center, Laurie and Jim Hall decided to offer live music on Friday and Saturday nights.
The performers, normally duos, mainly covered songs written and made famous by other musicians. There was no cover charge, no pay for the musicians, no limit to how long patrons could sit on a couch with their coffee, playing chess and enjoying the music.
No problem.
Then a few months later, music industry giant ASCAP started calling and sending letters saying East Coast Coffee & Tea was in violation of copyright laws. The fee to continue the music was $400 a year.
"At the time, the shop was losing money, so we had to break it up into payments," said Laurie Hall. But the Halls paid, and the music continued.
Six months later, other music copyright companies began calling the Halls and demanding money. Most days there would be three or four phone calls from each company, Hall said. Finally, unable to afford the fees, she had to call most of her musicians — those who did not play original music — and tell them they would not be allowed to continue performing.
This aggressive — but legal — posture being taken by music licensing companies has the potential to unplug live music in many restaurants, bars and coffee shops in Brevard County.
Doesn’t this sound vaguely familiar? First they agree to payoff the one guy…and then another guy shows up demanding money…and then another…and then another…
Andrus, the owner of Lou’s Blues, said he has had many run-ins with the copyright companies over the years.
"It started 15 years ago when I had a guy come out to our other place, Cantina dos Amigos, and play Mexican music on his guitar on the patio," Andrus said. "They came after me for money. Are they really sending royalty checks to the songwriter in Mexico?"
Andrus said he pays BMI and ASCAP about $3,000 a year but is ignoring the smaller companies that seek royalties from him.
"There are so many damned companies you don’t know who to pay," he said. "One guy called and said I had to pay him if I played any gospel music at all. It’s really a mess."
…
And in no way do the songs have to be performed live, or even on the radio, to elicit calls for royalties.
Andrus said a friend of his who owned a restaurant that did not feature music was contacted by a company looking to charge him because it owned the rights to a Hank Williams Jr. song, "Are You Ready for Some Football?" The song preceded every "Monday Night Football" telecast, which the restaurant carried on its televisions.
What next? A shakedown of street performers who play for tips? If the music companies had their way you wouldn’t be able to whistle a tune in public without paying them royalties.
(Albany, New York) The Assembly passed same-sex marriage legislation Tuesday night, but the state’s highest ranking Republican vowed not to allow it to come to a vote in the Senate.
And what’s hilarious about all this is that a lot of these so-called gay conservatives think all the sexual hedonism of the liberal "gay lifestyle" is wicked and we should all be about settling down and getting married and moving to the suburbs and getting rich. The way they tell it, it’s the socialist-communist urban liberal left that’s anti same-sex marriage. So you’d think it would be democrats who are adamantly against it. But no…
Just remember folks, while you’re busy kissing up to the republican establishment, that Truman Capote once said a faggot is the homosexual gentleman who just left the room.
Via Timothy Kincaid over at Box Turtle Bulletin… Dr. Joe Nicolosi of NARTH will be lecturing in London on June 22-23, 2007 on the subject of The Time for Truth – is gay real?
A conference for professional counsellors and therapists, pastoral care givers, church leaders, and those who are dealing with or affected by homosexuality.
Contact: Dr Lisa Nolland
ls.n@hotmail.co.uk
NB. Dr Nicolosi will take a scientific rather than an explicitly Christian approach.
And a good thing that is too, since you folks probably don’t want to hear from any Christians on this matter, do you? Or does this no longer apply…?
Thou shalt bear no false witness against thy neighbor.
The evidence that biology, genetics in part, perhaps development in the womb in part, determines sexual orientation is now so overwhelming even the mainstream news media can see it too. How else to explain the older brother effect, and that it only works for right handed boys? Yet Nicolosi persists in his junk science dogma that male homosexuality is caused by a poor father/son relationship. So why are these ersatz men of god inviting this quack to speak to them about homosexuality, and not a real scientist?
Simple. It comforts them to know that they’re beating on people who in at least some sense, choose to be homosexual. Let us have the pseudo science that tells us homosexuality is caused by a broken family relationship, rather then the honest science that tells us it is simple random biology that is neither chosen nor changeable…because the pseudo science allows us to blame homosexuals for not seeking treatment for their condition, because the pseudo science allows us to keep blaming the homosexuals for every evil thing we do to them, in the name of Christ, in the name of love. Nicolosi helps them shift the blame for all the pain and heartbreak they have ever brought down on the lives of gay men and women, onto their victims. Nicolosi will come to them as a man of science, and they, the men of God, will wash, wash their hands of every wrong they’ve ever done to innocent lovers in his junk science, and lift those hands in praise afterward. Then they’ll take up their holy clubs, and start beating on gay people again in completely clear conscience.
Of all the moral positions the anti abortionists generally take, the easiest one to discern the honesty of is the argument from the sanctity of life. Life, they aver, begins at conception, thereby making abortion murder. Fine. You can always tell the folks who argue this position in good faith, from the ones who don’t, because they’re the ones who also have a passionate concern for the welfare of children After they’re born. When you see someone babbling about the killing of innocent babies on the one hand, while supporting public policies that take food out of the mouths of living children, and which put healthcare beyond the reach of their families, then you know you’re dealing with a fraud. They don’t give a good goddamn about innocent children. Their motives are elsewhere, and the dishonesty of their rhetoric is enough to give you a pretty good clue where that elsewhere probably is.
It’s the same with religious arguments over homosexuality, and the rights of homosexuals. Scanning Google News this morning, I came across this news article in The Age (Australia), concerning the current hostilities in the Anglican church over homosexuality. Whenever someone starts pontificating about the tensions in various religious sects over homosexuality, you know they’re not really willing to look the beast in the eye when you see them starting from a premise of good faith on everyone’s part…
Not only is it divisive, it seems almost impossible to resolve because the opposing camps believe so strongly that they are right, that conscience demands they take the stand they do, and that they speak for God.
Er…no. But it’s true that some folks expect you to accept their declarations of their faith and devotion to God at face value. That needs to stop.
Those Christians who say homosexual acts are always wrong – and it is the act, not the orientation, they condemn, though gays don’t think this is a very meaningful distinction – do so because the Bible says so.
Here’s the problem with this: how often do you see these people who are standing pat on the bible’s anti-gay verses, living their own lives by the rest of it as well? Just as you can tell who the frauds are in the abortion arguments by a passionate devotion to the right to life that begins at conception and ends at birth, you can tell who the frauds are in an argument over homosexuality, by an absolute devotion to the word of God that begins with all the biblical proscriptions against homosexuality, and comes to an abrupt halt wherever the bible starts telling heterosexuals what to do with Their genitals.
It isn’t the people of faith who are the problem here. The problem is the people of bad faith. We can’t have honest discussions about homosexuality, and the rights of homosexuals in this country, until we start demanding that the people of bad faith either come clean about what they really believe, or step aside and shut the fuck up. Because all they’re doing…deliberately doing…is poisoning the well for the rest of us. Shoving them aside until they’re ready to start speaking their mind instead of trying to incite and manipulate and short circuit the political conversation is the first order of business.
You think the bible is crystal clear about homosexuality do you? Fine. But you think that divorce should be legal? Had a divorce yourself have you? Oh…two? On your third wife now are you? But the bible is clear about homosexuality you say? No compromise with what God has condemned is it? Well…okay…until you’re ready to have an honest discussion about this, just shut the fuck up while the grownups talk among themselves.
OK… Thanks to a blog reader and supporter over in Tennessee, I’ve gotten copies of the articles (which were never online) concerning David Crockett High School senior Curtis Walsh, who was dismissed from school for a day after organizing the Day of Silence at his school.
The Day of Silence is a national event in which middle, high school and college-aged students take a vow to silence, symbolically representing the silence that is forced upon LGBT people every day by our society.
The articles (which can be viewed as photos: Page 1 and Page 2) state, in part:
Senior Curtis Walsh said he was dismissed for the day early Wednesday morning by David Crockett High School principal Henry Marable for his own safety.
…
“I showed up at school and within two minutes (Marable) called me and three others into his office. After first period I was dismissed for the day.”
…
Marable as well as Director of Schools Grant Rowland said they had no comment on anything pertaining to the student of the “Day of Silence,” in which several students reportedly left school early.
However, Rowland was quoted by a local television station later in the day:
“One student and one reporter caused one heck of a mess to be stirred up for no reason,” said Rowland in regard to the article on the “Day of Silence” that appeared in Wednesday’s edition of the Johnson City Press.
This principal has apparently kept Curtis out of his school ever since the Day of Silence…
As it seems, Curtis was kept out of school not only on the Day of Silence (Wednesday, April 18th) but also on Thursday, April 19th and Friday, April 20th.
Just wanted to give you an update on Curtis Walsh, the Tennessee senior who was dismissed for supporting the day of silence. I am Curtis’ mother. On Wednesday, he was sent home as the newspaper article said, but we were given NO REASON (the paper said for his own safety). On Wednesday afternoon about 4:00, I received a phone call from Marable, the principal, and he said that Curtis did not need to come to school on Thursday. I asked if he had been threatened (Curtis) or if it was a punishment. He replied, “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.” On Thursday afternoon my husband, Curtis’ STEP-FATHER, NOT HIS MOTHER, received a call from Marable saying that Curtis did not need to be in school on Friday. As you may guess, this fight is NOT over.
This story hasn’t really gotten all that much attention yet… but I hope it will. What is happening to Curtis is beyond unacceptable.
Gotta love it… “It don’t matter, He just don’t need to be here.” Right. Anyone who agitates on behalf of the dignity of gay kids let alone their safety, doesn’t need to be in Henry Marable‘s school. Sorta gives you a flavor for what life is like for gay kids that have to walk those halls doesn’t it? Meanwhile Pat Robertson’s legal sharks are threatening any school that refuses to support their "Day Of Truth" with litigation.
Contact info for David Crocket High School in Jonesborough, Tennessee can be found, Here. More info on another kid who was punished for organizing a Day Of Silence, and a school in Indiana that was put into a lockdown over threats of violence during the Day Of Silence, Here. You can suppose that Jay Sekulow won’t be stepping up to defend the rights of those students…
…or This Teacher who allowed this student editoral calling for tolerance toward gay students to be published. She stands to loose her job now , for allowing these highly controversial words to be published in the student newspaper, and read by impressionable young minds…
Would it be so hard to just accept them as human beings who have feelings just like everyone else? Being homosexual doesn’t make a person inhuman, it makes them just a little bit different than the rest of the world. And for living in a society that tells you to always be yourself, it’s a hard price to pay.
Well we wouldn’t want our kids taking any of that shit seriously now would we?
You’ve got to be taught
To hate and fear,
You’ve got to be taught
From year to year,
It’s got to be drummed
In your dear little ear
You’ve got to be carefully taught.
Two weeks ago, the University of Florida voted to deny Jeb Bush an honorary degree. By a 38-28 vote, the faculty Senate rejected the former governor’s nomination, citing concerns about some of Bush’s education initiatives, including his dismantling of affirmative action programs in the state:
In higher education circles, Bush’s greatest criticism came over his “One Florida” plan, which ended race-based admissions in state universities. Black enrollment dropped at UF and statewide after the change took effect, as critics predicted.
Bush’s policies of “rewarding and punishing schools according to students’ standardized test results and using vouchers to send certain students to private schools at public expense” also contributed to the rejection of his nomination.
Upset by this lack of Jeb Bush adoration, the conservative-controlled House Schools & Learning Council voted yesterday to force the university to rename its education school the “Jeb Bush College of Education.”
Over the faculty’s opposition, the school will now have “to erect ‘suitable markers‘ noting the college’s new name and include the revised name in all university documents, including catalogues and brochures.” The lawmakers acknowledge they “came up with the idea as an answer” to the faculty’s denial of Bush’s honorary degree.
I’m surprised they didn’t make them give Jeb a few more college degrees while they were at it…maybe a PhD in Advanced Physics or Computer Science or something. This may all seem like the same old, same old and yes it is, but look at it: a group of conservative lawmakers decided to force an institute of higher education to give someone recognition in the field of education that they had not earned from that institution. Yes, yes…often that only amounts to giving them piles of money…but at least the giving of money to a college or university makes it possible for that institution to continue to do its job. Jeb acted to deny minority students an education and drain the public schools of money they desperately need to educate kids, our nation’s future…voted to in other words, make the world poorer then it was before he took office, and he and his Conservative cronies expected that institution to give him accolades anyway. And when they didn’t, they forced them to. Next time you hear a conservative yap, yap, yapping about how people have to earn their place in this world, and that liberals are always giving people stuff they haven’t earned and don’t deserve…laugh in their face.
NEWS ITEM: Bill Donohue Demands The Edwards Campaign Fire Two Liberal Bloggers For "Trash Talking"
Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League demanded this week that presidential candidate John Edwards fire two liberal bloggers his campaign had hired. In a statement on Tuesday, Donohue accused Amanda Marcotte, a regular contributor to the blog Pandagon and Melissa McEwan, of Shakespeare’s Sister, of expressing "anti-Catholic opinions". "John Edwards is a decent man who has had his campaign tarnished by two anti-Catholic vulgar trash-talking bigots", said Donohue.
"Name for me a book publishing company in this country, particularly in New York, which would allow you to publish a book which would tell the truth about the gay death style." [MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, 2/27/04]
"The gay community has yet to apologize to straight people for all the damage that they have done." [MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, 4/11/05]
Addressing former Rep. Mark Foley (R-FL) in a press release, Donohue said: "[W]hy didn’t you just smack the clergyman in the face? After all, most 15-year-old teenage boys wouldn’t allow themselves to be molested. So why did you?" [10/4/06] "We’ve already won. Who really cares what Hollywood thinks? All these hacks come out there. Hollywood is controlled by secular Jews who hate Christianity in general and Catholicism in particular. It’s not a secret, OK? And I’m not afraid to say it. … Hollywood likes anal sex. They like to see the public square without nativity scenes. I like families. I like children. They like abortions. I believe in traditional values and restraint. They believe in libertinism. We have nothing in common. But you know what? The culture war has been ongoing for a long time. Their side has lost." [MSNBC’s Scarborough Country, 12/8/04]
On the January 15 edition of Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor, host Bill O’Reilly said of Shawn Hornbeck — who was abducted at the age of 11, held for four years, and recently found in Missouri — that "there was an element here that this kid liked about this circumstances" and that he "do[esn’t] buy" "the Stockholm syndrome thing." O’Reilly also said: "The situation here for this kid looks to me to be a lot more fun than what he had under his old parents. He didn’t have to go to school. He could run around and do whatever he wanted." When fellow Fox News host Greta Van Susteren pointed out that "[s]ome kids like school," O’Reilly replied: "Well, I don’t believe this kid did."
The following day, during his "Talking Points Memo" segment, O’Reilly responded to viewer mail criticizing his comments about Hornbeck. O’Reilly concluded: "I hope he did not make a conscious decision to accept his captivity because" his kidnapper "made things easy for him. No school, play all day long."
But then…it makes everything about right wingers make sense when you think about it. Digby puts the pieces together here…
I think this is one of the defining aspects of conservatism. They have a stunted sense of empathy and an undeveloped ability to understand abstract concepts. It makes them unable to fashion any solutions to common problems, which they blame on "poor character" because they cannot visualize themselves ever being in a vulnerable or unlucky position through no fault of their own. Until it happens to them or someone they know, in which case they never question their philosophy as a whole but merely apply a special exemption to whichever particular problem or risk to which they have personally been exposed.
Empathy is not some altruistic concept. In fact, it’s quite selfish and designed to make humans better able to survive. It allows a person to walk in another’s shoes so that they might have an inkling of what it would be like if that person’s experience became their own. It is necessary to understand how to head off problems that you might someday have to confront and it is certainly necessary to fully understand other necessary concepts such as justice, fairness and love.
I’m not drawing any conclusions from this [Warning…PDF file], but it’s interesting. It seems that when they test psychopaths, they find that they can’t understand abstract concepts. I’m just saying.
That PDF from Crime Times Digby links to is really interesting…
Psychopaths are callous, glib, superficial, and impulsive; lack empathy for others; and display no guilt or remorse for their harmful acts. One reason for these traits, research suggests, is that psychopaths have difficulty understanding emotions. However, a new study indicates that psychopaths are impaired not just in the emotional realm, but more broadly, in understanding abstract information in general.
Sound familiar?
In particular, the psychopaths showed clear deficits in activating one brain area, the right anterior superior temporal gyrus, when processing abstract stimuli. This region failed to differentiate normally between abstract and concrete stimuli.
The researchers say, “These data support the hypothesis that there is an abnormality in the function of the right anterior superior temporal gyrus in psychopathy.”
“Perhaps,” the researchers say, “psychopathic individuals have difficulty engaging in cognitive functions that involve material that has no concrete realization in the external world. We might speculate that complex social emotions such as love, empathy, guilt and remorse may be a form of more abstract functioning. Thus, difficulties in processing and integrating these conceptually abstract representations to regulate or modulate behavior would be [seen] in these individuals.”
I’ve always wondered about this, particularly regarding the hard core homophobes. How is it that any decent person could stick a knife in the hearts of loving couples, do everything possible in their power to gut them of their capacity, not just to love each other, but to trust anyone, let alone love anyone? How is it they can look you right in the eye and tell you to your face that marriage doesn’t have anything to do with love…that it’s just about making babies and nothing more? How is it, they can throw helpless gay teens into ex-gay camps where they’ll be taught to fear and loath their sexual nature, how do they pray to God above that if their kid can’t be made into a heterosexual, at least dear god make them incapable of loving someone of their own sex? How does anyone do this to a kid and say they’re doing it out of love? Well…maybe this is why.
Look at what O’Reilly is saying up there again. How do you look into the camera at millions of viewers and tell them you think that kid was enjoying himself? How do you do it with an air of plain talk common sense? The only answer I can think of is, you do it like that because you simply cannot fathom what that kid must have been going through. Empathy. You could swim in the open sewer of that man’s conscience forever and not find a single shred of it anywhere.
Or in any of them. This is why appealing to their better nature isn’t bloody likely to buy you anything.
Via Steve Gilliard…via Firedoglake… How do you sell advertising space on a radio station that openly calls for liberals to be killed? Why…you sell it to them as Disney programming, of course…
Evenin’, fellow firedogs! Tonight I’m going to attempt to get us all up to speed about a situation that I suspect we’re going to be hearing a lot about in the near future. This story was brought to my attention by ¡El Gato Negro!.
Where to begin? First we’ll go to A. J. Kandy, who blogs at King Marketing:
ABC/Disney operates a US-wide network of radio stations and affiliates. One of these affiliates, San Francisco’s KSFO, is a die-hard right-wing talk shop whose rabidly eliminationist hosts have publicly endorsed (if not outright revelled in) torture and engaged in hate speech of all stripes. However, the station is sold to its advertisers as a “Disney” station, with all the connotations of family-friendliness that entails. [Bruce here – the emphasis is mine…]
Self-described “fifth-tier blogger” Spocko decided to “out” KSFO to its national advertisers with a polite letter-writing campaign, and by exposing their hate speech on his blog with short audio clips and transcripts (which falls under the Fair Use statutes.)
This, of course, is what we call citizen action, and most of us know the drill by now. We write to advertisers and once in a blue moon, they write us back, pat us on the head and tell us that they’ll take our suggestion under advisement, then go on their merry way without changing a thing. This was not the case, however, with Spocko. From a guest post at BlogIntegrity, Spocko himself can tell us what happened next:
In mid-December I got confirmation that a major national advertiser, VISA, pulled their ads from the Melanie Morgan and Lee Rogers show, based on listening to audio clips I provided them. I also think that FedEx, AT&T and Kaiser are considering pulling their ads. Visa isn’t the first advertiser who has left KSFO, multiple advertisers have left the station, especially from the Brian Sussman show. In July of this year when KSFO lost MasterCard as an advertiser someone from KSFO “outed” me on a counter-blog (which I won’t link to). This same person has also threatened me with local and federal criminal action for using the audio (which I clearly used under the fair use portion of copyright law). And because they have suggested violence toward me (in addition to talking about suing me "for everything I have”) I have chosen to remain anonymous.
As Thers has said,
Hooray, for Thers!! Oh, uh, ahem. Sorry. You were saying, Spocko?
95 percent of blog fights don’t mean anything, but I think this one does since KSFO is using the full weight and force of an ABC/Disney lawyer and copyright law against a private citizen blogger. I dared to use the audio content in question for nonprofit educational purposes (I don’t even have ads on my blog!), and thus under the protection of the Fair Use Doctrine set forth in Section 107 of the Copyright Act, 17 U.S.C.§107.
IN THE LATEST SKIRMISH BETWEEN big media and a blogger, The Walt Disney Company has succeeded in shutting down the Web site "Spocko’s Brain."
On the site, blogger and media critic "Spocko" took issue with on-air comments made by right-wing talk show hosts at Bay Area ABC affiliate radio station KSFO. He posted audio files of hosts’ comments on his Web site, and also began a letter-writing campaign that, he says, resulted in advertisers fleeing the station.
But Tuesday, Spocko’s Internet service provider, 1&1 Internet, pulled the plug on the blog–a move prompted by a Dec. 22 cease-and-desist letter from ABC Radio claiming that material on Spocko’s Brain violated Disney’s copyright.
And that’s where things stand right now. Many of us are now familiar with ABC/Disney’s strong-arm fascism-in-mouse-ears tactics from the "Path to 9/11" debacle earlier this year. Here’s what you can do to help our fellow blogger, Spocko:
1. The KSFO hate clips are all up at Online BlogIntegrity. Collect ’em all. Share with your friends. Spread them around. It’s a veritable cornucopia of Right Wing Hate Speech. (Listen at your own risk.)
2. Go here and scroll down to "What Can You Do?" and follow the instructions. Spocko has provided us with a step-by-step plan to alert the blogging world, the MSM (if they’ll listen), and KSFO’s advertisers to the current situation.
I urge you all to get involved. This is an example of how we can effectively fight the tide of hateful bile that pollutes our airwaves and rots the brains of millions of overly credulous talk-radio listeners. We, of course, support the wingnuts’ right to say whatever they want to say, but they must be prepared to face the real-world consequences of stoking the fires of ethnic, political, and religious hatred. If that means losing the support of their advertisers and cutting into their six-figure salaries, well, then, hurrah! We win.
Thank you and good night.
If those clips get taken down email me and I’ll pass them along to you. Here’s some excerpts from the menu at Online Blogintegrity…
Somebody at Disney needs to get their head screwed on straight. This isn’t anything Disney should want its brand associated with. Yet they’re apparently marketing that station to advertisers as a Disney station. It’s like putting the Disney logo on a burning cross at a Klan rally. Why are they doing this? Is someone in marketing there just completely brain dead or what?
I can appreciate wanting to attract an audience. But some audiences you should probably just walk away from, regardless of whether or not it adversely impacts the shareholder bottom line. The kind that think ridiculing a congressman’s racial make-up is funny, for example. If Disney owns this station, then they either need to make it reflect their corporate values, or they need to sell it.
In the meantime, the least the rest of us can do is inform the advertisers of what it is they’re buying into, when they buy into the Disney brand. Read this from the blogger Disney is going after, for more info on how. If that post gets taken down email me and I’ll send you a copy of it.
I doubt that even Barack Obama can save us from our anger now. That’s because the anger that lately pervades our politics is more than just an after effect of six years of Democratic setbacks (although the strikingly angry Democratic response to their six bad years does call for an explanation).
An explaination…did you say? Well…how about this one…
You should go read the rest of Digby’s post. Digby says of the Kurtz review that, "It’s fascinating because it once again illustrates the degree to which conservatives have absolutely no self-awareness", but I don’t think it’s a lack of self awareness so much as a lack of conscience. When they kick people in the teeth, conservatives don’t see that as anything less then their god given right as superior beings. The role of all the rest of us lesser beings is to just stand there and passively take it because…well…they have a god given right to dish it out to us and if we object, we’re the ones being mean. To them. And of course, if we decide to dish it right back then we are being positively uncivil.
Speaking of which…have you noticed how the word, "civility" has become some kind of watchword recently? Civility. Civility. The news media has suddenly discovered that it is important for us to be civil. Now that the democrats are back in power. Goodness knows it wasn’t important when people like the lady in the photo above were in power. Goodness knows it wasn’t important back when Rush Limbaugh was playing "It’s Raining Men" right after news broke that a New York Times reporter had committed suicide by jumping out an office window. Goodness knows it wasn’t important when Ann Coulter said the only problem she has with Timothy McVeigh is that he didn’t go to the New York Times building. Now that democrats are back in power, the news media that treated Limbaugh and Coulter like elder statesmen have suddenly discovered that incivility is a bad thing. Gosh.
Digby reminds us about the little list of words the father of the new incivility, Newt Gingrich made for republicans to use every time they talked about democrats…
He became famous (with some help from his cohorts) for being a manipulative, vicious asshole and the lesson was well learned. He went on to create a lexicon of derision, used by Republicans everywhere, to describe Democrats and liberals. He called these words "contrast":
Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.
I realize it is churlish of us liberals to attempt to defend ourselves from this kind of bad faith and even worse for us to lose our Gary Cooper cool. But, you know, when you push people far enough and hard enough they start to fight for their survival. The level of vitriol and hate emanating from the right — and encouraged by Republicans leaders of all stripes — has been overwhelming. These past twelve years alone have been characterized by smears, toxic rhetoric, impeachments, abuse of power, stolen elections, power mad governance, corruption and ineptitude. So yes, we’re angry — but more importantly, we are fearful for our country.
Until Republicans admit what they have wrought and recognize that their trash talking and boot-to-the-throat mode of fetid politics are responsible for our state today, then for the good of the country, I hope the left remains angry and battles them back with everything they’ve got.
This is ugly, I admit. But the country just can’t take another couple of decades of Republican politics and Republican rule. We have to stop it — and it won’t be stopped if Democrats play nice.
No. It won’t. I say this over and over again but it’s true: we’re in a knife fight with these people. You either fight back to win, or you just stand there and let them laugh in your face and kick your balls, because that’s just what they’ll do, and keep doing, even after you’ve curled up in the fetal position. They don’t care. They hate you. They hate you with a passion that your gay and lesbian neighbors have seen first hand for decades now. Digby’s right. Until the republicans are held accountable for the past couple decades of vitriol and hate they’ve been spewing into the political well all that this newly discovered concern about the level of incivility amounts to, is just another way of keeping us passive while they get to keep kicking everyone they despise in the face. It won’t stop until they’re held accountable.
A bill, of course, they wouldn’t even consider when they were in the majority.
There is something profoundly sickening about watching the party that made race baiting and fag bashing into political art forms bellyaching about minority rights.
The usual retort by gay bashers is that the victim made a pass at them, or something akin to a pass. This is the essence of the "gay panic" defense, that the victim provoked them by in some way attacking their masculinity or their heterosexuality. What heterosexuals don’t realize, is that they get to play too, by merely being thought to be gay by their assailants, or by having gay friends, and now, apparently, just going to a concert given by a gay performer …
(London) Two men who beat a man and his young nephew as they left an Elton John concert were convicted Wednesday of assault causing bodily harm.
Graham Brydon had taken his nephew John to the concert at Watford football stadium in June last year. Walking home Brydon put an official T-shirt he bought at the concert over his shirt.
Henry Peters, 31, and Neil Wattley, 30, spotted the T-shirt and began harassing Brydon and his nephew, yelling "Elton John is fucking gay."
Then without provocation the assailants began beating them.
Brydon, in his 50s, required hospitalization for a suspected broken cheekbone.
Peters and Wattley pleaded not guilty, and claimed that Brydon and his nephew had provoked the attack.
But at trial police showed tape from a CCTV camera which had recorded the entire encounter.
The tape showed Wattley yelling the homophobic slur and then punching Brydon in the face. Peters then joined in the attack.
Notice the reflex. They provoked us! Yes. Because "Elton John is fucking gay." It was provocation enough. Were it not for the video tape, they might just have gotten away with it. People would think to themselves, there must have been Some kind of provocation after all…nobody just walks up to complete strangers and starts beating them up without Some kind of provocation… And so there was. "Elton John is fucking gay." That was the provocation. Luckily for the victims in this case, there was a video tape to prove that was all there was to it.
Without a doubt this is the way it goes in nearly all gay bashings. If you could watch a tape of the entire time Matthew Shepard was in the company of his killers the night he was tortured and murdered, you would, never doubt it, see something very similar to this. Two adult thugs suddenly turning on a young five foot two 112 pound gay college student who had done absolutely nothing to them, beating him bloody, tying him to a fence, putting cigarettes put out on his skin, and then bashing his skull with a handgun, and then later telling the police, and then the world, that Shepard had provoked them.
So…here’s the scenario… A man who was hired by a city police department to psychologically screen prospective new hires is discovered to be a member of an antisemitic group that distributes copies of Protocols of the Elders of Zion, pamphlets denying the holocaust really happened, and asserting that Jews are anti-Christian Christ killers. It develops that this man was conducting psychological tests against prospective employees which hedeveloped on a grant from the Bush Department of Justice. Some say his membership in the antisemitic group is suggestive of why he’s disqualified many Jewish applicants, and they complain to the police community relations council, which orders an investigation. The police department stops using his services while the investigation is underway.
The head of the antisemitic group is suitably outraged. "Does this mean that any person with a Christian or moral belief system cannot work for the city?" he asks. "This case has all the markings of blatant anti-Christian discrimination and bigotry. People of faith should follow it carefully, because they could be next." Everyone writes him and the former police department screener off as a couple of bigoted crackpots.
Minneapolis interim police chief Tim Dolan has ordered an inquiry into the use by his force of a psychologist tied to a group that opposes LGBT civil rights, gay marriage and endorses the so-called ex-gay movement.
Michael A. Campion has been used by the police department for more than a year to screen prospective police officers. Campion also has worked for departments in more than 100 cities over the past 30 years. He is based in Champaign, Illinois.
His involvement with the Illinois Family Institute was brought to Dolan’s attention at a meeting last week with the Police Community Relations Council when it was learned that Campion had made negative comments about single parents.
…
Although some of Capion’s comments to prospective officers "disturbed" members of the Council, Chief Dolan said there was nothing specific to indicate he was biased in his testing. Nevertheless he ordered an independent inquiry and said Capion would not be used until the inquiry finished its work.
…
"Does this mean that any person with a Christian or moral belief system cannot work for the city of Minneapolis?" said David Smith. "This case has all the markings of blatant anti-Christian discrimination and bigotry. People of faith should follow it carefully, because they could be next."
Bigotry. Bigotry. Homosexuals are disease spreading, child molesting, family destroying perverts that god hates and who don’t deserve any sort of civil rights and people who tell us not to kick them in the face are not moral and are not Christian. And we’re not bigots, the rest of you are. Bigotry. Bigotry.
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