MFA in Exercising Creative Resistance

Discussion in 'Political Discussions' started by me again, Jun 2, 2017.

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  1. heirophant

    heirophant Well-Known Member

    Four of those five are ostensible "comedians", a category often lumped in with the arts, along with an opinion writer for the New York Times, an exceedingly provincial publication whose opinion pages often resemble failed attempts at comedy.

    It's telling how comedians have become the left's new intellectuals. Which returns us to the (long forgotten) subject of this thread, an MFA (Master of Fine Arts) in "Creative Resistance".

    Comedians are all about "transgression", it's how they get their laughs. It's about stepping over other people's moral boundaries and goring sacred cows, in what is intended to be a stylish way. As such, there isn't any great need for verisimilitude and caricature becomes the rule of the day. Nobody literally believes that Trump's wife is a whore, that Trump has sex with his daughter or that Trump and Putin are gay lovers, but those images don't have to be true or even truth-like as long as they get laughs from audiences that enjoy seeing Trump diminished. All that comedic caricature has to be is stylish caricature, where 'style' is defined as what flies in the New York and Los Angeles comedy clubs (or the newsrooms of the same cities). Kathy Griffin's big mistake was expecting that the United States as a whole would all share the NY/LA comedy club sensibility.

    I think that it's interesting that Milo Yiannopoulos is cut from the exact same cloth. Milo just reverses that same very gay edginess and willingness to transgress on many of the left's sacred cows, on what he perceives as the repressive and often even totalitarian tendencies of the cultural left. No pedophilia isn't funny, even if it is obviously transgressive to what Milo perceives to be repressive sensibilities. Just as Griffin posing as Jihadi John with Trump's bloody severed head wasn't funny.

    Comedians can't transgress any and all boundaries without becoming moral nihilists. And that's precisely what contemporary culture is NOT about. In a way, we live in a Neo-Puritan age, in which politics in all areas has become a matter of morality, of people (usually the left) shaking their fingers at everyone else: "Bad! Evil! Sinner!" (Except in the contemporary vocabulary it's more likely to be 'Racist! Sexist! Xenophobe!') But it's moral condemnation all the same, whichever side is doing it. So moral nihilism goes 100% against the prevailing moral-judgementalism Zeitgeist.

    And in a way that's what contemporary comedy is all about. It's an appropriation of cultural power: 'We (the comedic left, presumably including the ones with MFA's in Creative Resistance) set the remaining boundaries, you (the deplorables) must abide by the boundaries we establish for you.' It most emphatically isn't the assertion that there are no more moral values, but rather it's a declaration about who gets to define them.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 7, 2017
  2. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    They eventually picked Andrew Scheer. As a free market guy without social hangups, I would have preferred Maxime Bernier. But it is what it is.
     
  3. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Man, you really need to decide whether you're pro or against free speech and PC. It's hard to follow.
    Art. To me, crappy art; I do not follow Kathy Griffith and can't say whether it's her usual caliber of work. If so: meh.

    Libel. There is no evidence Melania was ever a hooker. She did make softcore porn photos though. Her husband had a cameo in a softcore porn movie, so birds of a feather.


    Dumb, and she was crucified in the MSM for that,


    ...which only made news because it's so unlike him; ostensibly he was sticking up for a reporter Trump attacked. To which I'd add: if this is what makes you pay attention to the weird chemistry between the President of United States and the world's biggest real-life supervillain, it's worth it. Yes, Vlad the Alpha Stork is the closest thing reality has to a supervillain, or a Bond villain.


    ...because Trump can't stop acting creepy around her. And Maher is the Left's answer to Howard Stern.


    Nice how you switched from people preventing free speech to people exercising it. Did it occur to you there might be a reason people are angry? And they target the President, not random students like Milo or innocent NJ residents who happen to be Muslim like Trump. The latter was elected President because of his hate speech, so it's way past "normalized" by your side. Not to mention, the Right practices this for decades now: how about O'Reiily's attach on 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton on major network? Even Maher tries not to do that, and it's his job to be provocative. Hypocrites.
     
  4. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    I believe they did. We do have some legislation regarding hate-speech and that appears to include Holocaust deniers. I seem to remember that Jim Keegstra, Ernst Zündel and David Ahenakew all fell afoul of hate-speech legislation. David Ahenakew was convicted of wilfully promoting hatred, but his conviction was overturned on appeal. Zündel was jailed several times: in Canada for publishing material likely to incite hatred against an indentifiable group, and in the U.S. for overstaying his visa. The U.S. deported him to Canada, from whence he was deported to his native Germany, where he did five years in jail for "inciting racial hatred." A hat-trick of sentences for an international, major-league hater: fitting, I'd say. Jim Keegstra was a teacher, who was charged and convicted of hate-speech in 1984. His conviction was overturned by the Alberta Court of Appeal and reinstated by the Supreme Court of Canada.

    Yes, we've had (and continue to have) some really nasty buggers, here. I had a sneaky, insinuating sort of Holocaust denier as a history teacher in high school nearly 60 years ago, but he's guaranteed dead now. The courts never got him, as far as I know.

    J.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Jun 8, 2017
  5. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    A nutty comment like that is like a train wreck: people just have to stop and stare in total disbelief.

    Jihadists are also angry and are killing targeted-people, but their reasons don't legitimize their ideological actions.
     
  6. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    I hope you wouldn't associate Steyn or Levant with anti-Semites. The former is insignificantly Jewish and the latter significantly so and neither is anti-Semitic. I have Osmotic Jewish heritage by dint of association.
     
  7. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Majority of voters stare in disbelief, Cap. And with all of the constant covfefe
     
  8. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Frankly, I need more context. I don't follow careers of these two particular gentlemen. I have only the vaguest idea who they are. What kind of trouble did they get from our esteemed (a hint of sarcasm here) officialdom? Because I was under impression that both are overfed D-list celebs who do rather well. Also, sometimes official meddling is justified: for example Gomeshi was not persecuted, he faced serious criminal charges and got away with them.

    You know who had trouble with an officialdom? Boris Nemtsov.
     
  9. Bruce

    Bruce Moderator

    Uhhh.....the context was my assertion that liberals are the most hateful, spiteful, nasty, etc., people around. You countered that that only applied to a handful of fringe Berkeley activists who live in their parent's basements. I supplied you with a list of very prominent liberals who most certainly do not live in their parent's basements, who said and did the most vulgar and nasty things imaginable. all because they can't accept the fact that Donald Trump won the election.

    Of course those people have the right to say and do what they did. To paraphrase Neal Boortz, popular speech needs no protection, by its very definition. However, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should do something in a civilized society.

    Personally, I hope they keep it up, full throttle. It just highlights what mean & nasty people the left are, and their acts are wearing thin with the American people.
     
  10. decimon

    decimon Well-Known Member


    For your presumed A-list edification: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGF1LR_QCIs

    In Nemtsov you equate Canadian justice to that in Putinist Russia? Interesting.
     
  11. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    I find this assertion most puzzling, Bruce. Surely you're aware of the existence of Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly (Colbert made a lot of money imitating him btw), Glenn Beck, Ann Coulter, Alex Jones among others? Heck, Trump in his Birther years was de facto among them. The only guy approaching these in spite (but with more talent) is Maher. The left is only catching up to you guys, and you're freaking out so about it; I'm not quite sure how to covfefe
     
  12. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Snooze. But thanks. Canadian "tribunals" system doesn't inspire much confidence in me; but it doesn't look like it slowed down Msrs. Levant and Klein in their Islam scapegoating and shilling for oil sand industry. In fact, Wikipedia treatment makes it look like some complaints against Levant (eg., his blatant anti-Roma rant) were justified. Both gentlemen are doing just fine. In fact, Levant may have more legit gripe against the Conservative Party that took away his rightful nomination to run for Parliament in order to parachute a star candidate to his riding (one Steven Harper). That practice, frankly, smells, but is super-common in Canadian party politics.
     
  13. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    You're both right. The culty part of the academic left is horrible, and so is the entertainment wing of the right.
     
  14. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Stanislav, televising the term "house nigger" and showing a pic of a severed American president's head is the proud [sic] domain of the MSM. The left cockily presented those insults, until the public back-lashed in disgust, thus forcing the MSM to retreat in financial fear. That is just a foretaste of what is to come because the MSM's political and financial course-of-action cannot be financially sustained indefinitely. A day of financial accountability and reckoning is coming.
     
  15. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Oh sure, because broadcasting the song "Barack the Magic Negro" and devotint two shows straight to how one private citizen is a "slut" was not Rush Limbaugh. Dude, after all the slime on the right talk radio and outrage to you, it's shocking you find covfefe
     
  16. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    Also, Maher called himself the "house negro"; so it was not a slur, just use of a very fowl language (and Bill Maher, while possessing a considerable talent, is an arrogant prick). But you would think from all the negative covfefe
     
  17. Kizmet

    Kizmet Moderator

    I would appreciate it if you'd leave covfefe out of this discussion. After all, this is a family-oriented board:sgrin:
     
  18. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    I would, but I find it necessary because of all covfefe
     
  19. me again

    me again Well-Known Member

    Sample MSM articles about President Trump from today's release

    Just for anecdotal purposes, let's go to yahoonews.com, right here and right now, and let's pick out the first four or five articles about President Donald Trump. Whether they are positive, negative or neutral, let's just copy-and-paste them as they are. Let's see if there is a continued pattern to MSM reporting:

    1. Trump is a 'sociopath' and could be 'losing his mind'
    Trump is a 'sociopath' and could be 'losing his mind,' says former Cabinet member Robert Reich

    2. Comey makes clear we can’t trust President Trump
    Comey makes clear we can't trust President Trump (Opinion) - CNN.com

    3. Trump does not seem to understand what the presidency is about
    Trump does not seem to understand what the presidency is about: Bill Kristol

    4. Comey says Trump ‘looking for something’ in exchange for keeping FBI job
    https://www.yahoo.com/news/comey-says-trump-looking-something-exchange-keeping-fbi-job-152117806.html

    5. Trump's approval rating has fallen to a record low
    Trump's approval rating has fallen to a record low - Business Insider

    The MSM prints lies and has a nefarious agenda and has lost all journalistic credibility. The MSM is garbage.
     
  20. Stanislav

    Stanislav Well-Known Member

    All this shows that Trump's performance gets terrible press. Maybe there's a covfefe
     

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