Discussion for article #231658
BUt MAINEs cOMMEnts Were CLEARLY antI-AmericaN, Libtard!11!1!one!!1!!!
Anti-Texan⌠Nothing wrong with that!
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Thatâs funny. I clicked om TPM, but an article from Salon appeared.
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As stupid as the outrage expressed towards the Dixie Chicks was there is a big difference between boycotts and outrage from ones fellow citizens and acts of reprisal from the government. As for the comparison between the responses to Dixie Chickâs statement and The Interview, a less apples to oranges comparison might be to ask how the government of North Korea would have responded to a group of North Koreans making similar statements about their leadership to how the US government responded to the Dixie Chicks.
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If you canât tell the difference between a totalitarian governmentâs overreaction to criticism of a leader and the overreaction to criticism of a leader of one ideological slice of the population of a democracy, you might be an associate English professor at a regional state university.
The smacking sound you hear is coming from the faculty of the Fitchberg political science and history departments smacking their heads.
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That is what I thought. If the North Korean Dixie Chicks said something like that, at best they would be sentenced to a life time of hard labor in a labor camp, at worst instant bullet to the head. On top of that, a large portion of the American population was supportive of the Dixie Chicks comments at the time, it just so happened they were not big country music fans. You would be hard pressed to find a more conservative/fascist monolithic block than country music fans. The only one I can think of is NASCAR fans, but the two have a lot of overlap. There was a lot of vocal support for the Dixie Chicks at the time, just not from within their industry. That is not what it would be like in NK at all. So, yeah, I will agree that about 15% of the population is exactly as insane as Kim Jong Un. But I would not say that represents America as a whole.
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I donât understand your point. Damaging your career as a chart-topping musician and having to painfully build a new audience from scratch is just like being sent to a concentration camp or executed. Clearly a difference of degree rather than of category.
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So what youâre saying is that conservative republicans are on the road to the same kind of behavior as North Korea? Thatâs not news.
Thanks for the comments, all. Of course I agree that there are crucial differences between a totalitarian regime and our own nation. But on the other hand, I find one part of that comparison even more frustrating: of course such a regime is going to attempt to squash critiques of itself, and limit its citizens freedoms for the same reason; whereas the millions of Americans who took it upon themselves to express the same levels of outrage and violent threats against the Dixie Chicks did so much more fully of their own will, and attempted very overtly to limit their fellow citizensâ freedoms.
So yeah, weâre not North Korea. But weâre not nearly as collectively freedom-centered as we like to claim either, far too much of the time.
Thanks,
Ben
So true - associate professors at regional state universities are so stupid!!!
Actually, more a comment on English professors who think theyâre political scientists.
And letâs not even get into professors at small private colleges or universities. Or worse, community colleges. Those guys are idiots. /snark
But we are freedom centered. Yeah, there are always segments of society that would like to curtail this freedom, or that freedom. I, for example, would like to see the entire 2nd amendment struck from the Constitution and wouldnât lift a finger to help someone whoâs gun ârightsâ are being trampled. Whereas I will go to the mat to defend someones freedoms under the first amendment. Does that make me anti-freedom because I value certain freedoms over others? Some people are strong supporters of the 5th or 8th amendments over any others. Not a lot of big advocates for the third amendment, but you get my point. The people who were harshly critical of the Dixie Chicks value other freedoms.
And I am not even sure we can say that, as we donât know how many of them would actually like to have seen the Dixie Chicks actually arrested by the government for their speech. I have personally boycotted Chick-Fil-A, Walmart, and Hobby Lobby for their political activism. Does that make me anti-freedom? How is my boycotting Hobby Lobby any different than what the country music scene did to the Dixie Chicks? And Iâm not talking about the small minority of RWNJs who made the death threats, they are not representative of even the boycotters. I am talking about the country music fans and industry in general.
The Dixie Chicks espoused views that were very different from their primary target audience, and there was an industry backlash. Imagine if a white rapper like Eminem suddenly went on a huge screed against urban culture and black people on stage. Or if someone like 50 Cent said on stage the Michael Brown deserved what happened and Darren Wilson was innocent? What do you think his audience would do? Would they be anti-freedom for walking out on him and trashing their copies of his records. Guarantee he would get a fair number of death threats too. Bush was right, you have free speech, but you have to accept the consequences of that speech.
I may not agree with their position, but in principle, it really isnât anti-freedom. People vote with their dollars, and that is fine. It is the way our system has always and will always work.
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I appreciate those thoughts, thanks. I hear you but would say that the difference in my example from yours is that the problem for those millions of outraged, boycotting, attacking folks was specifically a critique of their president/leader. That, to my mind, is much further along the line toward a totalitarian, anti-freedom perspective than other examples of statements that could lead to boycotts or the like. Yâknow?
Thanks,
Ben
Lots of other examples going well back to the early 20th century of both entertainers and ordinary people who were threatened by the US government, harassed by the FBI and police, questioned before Congress and had their livelihoods taken from them by smears. Concentration camps? No. But insidious and anti-freedom nonetheless.
No, I donât. It was someone in a band they admired and (presumably) thought they agreed with in general taking a very loud and prominent stance that was in direct opposition to what they very strongly felt. You seem to have a very hard time seeing this from someone elseâs perspective. Look at it this way - what if Eddie Vedder continued to make the same kind of music he does, but suddenly started giving stage speeches and interviews like Ted Nugent, saying Obama was a Muslim communist? How would you feel about him then after him being a big part of a pretty liberal scene for a long time?
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Just yesterday there was an article here on TPM about the anger amongst the Harvard faculty at the changes to their health care plan. If you look at the comments, I donât think anyone felt any sympathy that there super awesome health care plan was only slightly less super awesome. Where the commenters did express anger, was the fact that Harvard blamed ObamaCare (and by extension Obama) for the changes, even though they provided no evidence of that claim at all. And there was quite a lot of frustration directed at Harvard for that.
Now we canât boycott Harvard, they donât produce any products for direct consumer consumption. But I think there would be a fair number of people who would consider it for being critical of the president. You should have seen the comment threads around here during the dark days of the Edward Snowden fiasco. It started coming frighteningly close to threats to anyone who criticized the president during that time. It didnât matter what the topic was.
My point isnât that both sides do it. My point is that it is natural to rally around your leader. What is important is to understand that other people can be critical of said leader. I get very angry when my inlaws go into long racist tirades against the president, and I have told them on more than one occasion to shove it where the sun donât shine (Christmas with the inlaws is rough in my family). I donât want to hear their crap, but at the same time I fully recognize their right to say it.
So I still think that rallying behind your political leader by speaking with your dollars is a far cry from saying that you reject someoneâs freedom to speak out against your president. I do the same thing when I choose not to give campaign money to Democrats who ran against Obama (ahem, Grimes, Davis). I choose not to financially support someone who I politically disagree with. Which is the reason I gave away my Meatloaf CD after he campaigned for Romney and will never buy any of his stuff ever again. He has the freedom to rally against the president all he wants, and I have the freedom to not buy his product because of it.
Oh and one more point. I guarantee you that those same people who boycotted the Dixie Chicks would rally behind a country music star who said the exact same words about Obama. They arenât rallying behind America, or their President; they were rallying behind their political leader (outside of him being president). That distinction is very important.
I sure hope I wouldnât send him death threats. Nor have I ever used the phrase âshut up and singâ or any variation thereof. It still seems to me that trying to shut down or silence voices with which we disagreeâwhich is very much what many if not all of the Maines attackers were afterâis dangerously close to the same attitudes we see in totalitarian states, yes.
Though united in our love of crap movies, we can thank God Americans vastly outpace the DPRK in the fat maniac with weird hair department but lag in the human-flesh-eating dog areaâŚUSA, USA, USA!!!