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Post by mllemass on Jun 17, 2017 20:00:47 GMT
Her humour is always in bad taste, and a lot of people find her funny. But she usually sticks to ridiculing celebrity red-carpet outfits, so the Trump beheading was not really expected from her. And it wasn't funny. I absolutely understand whey she was fired from a couple of jobs. So she won't be co-hosting the CNN New Year's Eve show anymore - that wasn't her entire livelihood. Her comedy career is far from over. I read somewhere - and I agree - that she made things much worse for herself by hiring that lawyer to make a public statement for her because it made her earlier apology look ridiculous. It came across as "please don't hate me for what I did", which isn't really apologizing at all. She should have said nothing at all - no apology, no lawyer statement. If she had still been fired from CNN, the public would have rallied to her defence and she would probably have received even better job offers.
I don't know about other people, but if I had posted a similar image of myself online, holding a bloody head, I would have been fired from my job, too. I don't see why comedians should get special treatment in this case.
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Post by sgev1977 on Jun 17, 2017 20:15:46 GMT
Honestly, I’ve got to weigh in here. This attack on freedom of expression is not something that the Right has “learned” from the Left! They have been at it for decades, if not centuries. The complaints are usually religious-based – protests against Monty Python’s Life of Brian and Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ come to mind, but often aimed at art that challenges the status quo. Fox News’ whole reason for existing seems to be to stoke the Right’s delusions of victimization. Their logo should be a special snowflake. How much time have they devoted to the preposterous “War on Christmas”? (If there ever was a war, Christmas won decades ago and it was a massacre! You would have to live in a deep, dark hole to avoid Christmas. I love Christmas, btw.) I once posted a comment on a different forum accusing some leftists of behaving like Festival of Light's Mary Whitehouse when attacked Life of Brian (which totally would be attacked by Tumblr activists nowadays!. Just watch the Loretta scene...and a few others with The People's Front of Judea). I think the right has a long history of censoring so it's sad when it's the left doing it. Now I think modern right wing extremists are copying some of the modern left wing extremists tactics like claiming they are victims of violence because words are totally evil and equaling them to physical damage. I also hated when Trump took silly phrases fabricated by the left and made it work for him and his cause (Fake News) or when he uses the preceding of Obama's administration legal actions to approve awful laws (all those executive orders that luckily haven't completely worked for him...nor always worked for Obama).
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Post by sgev1977 on Jun 17, 2017 20:40:59 GMT
Her humour is always in bad taste, and a lot of people find her funny. But she usually sticks to ridiculing celebrity red-carpet outfits, so the Trump beheading was not really expected from her. And it wasn't funny. I absolutely understand whey she was fired from a couple of jobs. So she won't be co-hosting the CNN New Year's Eve show anymore - that wasn't her entire livelihood. Her comedy career is far from over. I read somewhere - and I agree - that she made things much worse for herself by hiring that lawyer to make a public statement for her because it made her earlier apology look ridiculous. It came across as "please don't hate me for what I did", which isn't really apologizing at all. She should have said nothing at all - no apology, no lawyer statement. If she had still been fired from CNN, the public would have rallied to her defence and she would probably have received even better job offers. I don't know about other people, but if I had posted a similar image of myself online, holding a bloody head, I would have been fired from my job, too. I don't see why comedians should get special treatment in this case. I think if you agreed that she should be fired because as comedian she did a nasty unfunny joke about the president's death then it's justify that powerful companies stop financing Shakespeare because the violence in it. It's not about good or bad art. That's subjective! It's about being free of doing your art without retaliation by powerful people. Someone who I really admire is Salman Rushdie. When one awful Pakistan movie was screened to The British Board of Film in which Rushdie was the main villain and was killed by the heroes at the end, it tried to banned it. After all there was a Fatwa against him and a lot of people died around the world because of it, so it could be easily considered a provocation against his life but he actually wrote a letter interceding for the release of the movie! As a damned writer he knew how valuable free expression is and it's always a error to set a precedent, even when the work is in bad taste, low quality or malicious.
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Post by mllemass on Jun 17, 2017 23:13:15 GMT
But art is subjective! There is a long history of art, music, dance, drama that has shocked and appalled people, and it will continue. Nobody is stopping KG from doing her comedy - she will always find an audience. She wanted to provoke a response, and she succeeded in doing so. It just didn't happen to be the response she wanted. Some people decided she was no longer right for their image, so they let her go. No one forced her to remove that posting. She wasn't arrested. I don't know what retaliation she faced from powerful people, but I'm certain she's still free to do as she pleases.
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Post by sgev1977 on Jun 17, 2017 23:51:33 GMT
The thing is she is not the only one. There are a lot of recent cases of people losing their jobs because an angry mob pressured their company. Some with apparently more justification than others (yes, it's subjective) but it's still worrisome that it's happen very frequently.
Now suddenly it's about the government: in her case she was very cruelty making fun of the most powerful man in the USA and she was fired by CNN. Days later the same network fired one of its presenters Reza Aslam for, again, offending the President. This time a tweet with swear words in which he reacted to Trump's comments about the last London attack. I think that it's really bad. It seems that bad comedians or liked journalists can't criticize (with offensive images or offensive bad words) the American president because it's against the big company politics. Then now it's a Shakespeare play doing what other productions did before it: using the image of the current president which suddenly it's being accused of inciting violence (even when the message of the play it's the opposite) by a lot of people including the president and his son. What will come next? This is just another precedent.
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Post by igs on Jun 18, 2017 6:34:51 GMT
I don't know the specifics of the Kathy Griffin case, but for me the crux of the matter is this: Many people on both the left and right somehow interpret "freedom of speech" as being somehow entitled to saying something with no possible repercussions or the right to have everyone agree with them. I don't think that is, or should be, the case. You can say whatever you please - no one was stopping her? - but if you behead someone [even someone as vile as Trump] in your skit, then don't cry foul when someone doesn't like it. CNN isn't even her full-time employee, she was a free-lancer? Ain't that how it works, your employer likes you you get more gigs, they don't and you won't? By the way, I don't think "offending" Trump should get anyone fired. But decapitation is a bit different...
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Post by queenzod on Jun 18, 2017 7:27:04 GMT
We are in an era of unprecedented polarization, which squeezes out the moderate middle. It's a problem exacerbated by social media and the 24 hour news cycle seeking more and more sensationalism to fill air time. People SAY they want trigger warnings and cut themselves off from dissenting opinions which also eliminates the possibility for reasoned discussion. But they also get het up and spring to offense very quickly. I actually think there are gobs of reasonable people out there, living and working and getting along with each other, but that's doesn't make it to the drama filled media. It's boring, and god forbid we should be bored.
Therefore we get panels on the news programs who spend hours explaining why Trump's latest tweet is The Worst Thing Ever. It's stupid and mindless. Add in the fact that we're not teaching our children any critical thinking skills or tolerance and down the loo we go.
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Post by igs on Jun 18, 2017 7:47:19 GMT
We are in an era of unprecedented polarization, which squeezes out the moderate middle I think - talking specifically of the US and possible UK here - this won't change until the political two-party system changes. When you have several political parties that have MPs in the Parliament or have actual political power, they can't do whichever stupid crap because that'll lose them voters. It's much easier to change what party you vote for, when there are so many parties with different combinations of ideologies. I mean hell, in the last week we've had more political scandal in Finland than we've had in the past 30 years (a bunch of insane people selected as leaders to our formerly [until a few days ago] 2nd biggest party, the whole government falling as a result, said 2nd biggest party's former leader organizing a mass public walk-out from said party to form a new independent parliamentary group, the whole party fracturing into two, the government being reformed) but this could never happen if you only have 2 parties that matter. There's no reason why Bernie and Hillary should be in the same party, or Trump and John McCain. But they're stuck where they are and people are stuck voting for whom they always vote because of that one issue that is important to them. It pushes people into two camps: the left and the right. With a less polarizing political system maybe there would be less polarization in the society as a whole.
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Post by sgev1977 on Jun 18, 2017 11:44:02 GMT
I don't know the specifics of the Kathy Griffin case, but for me the crux of the matter is this: Many people on both the left and right somehow interpret "freedom of speech" as being somehow entitled to saying something with no possible repercussions or the right to have everyone agree with them. I don't think that is, or should be, the case. You can say whatever you please - no one was stopping her? - but if you behead someone [even someone as vile as Trump] in your skit, then don't cry foul when someone doesn't like it. CNN isn't even her full-time employee, she was a free-lancer? Ain't that how it works, your employer likes you you get more gigs, they don't and you won't? By the way, I don't think "offending" Trump should get anyone fired. But decapitation is a bit different... That is a common position nowadays but the things is more complex. Of course there are repercussions. In the same way that there were repercussions when Monty Python released (even before it) their Life of Brian. And we are talking about satire, too. But it doesn't mean those repercussions aren't criticizable or respectable. Both the extreme right wingers in the 70s and the sensitive people and...the extreme right wingers from today have their reasons to be offended and "say whatever they want to say" too the problem to me is that, thanks to social media, big companies are taking them seriously now. And I understand, we are on the limits of free speech here and the independence of private owner's companies worried for sales but we are seeing something without precedence here: angry mobs on Internet (sometimes not very big at all) effectively forcing with a negative campaign to big companies to firing people who committed errors or have unpopular opinions. Now Kathy Griffith wasn't the only one. Again, in one or two weeks they also fired a journalist for an offensive tweet against the President. And we know that the President and his people were part of the "angry mob" in both cases. Again copying extreme left-wing tactics! So the question is: how can we measure the Government participation here? He, who represents the Government, was very offended by the image and he, like ordinary citizens do every day, expressed it angrily on Twitter and the big company fired the two "sinners", as they usually do....except that now the Government was in the mob. What's next? Well, it was Shakespeare: two companies, The Bank of America and Delta, listening their clients/"the angry mob", including the President and his son, decided to stop financing Shakespeare in the Park because, like Griffith, a play recreates the bloody murder of the President. Same reason, same repercussions! What's next?..... IMHO it's very worrisome.
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Post by mllemass on Jun 18, 2017 12:00:22 GMT
I think you're right - that's what many people think. But what it really means is you're free to speak out against your government without being arrested. But with the Internet now giving an audience to anyone with any opinion, people somehow feel that it's their right to express themselves without consequences.
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