Choice, control, and power
: Terry Teachout gets a new PVR (read: TiVo) in his cable box and waxes political — to his own surprise — about the deeper meaning of it:
I don
10 responses to “Choice, control, and power”
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If the miniseries had been aired, with the amount of promotion it was getting, it would have gotten decent ratings. For the sake of argument and to make a really conservative estimate, let’s say 10 million households. A good portion of them might have been those that were historically informed enough to understand that what they were seeing was libelous. They could have then bellyached on blogs, talk radio, and Fox News to a much smaller audience of already-like minded people. Perhaps they could boycott future CBS shows etc. However, millions of people whose mind was not made up either way would have seen the libels and taken them as truth. And, once a lie is told we all know how difficult it is to correct it. Witness the “Jenin Massacre”, the “imminent threat” canard, the “Niger/Uranium” canard, the persistency of 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the fact that in a thread up above people still insist on saying that the Jessica Lynch rescue was “staged” despite all evidence to the contrary. The powerful message that the people have sent out is that Big Media are accountable for some standard of truth when portraying history. Again, a running disclaimer at the bottom of the screen would have been fine.
I’ll keep restating this point because you continue to ignore it. The point was not that the miniseries was “bad” but that it contained outright libel, which can be verified by checking against the historical record.
For a different take on the mechanics of how the decision was made, see the Daniel Henniger piece referenced by Jayson Thomas below.
I’d also like to point out that others having their say consisted of rational argument while you having your say consisted of calling those who disagreed with you “unAmerican” and a “mob”. -
Eric: Let’s try one last time to get this straight: Having one’s say is a good thing, a great thing. Stopping others from having their say is a bad thing, a mob thing. That is the distinction.
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When Fox does a Clinton piece that has Limbaugh playing Clinton and reciting lines that have Clinton admitting that he (Clinton) forcibly raped Juanita Broderick and Clinton lines admitting that he asked Paula Jones to kiss his exposed penis, one would hope the liberals would get off their sorry asses and protest. Till then, don’t judge the “bullying” Reaganistas too harshly.
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Agreed. I just still see no evidence that this is an example of the latter and not the former, particularly now that the thing is going to be seen in its full, unfettered glory on Showtime. But also, for a zillion other reasons: the lack of First Amendment protection for libel, the nature of corporate decision making, your implied prohibition of conservatives from speaking up for their beliefs before the fact instead of waiting until after, the idea that Big Media should not be contemptuous of its audience’s politics, the responsibility of Big Media not to lie to the people about history, the silliness of blaming people for unintended consequences of speaking up for what they believe, the persistence of lies to stick no matter how many times they’ve been rebutted and on and on.
You have not responded to any of these arguments but only keeep repeating the same clich -
> Having one’s say is a good thing, a great thing. Stopping others from having their say is a bad thing, a mob thing.
Except that they weren’t stopped. They decided that they’d play it on Showtime instead of CBS.
Hundreds if not thousands of miniseries don’t get shown because they get killed in various stages of production. That’s not censorship – that’s deciding that there were better things to show, and that’s exactly what happened in this case.
It’s a good thing when speech has good andconsequences for the speaker, both good and bad for the speaker. -
Eric, you are wasting your time trying to demonstrate to Jeff the fallacy of the tautology that reinforces his belief in the superiority of his values
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The only people to “stop” the Reagan mini-series from being shown was CBS. Nothing is “stopping” the series producers for choosing any form of distribution they can arrange and pay for.
No one stopped the producers from making the film they saw fit. But they expect to get paid for it too. -
Art, I agree, but . . .
Final Thoughs for Jeff:
1. You consider yourself to be a friend to gay people, to your credit. I do as well, being the kind of unAmerican hater of freedom who contributes money to the Huma Rights campaign. If you, through some reliable media contact of yours, knew for a fact that someone was planning on writing a libelous biography of you, which claims that you said that all gay people “should die in sin” what would you do? Or, let’s take it further. Say you were lying the hospital in the ravages of some disease, what would you prefer your family to do: a)Work has hard as they could to stop the libelous book from being published, or b) Patiently wait until after the book was published,actually hope for it to get the widest and best distribution and promotion possible, and then only after it was published try to find a way of diseeminating the truth. If your family chooses option a, do you think that it means they’re suppressing the author’s freedom of speech, especially if the author still gets the book pulbished, only at a smaller press? I think we all know the real answer that virtually any reasonable person would give for that question. From the experience I’m having here I think your likely response will be to either ignore the question, as you have virutally all others, or say that you would gladly welcome the libelous book, just to further entrench yourself in your position and give yourself more material to rile people up with. Those would be your online responses. I think we all know what your real answer would be.
2. You keep on saying that Moonves was “chickenshit” for his decision. Why would it have been brave or admirable for him to use his network to promote the libel of a great and beloved American figure? Drudge says that he directly asked him the question, “Why don’t you show this trash to Nancy and see what she says?” Maybe this appeal to simple human decency did the trick? Maybe this is simply a case in which basic kindness and sensitivity are more important than making some grandstanding rhetorical point about free speech?
3. Are you aware that you’ve already been Farked on this? They’ve got your head on Babs’s body saying “It’s unAmerican!” Hah! Long live Photoshop! It’s going up on my site too. Check out this blog for an example:
http://www.thefatguy.com/
I hope you’re serious about that “no crushing of dissent” stuff.
4. You might want to think about calling those who disagree with you “unAmerican” as a first option. You may live to regret it. I know that you won’t actually think about it though. (If you did think about, and stopped doing it, would that be “tyranny of thought” on my part for suggesting it? Hmmm,something to ponder.) -
Eric: The last word? Promise? Shucks, thanks. An early Christmas….
Hey, if I were going to storm to get hateful crap off TV, I might start with, oh, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. But I believe they have the right to speak and I have enough faith in God’s creation to believe that any sane person will see them for the hatemongers they are. The proper response is not to shut them up but to let the people give them the judgment they deserve.
Gee, and it’s funny how when I support the war I’m a right-wing nut and now when I support free expression in this case I’m Babs. That has all the subtlety of your rhetorical style, my friend.
We disagree. That’s been obvious for a few days now. Let’s move on to the next topic, shall we? And next time, let’s try to leave the personal insults at the door. -
We are indeed getting into a stupid last-word thing here, but it’s simply maddening that your stock in trade has been unsubtle rhetoric and personal insults, and yet you would accuse others of same, and that you don’t see how someone who calls any action they disagree with “unAmerican” is begging to be likened to Streisand. If your able to make your case without such personal insults the next time I’ll do the same.
