I mentioned last week how I was doing some house-cleaning, by which I meant that among other things I’ve been cleaning my hard-drives of all the politics-based muck I’ve accumulated over the years that I’ve been blogging (before it was even called “blogging”). And there’s gold in them thar historic hills! I did decide to delete about 35 gigabytes worth of video (I started making internet videos before there was anything called “YouTube”), mostly of great examples of anti-conservative bias I’d captured from TV news and such. But don’t worry, I saved lots of gems. Many videos I had posted in years gone by might just have to make a re-appearance soon because they’re just too good to be kept on a lonely backup hard drive, unseen by the modern-day “yes we canners” and the “neo-cons is bad” and the CBC’s capitalism is dead set.
Today, as my PTBC YouTube Channel’s currently running and now sort of famous “Timeline shows Bush, McCain warning Dems of financial and housing crisis; meltdown” video surpasses the 3,800,000 views mark—that’s 3.8 million views—I can’t help but notice a phenomenon among The Left and their posted comments about it —and comments to me directly through tormented personal messages and emails. Now that President Bush isn’t around to bash ‘n blame ‘n hate anymore (they still do anyway, funny liberals), they seem to need to find others to bash ‘n blame ‘n hate. Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, and Fox News Channel are among the favorites these days. They seem to need this outlet.
Of course they can no longer blame Bush for anything, though they try anyway; these days it’s mostly about deflecting some of the well-deserved criticism of their man Obama, and obfuscating around the post-election Obama ain’t livin’ up to our expectations blues.
The number of APPROVED comments on that particular YouTube video has reached about 1,270, most of them from Americans of course. But I’ve REMOVED countless posts (I have kept them for my records, though, for later study—maybe I’ll get a scientific “stimulus” grant! This baby’s “shovel-ready”!). Many of the UNAPPROVED are filled with (A) overt hate for conservatives, (B) rabid hate for conservatives, (C) hate for Fox News Channel, (D) hate for me and all Canadians because I posted it, (E) hate for Bush, (F) comments or monikers full of horrid, smutty F-bombs or S-bombs or horrific gay slurs or calls for an insurrection or death or blood-lettings or disgusting personal insults and libelous statements, (G) comments by clearly drunk people or people way high on pot or crack, which I couldn’t understand, (H) excruciatingly boring repetition as if they hadn’t read one comment before they posted their drivel.
If I included all the comments people made on that one video, there would be at least 2,000. Maybe far more. I really just couldn’t count them all. But of course I don’t want to be associated with a hate-fest, or an F-bomb fest, or a libel lawsuit-fest, or any combination of the aforementioned A to H. So I just hit “REMOVE” on several comments to save my soul. As a predictable result, I get a massive number of complaints from folks on the Left who can’t stand being (what they call) “censored”. I don’t care.
There are an amazing number of people who shoot the messenger (that’s me of course, for making the video and posting it); Canadians generally, because this web site is called ProudToBeCanadian and that’s whose nameplate is on the video (sorry Canada!); and because they’re the actual source of the material in the video, there has been an absolutely amazing number of bashes at Fox News Channel. Here’s a really recent comment (number 1,200-something):
For anyone to take any piece of “news” aired on Fox to be a fact, just shows that you are in immediate need of psychiatric attention.
For anyone who supports Bush, and the past 8 years of his illegal wars and trampling the Bill of Rights and Consititution [sic], to now somehow blame the mess on Obama?!?
Again, please seek immediate psychiatric help.
That one is really typical, except that it’s one of the rare “polite” ones. It’s the same theme as most: we’re “psychopaths”, or in need of “psychiatric help” (even with the polite “please” in this case!), on the sound medical basis that we watch Fox News Channel. Genius. It’s the Fox News Channel Derangement Syndrome (with a hat tip to the brilliant Dr. Charles Krauthammer who invented the term Bush Derangement Syndrome —and he’s actually a psychiatrist, by the way).
The house-cleaning I mentioned earlier and that recent YouTube comment’s line of “reasoning” sent me off on a memory tangent. The pseudo-psychosis analogy in that comment reminded me of when Canadian radio talk-show hosts Charles Adler and his on-air guest Michael Harris (also a radio host— shockingly a liberal) decided to bash (our) Ann Coulter two years ago when Ann said the word “faggot” (which Adler referred to as “the f-word”) in a speech to a private conservative group in Washington DC, which was picked up by a cell-phone camera or something. It was a classic Ann Coulter humor-based, sparkle-in-her-eye speech, which referred to the effete Democratic presidential candidate wannabe (and hypocrite and wife-cheater) John Edwards.
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In the radio hosts’ stupefyingly jejune effort at feigning haughty, moral outrage and indignation, and the importance of raising the level of debate in this country (and the United States, apparently!), they tripped over their own total BS. Ann Coulter was being purely comedic, using hyperbolic terms, as Ann Coulter famously does. The two self-esteemed radio talk show hosts proceeded—in all seriousness, mind you—to “elevate the level of debate” in our nation(s) by Harris calling Ann Coulter: “one of the world’s high-functioning psychopaths”, and said she’s “like slipping out of a taxi with no panties on” (a reference to the troubled Britney Spears at the time), and added that she’s “a lunatic”. For his own self-esteemed part, Charles Adler called her a “right-wing rodeo clown” and added he doesn’t even remotely “take her seriously” (and yet… here they are taking her dead seriously, as the irony—and the sickening hypocrisy—goes right over their air-heads….). “All of us suffer from the coarseness of Ann Coulter”, Harris intoned. All of this idiocy on air, on a nationally broadcast radio show, without a glimmer of embarrassment.
I used to not “censor” comments (here, in my various forums I used to run, or anywhere else), but often said that it was for liberals’ own good, when I did. Had I not censored them, they’d have looked real bad for what they said, and I’d have looked bad for being party to their tripe (or worse, they’d sic their “human rights” commissions on me!). Occasionally, I use this space to post a choice email to me from a typical liberal, showing just how intolerant and racist or bigoted and full of hate they are, just to help prove the point. Adler and Harris might have censored their own idiocy before letting it ooze out of their heads like brain poo, and come out looking much better, instead making complete asses of themselves as they did. But they didn’t do that.
And actually, in hindsight, we’re the wiser for it. So I might learn from all that. We all might.
SIDEBAR:
This video’s popularity is sort of frustrating for me because I like to think I was one of the early proponents (“pioneers” is too strong a word) of producing internet video snippets and posting them at my site to be seen over the internet — a venture which got me into no end of legal trouble with the state-owned CBC, for example. And over the years, I’ve made some (I think) terrific videos all of my own original creation. And yet this real popular one is nothing more than a good clip I managed to capture from Fox News Channel and post out there for the world to review… no creativity involved, just luck and an eye for what is important for folks to know, and maybe a dumb-ass eye for what might appeal to people….
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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