The admirer of pedophiles who trolls me and dutifully reports distorted versions of what gets said here at the blog of a notable non-fan of a high age of consent has made the ultimate pseudo-lefty, pseudo-liberal Catch-22 assertion that because I did what any responsible person would do before making claims, check to see if those claims were accurate, I'm disqualified for having an opinion about porn.
Oddly, it's an argument I've never seen them claim for a proponent of porn, who can wax First Amendmenty on it ad nauseum without anyone claiming the only reason they want to have access to it is as an enhancement of their personal onanistic activities, the children, women, men, used up and spit out by the porn industry be damned. I am pretty sure that the lawyers and judges and "civil" liberties advocates for the porn industry have looked at what's being sold, the same rule should disqualify all of them from supporting its publication and distribution.
Well, last week I looked at the photo of Joe Barton before deciding not to write about it. I can guarantee you, I didn't do it for pleasure. While my troll and the media advocates of porn might look at pictures of the rape of young children and find that arousing and want more of it available to them, I want it stopped and all of it removed and those who are involved with the rape of children to be prosecuted and imprisoned and policed so they can't inflict their sadism on other prisoners. I would guess that the commentators at Eschaton who object to my post this morning want what I opposed to continue. I wonder what Duncan would have to say to that.
Update: How do you know that civil liberties advocates have looked at porn?
No, you don't get to make that argument because of what your argument claims. The porn-industry-civil-liberties-industry Catch-22 starts by saying that if you haven't looked at porn you don't know what's in it and you can't judge it. It only continues with the assertion that if you have looked at it, you're a hypocrite for looking at it and then opposing it. If that's a valid claim then that applies even more for those who support it. If they claim they're calling for its legal protection and distribution while claiming to find it personally distasteful, that's a far harder claim to make than that people who want it wiped out are being hypocrites for wanting it to be made UNAVAIABLE on the basis of its violation of the rights of those being raped, damaged and destroyed in its production.
That the porn industry and its journalistic and legal hirees and supporters were ever able to sell that line of illogical crap to judges or anyone else has to count as one of the stupidest phenomena of the post-war period.
Update 2: The Gospels say that you cannot serve both God and Mammon, porn is the contemporary version of temple prostitution, which the scriptures also opposed. It is the temple of Mammon and the civil liberties industry is its priesthood, corrupting even those who should know better. You can look at it that way, too.
And porn was the legalistic gateway to making political lying by of and for the oligarchs immune to legal consequences, it and the arguments made for it were always bound to end up empowering the worst among us. Citizens United and the other rulings that have done so much to destroy democracy was the far right on the Supreme Court realizing they could use the ACLU "free speech" language to empower the oligarchs they serve. It's no accident that the ACLU briefed in favor of those rulings handing the country to the Republican-fascists through "free speech" of the "free press" it was what their theory would have led to under any circumstances. It's knowing the truth that frees you, lies given even First Amendment protection will always lead to oppression.
Last Update: There's no great big secret of it. Look at the use of "free speech" by the Nazis and their allies all around us. When that freedom includes lies and hate speech, advocating the denial of equality and justice and advocating everything up to and including death, who the hell do you think is going to benefit from that? Not their intended victims.
You do realize that if you viewed what you think is child porn online you're legally obligated to alert the proper legal authorities, right?
ReplyDeleteHave you done that, Sparkles? If not, then you're in deep shit.
I don't think that's true, Stupy. I think it's only if you download it and I didn't do that.
DeleteYou're the guy who supports the publication of child porn, speaking up for the rights of Tumblr to sponsor it. It fits in with your defense of Gore Vidal, Jerry Lee Lewis and others. I don't remember, did you ever say how much you admire Roman Polanski? How about the maker of "Pretty Baby"?
Sorry, pal. You’re in deep shit.
ReplyDeleteWhen I feel the need to consult attorney Steve Simels esq. I'll know I'm ready to take the gas pipe.
DeleteThe deep shit is in your head, I look but I don't dive.
Face it, Simps, you're the one who supports the distribution and availability of child rape porn, you and your pal at the Village Voice, along with other images of sexual enslavement and abuse. You've got some famous allies in the pseudo-lefty fraud that the "civil" liberties advocacy industry comprise. They're in the pay of the oligarchs but you're never going to see any of that money, you're part of the duped, not the dupers.
Oh, yeah, and what's your position on Roman Polanski, that the 13-year-old he raped "consented"? Or that he, like Gore Vidal, gets off because of his alleged genius? I saw Chinatown and probably saw some of his other dreck. Movie genius is even lower than the second string of "serious" authors, you know, the ones who write the books that the movies "are based on". I have to say that when I saw it, the theme of incestuous child rape was the second thing I thought was seriously awful about it. The first being that Jack Nicholson was in it. I can't stand him. Then I realized that Polanski had made it and realized it was a film centered on what was likely one of his sick fantasies.
DeletePolanski is an evil guy, but CHINATOWN remains a great movie. And most of that is down to Robert Towne, the genius screenwriter who actually wrote it. And no, it's not based on somebody else's book.
ReplyDeleteGod, you're a philistine ignoramus.
I didn't say that Chinatown was based on a book, and it's dreck. Given Polanski's history of admitted child rape and the other credible accusations of him having raped or molested little girls down to the age of 10, it is incredibly creepy dreck.
DeleteA philistine is someone whose knowledge of art is so in-capacious enough that they consider something like Chinatown to be great art. I used to read movie critics and, really, the best of them, I can't believe they believed a lot of what they wrote. Now my view of the movies is what Groucho's was of TV. I'd generally rather read a book.
Yeah, CHINATOWN is dreck. Got it. And yes, if you can write that with a straight face, you're a philistine ignoramus.
ReplyDeleteAnd what have we learned from you in the last week, Sparkles? Ballet is stupid and movies are crap.
There are no bad books, however. Because, you know, they're not movies.
Oh, Simps, what an opportunity to remind you that you bragged to me a couple of weeks back that you'd gotten a book published so, even if I'd not known so before, I know that there are bad books.
DeleteI said ballet was the stupidest of the arts, and it is. All of them can be stupid at times, ballet just is more than any other. It is probably about the stupidest way to tell a story, like the world's most elaborate mime that can't really tell you much so the stories have to be really, really, really simple and you have to fill in the substance with spectacle and glitter and, if you've got a taste for dangerously anorexic stick figures, these days, sex. It is stupid.
You do know that ballets are set to music, right?
ReplyDeleteMust be stupid music, of course.
Some of it is pretty stupid. Some of it is better as concert music, some of it isn't. I really don't think Stravinsky would want people to figure his music depended on the choreography it was written for, he certainly whined enough about the choreography. If you think my general description of ballet was harsh, his specific condemnation of Nijinsky's was scathing.
DeleteOther than Bartok, I can't think of another of the greatest composers who wrote for ballet. I'm not sure about that piece by Beethoven, just what kind of spectacle that was meant for but, as far as I know, it' the only one he was interested in producing. I will admit that the music Prokofiev wrote for ballet is often quite superior music though his concert music was better.
It is one of the greatest tragedies that Aaron Copland was known mostly for his dance music, though most of that was written for modern dance, which is generally more cerebral than ballet. Ballet is figure skating by unhealthy anorexics without skating skill. Figure skating can be as stupid but it's generally kind of fun, when the music doesn't suck even more than it does for ballet.
Ballet is figure skating by unhealthy anorexics without skating skill
ReplyDeleteRudolf Nureyev = anorexic figure skater without skating skills.
Nah, you're not a philistine ignoramus.
If you only knew how much fun I get from making you go all pearl-clutching matron mode. But, there, the secret's out of the bag. But Chinatown really does suck and ballet really is stupid.
DeleteRudolf Nureyev, yeah, you can see what an intellectual he was as he hung out with the Studio 54 crowd. Ballet is too demanding an art to lead to much time to think, especially if you don't often get out of counting past nine (The way they count in dancing is really stupid too, but that's a different matter, I've had to reteach several people who had taken dance lessons how to count for music, so I know from experience.) It can happen to musicians, too, but there are a lot more musicians who read and think on their off time than dancers who are discouraged from thinking.
I love the "modern dance isn't really ballet" dodge.
ReplyDeleteIt's like when you said that white-boy rock sucks, but since you like Bruce Springsteen he isn't really white-boy rock.
Modern dance isn't ballet. If it were ballet, it would be called "ballet".
DeleteRock sucks, it is what's left when you take everything interesting out of the blues, and less. I'm not a fan of Bruce Springsteen's music but I don't have anything against him, he's not an idiot. There are a number of rockers who have that status with me, there is even the odd rock number I like, just as there is the odd movie I like. I can't say that ballet has ever done anything but made me wish I was doing something else. Most movies, too. Especially the ones out of Hollywood.
And 20th century modern music isn't classical music because it's not, you know, 19th century.
DeleteGot it.
You might be able to catch a viral disease but that's about it.
Deleteclassical music definition
A loose expression for European and American music of the more serious kind, as opposed to popular or folk music.
The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition
Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Company.
I don't know what you thought you were accomplishing with that assertion but, yeah, it's stupid.
"If you only knew how much fun I get from making you go all pearl-clutching matron mode"
ReplyDeleteA philistine ignoramus AND a sexist asshole. Add your anti-Semitism and you've hit the trifecta, Sparkles.
I can't claim you've done as much to cheapen the accusation of anti-Semitism as your companions in that practice, Midge Decter and Norman Podhoretz and lesser rote vilifiers such as Shulamit Reinharz, but the accusation coming out of you is about as cheap as the junk they sell in the Oriental Trading catalog.
DeleteYou can always tell when someone like you can't hold their own in an argument because they'll always reach for something like that.
You're a tawdry liar.
"I'm not a fan of Bruce Springsteen's music but I don't have anything against him"
ReplyDeleteWho gives a flying fuck who or what you're a fan of?
Here's a clue Sparkles -- there actually are things that have value that you're not into.
Stupy, you said to me, "since you like Bruce Springsteen" I was correcting an inaccurate statement. Though, granted, if I did that with everything you tried to post here, most of which I send to the spam file, it would be a full time occupation.
DeleteAs for the last thing, after the hyphens, I think you're mistaking me for you.
"I think you're mistaking me for you."
ReplyDeleteAs usual, when Sparky has nothing, he defaults to the Pee-Wee Herman Defense. "I know you are but what am I?"
Not just an idiot, but a gutless idiot.
Dopey, I'm not the professional slammer of other peoples' taste, you are. I'm only expressing my personal opinion, not trying to shame people on the basis of assertions of fashion. It's just that I'm having a lot of fun outraging your sense of propriety. You really are no different from Hyacinth Bucket except she put more of an effort in it. You're too lazy to even keep up an entertaining level of snobbery.
DeleteI do like making you stamp your little feet and having a tantrum. I feel mildly ashamed of liking it but everyone has to have their weaknesses.
Oh please. Anybody who makes categorical statements like ballet sucks or movies suck isn't a serious person. You're just an arrogant putz and a philistine ignoramus.
DeleteSorry, I had to recover from laughing for several minutes. It's risible to read you making that confession without realizing it's a confession.
DeleteDecember will be a Simps free month on this blog.
It'll fill up the spam box but, hey, it's got a large capacity.
Delete