Shorter Mary Katharine Ham: I may think you’re an un-American traitor, but I don’t think you’re a fucking un-American traitor. That, my friends, makes all the difference.
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The media has devoted hundreds of stories of late to the tenor of audience comments at McCain-Palin rallies, fretting about “rage” and “incitement” by the campaign, but the only account of Stewart’s appearance is a one-sentence mention in the Boston Globe, and his abusive Palin comments are not included.
Because it’s the Obama/Biden/Stewart ticket now? (If only!)
They are aware that if they keep equating a candidate calling someone a terrorist with a minor celebrity (or random dude) calling someone an idiot, they’re going to have to come up with a new zomg-scary word soon, right? Because there’s only so long you can equivocate without people buying into it on a certain level, and the result is not going to be the elevation of “you’re stupid, and also a douchebag” to the level of mortal insult or treason.
You know, every day, they lose the last members of the generation that still believe how you say something is more important than what you say. Eventually, and it’ll be great, one of these people will be saying how bad it is that harsh language was used and the most staunch stick-up-the-ass pundit will just look over and say “So fucking what?”
This election cycle, I think there might be a couple of pundits wavering on that edge every time someone like her tries this tired bullshit.
Wow, that really was an accurate “shorter”. I don’t understand how come the right-wingers get the vapors every time someone says “fuck” but they moan to the high heaven about how come they don’t call people racial insults (well, actually, they do, but not without someone looking at them funny). Weird.
It figures they’d go after Stewart. He’s one of only a few people in the media calling the Republicans out on their bullshit.
The Weakly Standard, another teat of the wingnut-welfare program, courtesy of Rupert Murdoch, who has been victimized in the past with the f-word:
The Bush administration, through the Solicitor General’s office, is mounting a broad defense of the FCC’s right to levy fines for language or actions it deems indecent.
Meanwhile, Fox last week went to another court to argue the FCC overstepped its boundaries and violated Fox’s First Amendment rights.
According to one prominent First Amendment attorney, if the administration gets its way in the Supreme Court case involving swearing on Fox’s Billboard Awards broadcast (by Cher in 2002 and by Nicole Richie in 2003), it would be almost impossible to challenge an FCC indecency decision going forward.
On June 2, the Solicitor General’s office, essentially the Justice Department lawyers who argue high-profile government cases, filed the opening brief in the FCC’s Supreme Court challenge of a lower-court decision smacking down its crackdown on cussing. That lower court called the FCC findings arbitrary and capricious.
FCC OBJECTS TO THE F-WORD
Solicitor General Paul Clement defended the FCC’s determination that the f-word has a sexual connotation even when it is used in a nonsexual way—as, say, an intensifier or an insult.
“The commission, after having studied the issue, is in a better position to evaluate the connotations of language,” the brief said.
That reasoning troubles attorney John Crigler, a partner with Garvey Schubert Barer and a veteran defender of broadcast content.
The Bush administration’s argument “requires us to assume that the FCC’s expertise extends to ‘contemporary values,’ not only for the broadcast medium, but for the general population,” Crigler says. “That would make it virtually impossible to challenge any FCC indecency ruling because the rulings would turn on ‘expert’ administrative opinions entitled to deference and not susceptible to disproof.”
Fox has until July 2 to counter the FCC’s arguments in the court, but a source says it will ask for and likely will be granted an extension until Aug. 2.
But Fox already put in its two cents’ worth and more in the U.S. Court of Appeals, D.C. Circuit. It last week requested the court to dismiss the FCC’s $91,000 fine against Fox stations for airing pixilated nudity on the 2003 reality show, Married by America. The FCC would have no power to regulate indecent images if Fox wins its argument in that case, but it may be a long shot.
Fox says the FCC’s indecency-enforcement power applies only to indecent “language” since that is what the statute says.
The relevant statute, the company notes, prohibits broadcasters from using the airwaves to “utter…indecent…language, not to transmit indecent pictures.”
FCC ARGUMENT USUALLY SUCCESSFUL
Getting a court to buy that will be a stretch, says one veteran communications attorney who asked not to be named.
“The commission up until now has always been successful in extending the statutory language in the Communications Act [which dates back to the pre-TV days of the 1920s] to television and images,” he says.
Fox also argues that the show was not indecent anyway since the FCC did not allege that it depicted any sexual activity, and what nudity there was had been pixilated.
Fox also says the FCC ruling violated the First Amendment.
Fox doesn’t have a monopoly on indecency fights. Briefs from ABC and its affiliates are due June 20 in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York in their challenge of the FCC’s $1 million-plus fine for a 2003 episode of NYPD Blue that showed too much of a woman’s backside and side for the FCC’s liking.
And there’s no word yet out of the Third Circuit in Philadelphia on CBS’s challenge to Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl infamous wardrobe malfunction in 2004.
Of course, actually fucking an un-american traitor means you are ... Sarah Palin!
You know, every day, they lose the last members of the generation that still believe how you say something is more important than what you say.
Unless, of course, you are making a horrendous slur or insinuating that somebody needs to be lynched. That’s a joke, all in good fun, and what’s the big deal you politically correct anti-American!
Why does Mary Katherine Ham feel she has a right to violate Jon Stewart’s copyright? I thought Republicans were all about the personal property.
But, Sarah Palin said, in effect, “Fuck you” first, to all Americans who don’t live in rural areas. Since Washington D.C. is a large urban area, she’d feel out of place there, so she should withdraw.
Why does Mary Katherine Ham feel she has a right to violate Jon Stewart’s copyright? I thought Republicans were all about the personal property.
Yeah..no. Remember, what’s yours is theirs to exploit.
Wow a Stand Up Comedian is now held to the same standards that a prospective VP Candidate is??!
Man these people are nutz
I still haven’t had it explained how William Ayers is “terrorists”. Is there a William Ayer and another William Ayer, and that’s why he’s/they’re so dangerous? Are they clones? Is there a secret army of them being assembled at this time, just waiting for the signal to activate. Where’s the Trade Federation? What does the Imperial Senate have to say about this? Where is my astromech droid and my blaster? Will the Wookiee Defense prevail again?