11 responses so far ↓

• 1 Doug // Jul 2, 2009 at 8:42 am

  Nice ad. A dirty what?

• 2 Emily // Jul 2, 2009 at 12:15 pm

  This silliness, right on the heels of that great “weak man” post? Raspberry!

• 3 suffer // Jul 2, 2009 at 3:14 pm

  Emily, truth is a bitch, ain’t it?

• 4 Mike // Jul 2, 2009 at 8:09 pm

  Sorry, but this ad is bunk. This goes beyond “weak man” arguments to being plain old straw man BS. A lot of liberals hate Fox News, for example, but where’s the movement to ban it as hate speech? It doesn’t exist.

  You’re a smart guy, Julian. You can do better than this condescending nonsense.

• 5 Emily // Jul 3, 2009 at 12:30 am

  Yeah. Truth. That’s it. Ohh, it hoits! In the hoiben!

  Mike, I think we can be confident that Julian doesn’t actually subscribe to that kind of smug reductionism. It’s amusing enough if not taken seriously, and hyperbole is as hyperbole does. Still, I stand by my raspberry.

• 6 Micha Ghertner // Jul 3, 2009 at 2:08 pm

  A lot of liberals hate Fox News, for example, but where’s the movement to ban it as hate speech?

  I think this movement falls under the categories of the Fairness Doctrine, media-ownership caps, and Campaign Finance Reform.

• 7 DivisionByZero // Jul 3, 2009 at 3:45 pm

  Funny… because it’s true.

• 8 Mike // Jul 3, 2009 at 7:50 pm

  Micha–The Fairness Doctrine and ownership caps only apply to broadcast TV. Since Fox News is a cable/satellite channel, it would not be affected.

  Campaign finance reform only restricts political ads, which are only a fraction of Fox News’ revenue. It’s hard to imagine how CFR would put the channel out of business, and even harder to imagine how you could write a CFR law that would specifically target Fox News.

  Emily–I guess I need to lighten up, but I’m tired of seeing political debates reduced to gross charactures. What can I say…

• 9 Emily // Jul 4, 2009 at 1:08 am

  Mike–I don’t disagree with you there. Despite the humorous intent, the video is pretty ridiculous, and worse even than its caricatures is its pretending to be above the fray while in practice diving right in. Now, such is the nature of the YouTube political troop-rallying beast, and I’ve probably laughed/fist-pumped at my share of progressive videos that were less than fair to the opposition. But even YouTube shouldn’t absolve us of all obligations to good discourse.

• 10 B. Kennedy // Jul 4, 2009 at 2:28 pm

  Starts off fairly solid, quickly turns downhill, then runs too long.

  Where’s the Libertarian? In a bomb shelter, of course.

• 11 Michael B Sullivan // Jul 6, 2009 at 9:58 pm

  I think that you guys got a little focused on the “like Fox News” throw-away joke. While neither mainstream liberals nor mainstream conservatives want to totally disregard the first amendment, it’s certainly true that neither party takes a very absolutist approach to freedom of speech.

  Unfortunately, the video just isn’t that funny.