Donohue compares Sam Bee’s mean words to police brutality

Bill Donohue

Samantha Bee got into hot water last week when she called Ivanka Trump a “feckless c—t” on her show. Much of the ensuing outrage was ginned up by Right-wing trolls happy for any opportunity to stick it to a Left-wing firebrand, but there was enough genuine offense that both Bee and parent company TBS apologized, and she addressed the issue in full on last night’s show, explaining that her attempt to reclaim the word crossed a line. For most people, that’ll likely be enough.

It wasn’t enough for Bill Donohue, though. Not that it particularly matters what the President of the Catholic League and the country’s top professional whiner not named Todd Starnes thinks, but he went ahead and released a statement on the matter – one that compares a comedian’s use of a bad word to police brutality. No, really:

Bee ended by saying, “If you are worried about the death of civility, don’t sweat it—I’m a comedian.”

This is exactly the problem. A comedian has no more right to obscenely insult people than a cop has a right to randomly beat a person up. Neither should be allowed to take cover hiding behind his status.

I have to ask what Donohue thinks a “right” is. Insulting people is allowed under the law. Law enforcement officers brutalizing random people is not (not that it’s ever stopped them). Nor is Bee trying to hide behind her status as a comedian (and what status would that be? Comedians are criticized and penalized for saying dumb things all the time). She explicitly apologized for what she said, even as she explained why she said it. Compare that to cops, who routinely protect their own and rarely face consequences for even the most egregious misconduct.

Honestly, how can anyone say stuff this dumb and not be laughed out of every room they’re ever in from now on?

He continues with a veiled threat – or what he thinks is a threat, anyway:

We have ways to deal with trespassing cops, but no remedy to deal with trespassing comedians. Save for boycotts. Don’t push us, Bee. There are a lot of activist groups monitoring your next move.

Ooh, yes, Bee had better watch out, or her show may end up just like Jon Stewart’s did when Donohue pitched a fit over his “vagina manger” joke in 2012, wherein a handful of busybodies got one sponsor to quit and then Stewart addressed the nonevent for about ten seconds on the air before everyone forgot about it altogether. Victory!

Bill Donohue and the Catholic League: An impotent one-man-show designed to fool pearl-clutchers into thinking the times haven’t passed them by.

(via Right Wing Watch)

Trailer: ‘Cosmos: Possible Worlds’

Get hype.

Rather timely, too, considering the state of affairs.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Daily Links #123: Bill Cosby found guilty

Bill Cosby

• Bill Cosby ^[pictured]: Guilty on all counts of sexual assault. At his age, it’s effectively a life sentence. Good riddance.

• In totally unsurprising news, the Toronto van murderer is affiliated with women-hating incels.

• Here’s an TV show idea: Disgraced accused sexual predator Charlie Rose interviews other disgraced sexual predators like Matt Lauer and Louis CK about #MeToo. I’m sorry to say that’s not a joke.

• Not a repeat: Right-wingers triggered by NRA boycott destroy their own expensive property to own the libs, clearly need more safe spaces.

• Finally, NRA dude is sad that the unarmed hero who stopped the Waffle House shooter didn’t have a gun to shoot the gunman dead with instead.
  (via @fark)

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

John Oliver takes on “crisis pregnancy centers”

Few things stick in my craw as much as the predatory charlatanism of anti-choice zealots who set up fake abortion clinics to deceive and bully women into keeping a pregnancy they want to terminate. We’ve seen some good smackdowns of these “crisis pregnancy centers”, such as from Sam Bee and Patton Oswalt, and now John Oliver lays down the truth in his latest episode, with a characteristically theatrical finish:

Only in America can religious vultures set up fake medical clinics, staff them with actors pretending to be qualified physicians, and blatantly lie to desperate people who come to them in need of medical assistance or guidance, and not only be allowed to do so under the law but even receive taxpayer funding for it. It’s a crowning achievement of mendacious bullshit. It’s also a clear indicator of Christianity’s privileged position in the US that so few people know or care about these centers – imagine the reaction if some other group (say, Muslims) tried to pull the same stunt.

Fox News’s Hume on media’s treatment of Trump vs. Obama

Brit Hume

Here I am, quite enjoying my little quasi-hiatus, when some dunce on TV says something that just needs to be shared and laughed at. Take it away, Fox News guest Brit Hume:

President Obama enjoyed a certain protected status because he was African-American and because he was a Democrat and a liberal. Those things do not normally apply to Republicans, particularly Republicans so universally loathed among most of our nation's news media as this president is, so he doesn't get the same kind of treatment.

Hey, Hume, you want to know why Republicans are “so universally loathed”? It’s because they just keep saying stupid shit like this. Obama was “protected” in the sense that he had charisma, intelligence, poise and at least basic knowledge of whatever matter was being discussed, all of which your boy Trump famously and flamboyantly lacks.

To be fair, Hume said this on Tucker Carlson’s show, where adhesion to reality (alongside basic sense and decency) isn’t a requirement.

John Oliver examines (and expertly trolls) Mike Pence

If you aren’t watching Last Week Tonight with John Oliver every Sunday night, you should be – or at least catch the full segments his team puts on YouTube shortly after the show airs. Last night’s episode centered around Mike Pence, that creepy religious-regressive former governor of Indiana who’s now the one official in the White House Trump cannot fire. Oliver covers Pence’s views on everything from his contempt for women in the military to his support of “conversion therapy” (a fancier way of saying “pray the gay away”), along with his affiliation with the Christian-patriarchal group Focus on the Family.

Pence is the reason efforts to get rid of Trump before the next election are shortsighted – Trump is terrible in large part because he’s clueless and incompetent at everything, but that’s also been a saving grace as he keeps sabotaging his own worse moves. Mike Pence, on the other hand, is smart and politically experienced. Impeaching or otherwise removing Trump would mean replacing him with his next-in-command, and if Trump is the frying pan of stupid, Pence is the fire of pure religious zealotry.

The best thing voters can do is castrate them both in the November midterms, and then toss them out for good in 2020.

*

Apropos of nothing, I got this in the mail earlier:

T’was a nice little bit of reading.

Fox News’s double-standard on US presidents meeting North Korean dictators

Criticizing Fox News for being hypocrites isn’t so much swinging at low-hanging fruit as it is buzzing a chainsaw through them. Still, there’s a supercut making the rounds that throws their total lack of scruples into sharp relief, comparing their scorn and derision over Obama’s willingness to meet with North Korea’s leadership with their gleeful approval over Trump announcing the same plan:

Everything wrong with Fox News in one video pic.twitter.com/MhnApiQ3pG

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) March 16, 2018

Part of me still refuses to believe Fox’s viewership are so gullible and clueless that they can’t recognize the wool being pulled over their eyes. The con is hardly subtle.

(via retweet by @pzmyers)

Fox hosts think CIA black site torture criminal is “hero”

Greg Gutfeld

The reactions are coming in to Trump’s nomination of Gina Haspel, a career CIA official who ran a “black site” in Thailand and oversaw the torture of prisoners there, to run the agency. Much of them are rightly condemnatory, but there are those who’ll stop at nothing to defend Trump’s every decision and praise anyone he picks, and you already know I’m talking about Fox News, don’t you. Here’s a representative take:

GREG GUTFELD (CO-HOST): I think she should be proud of what she did. […] She has to make decisions that a lot of her critics don't have to make. She answered the call, and that call forces you to make decisions that could put you in jail. So, the thing is, if you are faced with a potential terror attack that could kill thousands, and they say "But if you do this, you go to jail," -- if you follow that order, you are wrong. If you follow the order that puts you in jail, that makes you a hero.

DANA PERINO (CO-HOST): And they save lives.

GUTFELD: And they save lives, so I think she is a hero. And if she was a TV character, she would be a hero, a woman running a black site, that's -- that's -- that's a great character.

You know, I fully expected Fox News talking heads to defend Haspel in spite of her involvement in torture. I didn’t expect them to praise her because of it. But that’s what blind partisanship does – you don’t just excuse the inexcusable, you claim them as your own and try to spin their monstrosity as a gain, even if that makes you as ghoulish as they are.

Funny of Gutfeld to say that Haspel’s actions could have landed her in prison, though. We all know that government officials don’t get punished by their own when they commit crimes; they’re defended and even promoted. Accountability isn’t a word that exists in the US government’s lexicon.

National Geographic promotes new show with magic crystals

Once, there were three edutainment channels that made an honest effort to raise the American masses’ scientific and historical literacy. Then History tossed out reality in favor of ancient aliens and finding Bigfoot, Discovery took up every “tough-guys brave the totally-not-staged wilderness” pitch in between fake documentaries, and as for National Geographic … well, it held out a little longer, but you knew things weren’t going well when it was bought by Rupert Murdoch in 2015, and they aren’t likely to get better.

Here’s what it’s up to these days: Magic rock water!

National Geographic, usually known for photos of animals and the adventures of rich people visiting other countries, is premiering their Will Smith-narrated, Darren Aronofsky-produced series, One Strange Rock, on March 26. I had a chance to watch one of the episodes at a screener last month—it was fine and very wide-eyed. There were lots of shots of Earth from space. It was very pretty. But I guess I’ve been concerned about Nat Geo ever since Fox bought them back in 2015—and this bottle makes me question whether they’re turning into a high-budget Goop.

The huge box Nat Geo sent me contained a book, some press material, and this glass water bottle with their name printed on the side. The >$70 bottle’s package advertises that it contains “carefully selected and ethically sourced gemstones representing the building blocks of earth,” including “wood,” “water,” “earth,” “metal” and “fire.” It came with an instruction and information manual.

Why does my water bottle have an instruction manual? It reads: “For the most precious moments in life! Gems raise the energy level of water. That’s been known for hundreds of years and scientifically proven. VitaJuwel Gemwater Accessories are not only Jewelry for Water, they’re a great tool to prepare heavenly gemwater like fresh from the spring.” The instructions are: screw in the gemstone vial, fill with water, and then wait 7 minutes.

Here’s the thing—this is a water bottle containing a sealed jar of gemstones. At no point will the water even come into contact with any of said gemstones. A warning tells you to discard the bottle if there is any way for water to seep into the vial of gems. All of the “science” cited in the brochure comes from widely debunked research from the likes of Japanese author Masaru Emoto—you know, the researcher who claimed humans could impact the chemical structure of water with their thoughts—or unnamed “German scientists.”

Hey now, they know precisely how many minutes you should wait after putting on the lid with the magic rocks, so it must be scientific. Or do you doubt the credibility of a company with a name like “VitaJuwel”?

NatGeo must have thought the article was harsh, man, because they responded, tut-tutting the author for “missing the point” of them sending a magic-crystal water bottle to a pop-science writer. The gist of their rebuttal:

The water bottle was just meant to be a clever and harmless representation of some of the themes of the show, and nothing more. Sure, the accompanying guide might read a little silly to some – but I think you are missing the point. […]

Of course National Geographic does not subscribe to pseudoscience, and I think you full well know that. But it doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun.

Even if they don’t believe in the woo they’re sending out with their name stamped on it, they’re forgetting that far too many people do subscribe to this bullshit – Gwyneth Paltrow’s shop wouldn’t be in business otherwise – and that they happily use it as a substitute for actual medicine, with predictably disastrous results. When you fleece the gullible, people inevitably get hurt. Trying to pass this nonsense off as a spot of harmless fun plays right into the hands of crock-mongers everywhere and undermines the efforts of actual science educators and medical experts who warn against this garbage.

I think it’s time to write NatGeo off as a lost cause. Once there were three; now there are none.

(via Friendly Atheist)

Judge dismisses censorious lawsuit against John Oliver

Please don’t ask me to explain the giant squirrel with the “Eat shit, Bob!” cheque
[full size: 600×337]

Last year, a segment on John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight exposed the, shall we say, checkered safety record of West Virginia coal magnate Bob Murray and his company. Murray, being a big boy, responded by suing Oliver and HBO. Months later, it all comes to a predictable, if overdue, end:

A West Virginia judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Murray Energy against HBO and Last Week Tonight host John Oliver, according to Lawful Masses, a legal website and livestream series hosted by copyright attorney Leonard French. Coal magnate Bob Murray, along with his company, Murray Energy, and other associated coal companies, filed the suit alleging defamation stemming from an episode that aired on June 18, 2017, that examined and exposed the coal companies’ misgivings. Murray and his company were revealed in the episode to have harassed the families of mine cave-in victims, creating unsafe working environments and ignoring the environmental impact of the coal industry with some clever funnies thrown in.

[…]

The original filing was littered with hyperbolic speech and attempts to garner sympathy that hardly amounted to legal claims, and the defendants’ attorneys filing a motion to dismiss based off of their rights under the First Amendment, which a West Virginia judge upheld and ruled that the case should be dismissed with prejudice, which keeps the plaintiffs from filing the charges against Oliver and HBO again.

This was a transparently bogus lawsuit from the get-go, but it was never intended to win. The point was to try and bully Oliver and HBO into silence, something rich, thin-skinned bullies like Murray do routinely and to great effect, as most of their targets don’t have the money, fame and legal counsel that Oliver enjoys. That said, I’m not certain why Murray thought picking this particular fight was a good idea – someone on his legal team has to have told him that a company the size of HBO would hardly be cowed by a blatantly frivolous lawsuit that was destined to be tossed out sooner or later.

Nonetheless, as has been said at length, incidents like this illustrate the need for strong anti-SLAPP laws around the country, and preferably at the federal level. If West Virginia had one in place, this bullshit suit would’ve been tossed out long ago and Murray would’ve been forced to pay Oliver and HBO’s legal fees to boot. As long as many states have weak or nonexistent anti-SLAPP laws, litigious thugs will continue to sue anyone who says things they don’t like, and often win, with impunity.

(via @BoothSweet; retweet by @Popehat)

Daily Links #108: Krauss accused of sexual misconduct

Lawrence Krauss

• Several women come forward to accuse noted physicist and famous atheist Lawrence Krauss ^[pictured] of sexual misconduct. More at Pharyngula and Friendly Atheist.

• You knew it was only a matter of time before some idiot – this time Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin (R) – blamed the Parkland school shooting on videogames.

• Speaking of idiots who blame games, Trump says there ought to be a rating system for them and movies. This will come as a surprise to the ESRB and the MPAA, which have respectively rated games and movies for decades.

• Quirky corporate Twitter accounts are not your friends.

• Finally, your tweet of the day:

If you have any story suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments or send them in.

Starnes upset at kids lecturing politicians on national television

Fox News’s Todd Starnes reacts to yesterday’s CNN town hall featuring outspoken survivors of the Parkland school shooting:

Parents, what would you do if your child lectured and ridiculed a U.S. Senator on national television?

— toddstarnes (@toddstarnes) February 22, 2018

Gotta love that ratio.

I’m not a parent, but if my kid publicly confronted a sitting politician whose inaction is part of a wider culture of irresponsibility that gets people killed, I reckon I’d take ’em to the movies, with a promise for a repeat every time they did it again in the future. Make it a day at the water park if it’s Mitch McConnell.

Only a quick outing at a McDonald’s if they humiliate Louie Gohmert, though, since that’s just punching down.

(via @NonWhiteHat; retweet by @Popehat)