About six years ago, I was introduced to a man by the name of Donald Wildmon, a goofy-looking man in horn-rimmed glasses and, what appeared to me in his publicity shots as, no-neck. A preacher in Tupelo, MS who ran something called the American Family Association. And he and the AFA has a little problem with a TV show called Book of Daniel.
Book of Danielwas a show NBC ran a few years ago about a pastor of one of those TV-friendly non-denominational churches who talked to Jesus. Literally. JC would talk to this preacher in the car, while he was shaving, stuff like that. (I guess, at the time, if God could get a gig on CBS and Joan of Arcadia, why can’t the Kid?). Anyway Dr. Wildmon thought all of this was blasphemy. That at the drinking, sex, gay characters, etc. And he wanted the show off the air.
But instead of letting nature take it’s course….the show WAS on NBCafter all..Wilmon decided to bully NBC into removing the show. The started a boycott of the series and his reportedly one million AFA members started writing letters to BOD sponsors (actually they were form letters that you could send via their site….most of these people probably could not create an unique thought if you paid them). The show was eventually cancelled and they took that as a victory. From there they became dangerous.
From this, Wildmon and the AFA used the boycott to bully corporations like Ford and McDonald’s anytime those companies deemed to support the “Gay Agenda” (read: treat non-heteros like normal people). Thier current target is Pepsi….but that’s another story.
This was the beginning of what I call de facto censorship. It’s not OVERT censorship, but its a nudge.
Say you hear Joe Blow say something. It offends you. Joe has a big audience that hangs on his every word. You say Joe is spreading lies and bigotry. He probably is. So you write a letter to his sponsor, Willie’s Widgets, that you will no longer buy his product until Joe is off the air, or at least starts agreeing with you. And you get everyone you know to do the same, and you get them to do the same. (and you said you couldn’t do Herbalife. HA!)
Suddenly Joe is off the air, large following not withstanding. You score a victory. But it wasn’t censorship.You were just excersing your free speech rights…to deny Joe his.
Sorry, you’re a censor.
And this has been going on for decades. It was the way conservatives tried to shut up Edward R. Murrow when he went after Joe McCarthy. And it wasn’t censorship that had the flag-wavers go after Tom and Dick Smothers. All they had to do was go back to “you-mom-liked-you-best” routines and all would be fine. Liberals went after “All In The Family” in the beginning the same way, not realizing that it’s creator, Norman Lear, and the guy saying all that racist stuff, Carroll O’Connor were actually on their side.
Though no one said that they were censoring, it was exactly what they were trying to do.
Which leads us to Mr. Glenn Lee Beck.
Beck is an odious little creature. The kind of villain who, after he falls down the bottomless well, Batman says, “…if only he used his genius for good, instead of eeeeeeeeee-vil.” He is a most dangerous kind of conservo-religious fanatic: one who actually believes all he is saying.
What got the blood of liberals boiling was this:
During the Henry Louis Gates controversy, Beck argued that reparation for blacks was driving President Barack Obama’s agenda, and that the president has repeatedly exposed himself as having “a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture” and saying “”I’m not saying he doesn’t like white people. I’m saying he has a problem. This guy is, I believe, a racist.” (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Beck)
This statement was pure bullshit, if only for the fact that there is nothing in his history, statements, or policies that would indicate that.
Anyway, for those on my side of the coin, time for action. Now I would not even be writing this is the stated goal was to get Beck to apologise (which, by the way, he has stated he would not do). But most want to get Beck and his ilk off the air. And do do that, they are leaning on advertisers to walk away from him.
33 already have, including CVS, Clorox, Wal-Mart(!), etc. The hope is that the show would be devoid of advertisers so that Fox can quietly can Mr. Beck. But what many are forgetting is that last week, at the height of all this, Beck had his biggest audience: 2.4 million, possibly besting even Bill O’Reilly.
And this effort to shut Beck up misses the REAL point: One can stand in the public square and try to get people to listen all day. If no one comes, there is no interest. But there is interest in Beck. The people who flock to Beck already are thinking these things….they were here before Beck was. And eliminating Beck would create a media martyr, at least to the backwards bunch that follows his every word.
Besides, if you call it fair play…to censor someone who censors you…that does not make it right. We are, supposedly, better that they are. And the best thing to do is expose them, rather that make them scurry.
And even if all you want to do is blue-pencil what they say, it is still censorship. I would rather deal with an ogre who is honestly an orge, than with person who seems like a saint because he doesn’t want you mad at him, but he’s an ogre anyway.
I’m sorry, I just have this thing about the Amandment One and free speech. It is easy to defend, until you disagree with it.
Besides, in terms of Beck, we have to remember who the real enemy is. Again: last week Beck got 2.5 million people following him. Walmart and CVS may leave, but the Beckies won’t.
These are the truthers and the deathers. The ones who think that Obama is a Kenyan Anti-Christ, a black Hitler (let that roll in your head a few..). They are the ones who are yelling and screaming that they want their country back.
And if Fox or United Health or whomever did not organize them, they would have found someone to do so.
And truly when you really think about it, the energies of we who want health care for all, a clean environment, and an America that trtuly is a shining city on the hill should not be focused on destroying the health companies, or Fox, or even O’Reilly, Hannity, or Beck.
Focus on thier followers. They are the real bad guys.
The Today Show: Mackenzie Phillips: Reaction to incest revelation ‘deeply cruel’
A year and a half after she released a memoir revealing she was the victim of incest at the hands of her singer father, Mackenzie Phillips is still dealing with the fallout — a decided chill from family members, a psyche still bruised over criticism about her confession.
The 51-year-old former child star has updated her best-selling autobiography, “High on Arrival,” to address the resulting storm that came from writing that her father coaxed her into bed on the eve of her wedding night, and continued an incestuous affair with her for 10 years. Her folk-rock star father, “Papa John” Phillips of the Mamas & the Papas, died in 2001.
Speaking with Phillips live on TODAY Tuesday, Meredith Vieira told the actress she was surprised she didn’t see the fallout coming over her hair-raising story.
(Moral: never REALLY tell the truth…)
“I think I was very naïve,” Phillips told Vieira. “I expected, certainly, people to go, ‘Oh, that is so crazy.’ What I didn’t expect was the deeply cruel things that were said … ‘Mackenzie Phillips banged her dad,’ or the blogs that I read.”
Perhaps less surprising was the family reaction to Phillips’ publicly airing her incest story. While Phillips told Vieira she has received waves of support from other incest victims and has unwavering support from her mother Susan Adams, other parts of her extended family are now lost to her. Her brother Jeff and celebrity stepsisters Chynna and Bijou Phillips no longer speak to her, while her stepmother, actress and former Mamas & the Papas singer Michelle Phillips, has repeatedly lambasted her incest story.
In a statement to TODAY, Michelle Phillips said: “After 35 years of a needle up her arm (including several months while she was pregnant) it’s difficult to believe much of her story … she has hurt everyone in her family tremendously and apparently feels no guilt or shame in doing it or over how she decided to deal with her … umm … ’memories.’ ”
Shown the quote from her stepmother, Phillips sighed and said, “Oh, Mich.
“Maybe I’m naïve, but I’m an eternal optimist. And I certainly didn’t expect such vitriol from someone who’s expected and thought of as such a classy woman,” she told Vieira.
Speaking with TODAY’s Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford later in the show, Phillips said Michelle Phillips’ comments may be the result of her stepmother’s “protecting a legendary rock band of which she was a huge part.”
“I’m very disappointed in Michelle, because she’s known me since I was 4 years old,” she told Kotb and Gifford. “She has known about the incest for many years, and yet she chooses to try to discredit me publicly.
The rest of the interview is here: http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/41715577/ns/today-today_people/
What is interesting is not only where Phillips is now headed with all this (read the rest of the story)…but the reactions of the ostrich-public….this response, for instance..
My ex had the same intentions for my daughter as John had for Mckenzie. A couple counselors explained to me the way a pedophile works. They groom the victim over a period of months or years, heaping flattery, money and gifts on the child while gradually building up the level of sexual contact. If my ex could have gotten away with giving my child drugs or alcohol, he would have used that too as a way of getting his way with her. I finally broke up with him over his cheating on me and left, but my child did not tell me about the abuse until long after. We went to the authorities but nothing happened. We ended up leaving the community because we got the same reaction from people that Mackenzie got. Most people are very ignorant about how this works and the coersion methods rapists and pedophiles use. These people blame the victim. Also I found that if the perpetrator is a highly respected person, like John Phillips was, then some people (usually men) refuse to let it into their head that the abuser is just that. They want to keep the person on the pedestal they’ve put him or her on. Then there’s other dynamics like there are actually people who don’t see anything wrong with rape, child abuse, or incest. I know this sounds crazy, but I was yelled at for saying using a child for sexual gratification was just plain wrong. These people think all sex is good, no matter who is involved and whether it’s consensual or not. Sometimes I think I live in a horribly sick world. My support is with Mackenzie and I think she’s brave for saying what needed to be said. God bless her.
I
And this..
I tend to believe her, that is just too big of a tale to make up. She didn’t sue the family over it, although (I’m sure that) she did make money from a book & appearances. But she felt that the secret should have been revealed, as she must have been suffering for years over it in silence. She was right in doing so.
Incest happens more often than we may think (or want to). The only thing that I hope for in her life is healing & inner peace with herself and her son, who by chance supports her. And to stay clean from her addictions, which is a huge battle for anyone with the disease.
And that one day, she is welcomed back to her family.
Cat
I leave it up to you to make the deteminations on what really happend. All I can say is how easy it is for people to take a set of circimstances and place it in boxes formatted so they can accept the story….not matter what the truth is…
Categorized in News and Comment and Sex
Tags: incest, mackensie phillps