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#CancelColbert

Started by bateman, March 27, 2014, 09:52:08 PM


b_dubb

Quote from: bateman on March 27, 2014, 09:52:08 PM
Here's what people have their panties in a bunch over today:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/colbert-tweet-triggers-firestorm-cancelcolbert-twitter-trend/
It's obvious people have too much time on their hands. Maybe he should start another scholarship for people in the leisure class?

albrecht

Quote from: bateman on March 27, 2014, 09:52:08 PM
Here's what people have their panties in a bunch over today:

http://www.mediaite.com/online/colbert-tweet-triggers-firestorm-cancelcolbert-twitter-trend/
Amazing that people don't get comedy or satire. I think it was on RedIce recently they had a guy about "liberal Hollywood" and he was pointing out how television changed. He had an agenda but it was interesting especially about the competition between the 3 networks and the change-over from the very popular, but traditional, comedies like Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Griffith, etc to the influence of advertisers and search for "key demographic" and so must be more "edgy" (to use a modern term.) Even though ratings-wise the older shows still held more real audience at the same whole lineups were changed. And how the social agenda shows (Archie Bunker, MTM, etc), Mel Brooks, etc now gave way to just base sexual innuendo and scatological jokes as ethnic, racial, religious jokes or themes are "offensive". So only jokes, and themes left, and remain are those of poking fun, or showing the dirty underbelly of, at what was normal or mainstream (married couples, Christians, traditional family, middle-class life, etc).

Quote from: bateman on March 27, 2014, 09:52:08 PM
Here's what people have their panties in a bunch over today:

The number 1 retweeter has 18,000 followers with 100 of those retweeting. This thing probably won't go far.

b_dubb

Quote from: Mind Flayer Monk on March 27, 2014, 11:33:31 PM
The number 1 retweeter has 18,000 followers with 100 of those retweeting. This thing probably won't go far.
People who "get" twitter are a little brighter than the average bubba. People who appreciate the humor that Colbert is sending out.

onan

Racism is never funny!


oh wait sometimes it is.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: albrecht on March 27, 2014, 11:03:18 PM
Amazing that people don't get comedy or satire. I think it was on RedIce recently they had a guy about "liberal Hollywood" and he was pointing out how television changed. He had an agenda but it was interesting especially about the competition between the 3 networks and the change-over from the very popular, but traditional, comedies like Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction, Griffith, etc to the influence of advertisers and search for "key demographic" and so must be more "edgy" (to use a modern term.) Even though ratings-wise the older shows still held more real audience at the same whole lineups were changed. And how the social agenda shows (Archie Bunker, MTM, etc), Mel Brooks, etc now gave way to just base sexual innuendo and scatological jokes as ethnic, racial, religious jokes or themes are "offensive". So only jokes, and themes left, and remain are those of poking fun, or showing the dirty underbelly of, at what was normal or mainstream (married couples, Christians, traditional family, middle-class life, etc).

The same thing is happening in publishing that happened to TV decades ago. Key demographic targeting has lead to a wholesale slaughter of meaningful science fiction published by the big six, if you want to sell you can only do character-driven soft sci that doesn't dig too deeply into concept-driven sci fi. As a result, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Niven and most pre-1990 authors would be unpublishable today, or dramatically altered to include stereotypical "strong" female characters whereas it used to be that we avoided stereotypes as a rule. Strong female characters are fine, there have been plenty of good ones, but what we're seeing now is cartoonish because of the stereotypical template in which they are forced to be written by the industry.

It even extends to mega-authors like Stephen King. The Shining would by unpublishable today in its original form and it's not because of the themes of child abuse. It's how he had Dick Halloran calling himself the N word throughout the plot resolution. That would never fly with today's editors. And, well, compare it to its sequel, Doctor Sleep. The sequel is based around a strong female protagonist and a strong female villain specifically because of demographic targeting. Unfortunately, the lack of natural character development and the inability of the author to "feel" the characters and write them unfettered by political correctness led to a book that's got nothing close to the impact and power of the original.

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on March 28, 2014, 04:02:59 AM
The same thing is happening in publishing that happened to TV decades ago. Key demographic targeting has lead to a wholesale slaughter of meaningful science fiction published by the big six, if you want to sell you can only do character-driven soft sci that doesn't dig too deeply into concept-driven sci fi. As a result, Heinlein, Clarke, Asimov, Niven and most pre-1990 authors would be unpublishable today, or dramatically altered to include stereotypical "strong" female characters whereas it used to be that we avoided stereotypes as a rule. Strong female characters are fine, there have been plenty of good ones, but what we're seeing now is cartoonish because of the stereotypical template in which they are forced to be written by the industry.

That is some interesting insight on the way the book industry is moving. I admit that most of the stuff I read that does not have good (not necessarily strong) female characters seems to be really dated. I reread Lensman and Ringworld and the portrayal of the female characters dragged down both books. Male writers with good female characters like Dashiel Hammett, Vance, Leiber, Poul Anderson, and Zelazny all seem to hold up fairly well.

I was going to say something about Barry Lyndon/Vanity Fair and Thackeray saying similar things about the publishing industry but its just dropped out of my head. sorry...getting old here.

Foodlion

While I think he's always been a bit of a douche, I respect his freedom of speech more then he did his own.

As always, the first rule is... Do Not Talk About FightClub!.... but if you did, just make sure it was to the right person.

ItsOver

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on March 28, 2014, 04:02:59 AM
The same thing is happening in publishing that happened to TV decades ago. Key demographic targeting...

I was watching the NCAA tournament games last night and suffering through ads for crap like #FWBL.  What a wasteland of self-absorbed twits TV has become.



:P

Quote from: Mind Flayer Monk on March 28, 2014, 05:20:22 AM
That is some interesting insight on the way the book industry is moving. I admit that most of the stuff I read that does not have good (not necessarily strong) female characters seems to be really dated. I reread Lensman and Ringworld and the portrayal of the female characters dragged down both books. Male writers with good female characters like Dashiel Hammett, Vance, Leiber, Poul Anderson, and Zelazny all seem to hold up fairly well.

I was going to say something about Barry Lyndon/Vanity Fair and Thackeray saying similar things about the publishing industry but its just dropped out of my head. sorry...getting old here.

Holy cow!  I thought I was the only one not to genuflect at the very mention of Ringworld for the main reason you mention.  Heinlein produced some good female characters, but some of his were cartoonishly shallow sex twits, too.

Little Hater

Quote from: West of the Rockies on March 28, 2014, 08:27:30 AM
but some of his were cartoonishly shallow sex twits, too.

As are some women in real life. I don't know why fiction, science or otherwise, can't reflect how things really are.

True enough, but when Niven only has such female characters, that is a considerable weakness.

The Libs think they are the 'good people', the enlightened tolerant ones.  Everyone is supposed to realize it's just a harmless comic bit when they are making racist jokes and comments, gay-baiting like Alec Baldwin, or otherwise doing what they would slam anyone else for saying or doing.

Then they act all surprised when someone objects ("but I'm a Liberal, it's ok when I do it, it's the other people who are racist").

NowhereInTime

Quote from: Paper*Boy on March 28, 2014, 03:45:36 PM
The Libs think they are the 'good people', the enlightened tolerant ones.  Everyone is supposed to realize it's just a harmless comic bit when they are making racist jokes and comments, gay-baiting like Alec Baldwin, or otherwise doing what they would slam anyone else for saying or doing.

Then they act all surprised when someone objects ("but I'm a Liberal, it's ok when I do it, it's the other people who are racist").
Because actions speak louder than words.
Liberals do make the same mistakes (like Baldwin's angry homophobic taunts) but we own up to them and know they are wrong and we actually do things like promote legislation for equality that you cons aggressively oppose.
That's the difference.

bateman

Ahh, Suey Park, a 23 year-old who has a long career of being professionally offended in front of her. Go get 'em, kid.

http://www.mediaite.com/online/its-just-a-stupid-opinion-huffpost-live-interview-gets-heated-over-cancelcolbert/

Liberals can't wait on the 'court of public opinion' to gently raise the general population consciousness of  their actions but have to create more ruthless statist  action to create  their vision of a controlled docile beta-male and females devoid of female nature. Kind of mind control fearful 'Brave New World' '1984' nightmare world. Guess that will include gulags for the  people that their very nature prevents them from  being PC  all the time. Welcome to the sick world of PC and the heavy hand of the statist ass rimming totalitarians that can't be happy till they crush people under the weight of their oppressive narcissistic self loathing of humanity. Remove self -realization and free will by proxy of more and more laws superceeding laws of common sense  A
little 'Golden Rule' applies here.

onan

Quote from: Unquenchable Angst on March 28, 2014, 11:06:49 PM
Liberals can't wait on the 'court of public opinion' to gently raise the general population consciousness of  their actions but have to create more ruthless statist  action to create  their vision of a controlled docile beta-male and females devoid of female nature. Kind of mind control fearful 'Brave New World' '1984' nightmare world. Guess that will include gulags for the  people that their very nature prevents them from  being PC  all the time. Welcome to the sick world of PC and the heavy hand of the statist ass rimming totalitarians that can't be happy till they crush people under the weight of their oppressive narcissistic self loathing of humanity. Remove self -realization and free will by proxy of more and more laws superceeding laws of common sense  A
little 'Golden Rule' applies here.

not to mention burning crosses on lawns.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: Mind Flayer Monk on March 28, 2014, 05:20:22 AM
That is some interesting insight on the way the book industry is moving. I admit that most of the stuff I read that does not have good (not necessarily strong) female characters seems to be really dated. I reread Lensman and Ringworld and the portrayal of the female characters dragged down both books. Male writers with good female characters like Dashiel Hammett, Vance, Leiber, Poul Anderson, and Zelazny all seem to hold up fairly well.

I was going to say something about Barry Lyndon/Vanity Fair and Thackeray saying similar things about the publishing industry but its just dropped out of my head. sorry...getting old here.

Yes, that was an issue of stereotyping as well. Niven simply created bimbos. Well, that doesn't work either and it's certainly not something that one could get away with now.

The best female characters, or male for that matter, are always the flawed, conflicted, human ones. People as people really are with all our complexities. The publishing industry tends to like those kinds of characters in literary fiction or drama, but hates them in sci fi/spec, horror, or most other pop cultural genres.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: West of the Rockies on March 28, 2014, 08:27:30 AM
Holy cow!  I thought I was the only one not to genuflect at the very mention of Ringworld for the main reason you mention.  Heinlein produced some good female characters, but some of his were cartoonishly shallow sex twits, too.

What I hate about Heinlein is his use of 1940's vernacular slang in his books. Stranger in a Strange Land is speckled with these dated phrasings and word usage and it now takes away from the novel and jars the reader out of the story. Slang gets dated very rapidly, and for whatever reason Heinlein chose not to be conscious of that.

SciFiAuthor

Quote from: NowhereInTime on March 28, 2014, 04:11:16 PM
Because actions speak louder than words.
Liberals do make the same mistakes (like Baldwin's angry homophobic taunts) but we own up to them and know they are wrong and we actually do things like promote legislation for equality that you cons aggressively oppose.
That's the difference.

The trouble is, the only way you can ever make everyone truly equal is by making everyone equally poor. You can't make them equally rich, because the end result of that is a massively increasing carbon footprint. You can't even make them equally middle class. They must all be equally poor.

So yeah, why would it surprise you that people would oppose something intended to make them poorer?


onan

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on March 29, 2014, 02:47:38 AM
The trouble is, the only way you can ever make everyone truly equal is by making everyone equally poor. You can't make them equally rich, because the end result of that is a massively increasing carbon footprint. You can't even make them equally middle class. They must all be equally poor.

So yeah, why would it surprise you that people would oppose something intended to make them poorer?

That is an interesting perspective. I would argue that making everyone equal would make everyone lower middle class. No opulence but no starvation.

Perhaps extreme poverty does outweigh extreme wealth... hard to really say. If we could provide clean water and shelter for everyone on the Earth, I wonder how many would consider themselves "rich".

Considering the poorest 10% accounted for just 0.5% and the wealthiest 10% accounted for 59% of all the consumption.

Pragmier

https://screen.yahoo.com/word-association-000000441.html

We've come a long way - what are the odds this would air today?

Interestingly enough, ol` Steve Colbert is a relatively conservative, Catholic guy, from the great state of South Carolina -- although you will never hear him say that publicly as  It`s bad for business.

Frankly, I think the guy is hilarious ABOUT 90% of the time. What`s really funny is seeing him interact with "Papa Bear", Bill O`Reilly, whom his character is fashioned after.

ItsOver

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on March 29, 2014, 02:20:36 AM
... Slang gets dated very rapidly, and for whatever reason Heinlein chose not to be conscious of that.

Please, oh please, could this be true for Valley Girl talk.  It's spread like a dreaded virus throughout the land, infecting not only females but young males.  If only the incorrect and over-usage of "like" and " awesome" would die painfully and very rapidly.

Pragmier

Quote from: FightTheFuture on March 29, 2014, 07:29:30 AM
Interestingly enough, ol` Steve Colbert is a relatively conservative, Catholic guy, from the great state of South Carolina -- although you will never hear him say that publicly as  It`s bad for business.


What's sometimes lost is the difference between being personally conservative, and the need to codify said beliefs for everyone else to follow. He would do just fine financially working an opposing view, O'Reilly being the perfect example.

onan

Quote"There are times that my character's ignorance of himself allows him to say liberal things or even hold liberal ideas without any knowledge of it.  In reference to my character, he's generally conservative... I myself sometimes agree with him.  It doesn't matter to me if my audience knows when that is, but I do sometimes agree with my character.  But generally speaking, if you slap me across the face at three A.M. and say, 'What are you?' I'd say I'm a liberal."

                                                                                Steven Colbert

aldousburbank

Quote from: SciFiAuthor on March 29, 2014, 02:20:36 AM
What I hate about Heinlein is his use of 1940's vernacular slang in his books. Stranger in a Strange Land is speckled with these dated phrasings and word usage and it now takes away from the novel and jars the reader out of the story. Slang gets dated very rapidly, and for whatever reason Heinlein chose not to be conscious of that.
I grok that.

bigchucka

Quote from: onan on March 29, 2014, 12:01:39 AM
not to mention burning crosses on lawns.

Nowadays they call that "cross lighting," not "cross burning."

bigchucka

Quote from: FightTheFuture on March 29, 2014, 07:29:30 AM
Interestingly enough, ol` Steve Colbert is a relatively conservative, Catholic guy, from the great state of South Carolina -- although you will never hear him say that publicly as  It`s bad for business.

Frankly, I think the guy is hilarious ABOUT 90% of the time. What`s really funny is seeing him interact with "Papa Bear", Bill O`Reilly, whom his character is fashioned after.

I like him as well, even though I don't watch the show.  Thought his first book was better than the second.  Have you tried the ice cream?  The 'truthiness' really comes out in it.  Personally, I got it once.  I like other flavors more and there's an Edy's flavor that's similar and lower priced is why I won't get it again.

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