via Signs of the Times News

If you want to know what's really going on in a society or ideology, follow the money. If money is flowing to advertising instead of to musicians, journalists, and artists, then a society is more concerned with manipulation than with truth or beauty. If content is worthless, then people will start to become empty-headed and contentless. The combination of hive mind and advertising has resulted in a new kind of social contract. The basic idea of this contract is that authors, journalists, musicians, and artists are encouraged to treat the fruits of their intellects and imaginations as fragments to be given without pay to the hive mind. Reciprocity takes the form of self-promotion. Culture is to become precisely nothing but advertising.

At the time the Web was born, in the early 1990s, a popular trope was that a new generation of teenagers, reared in the conservative Reagan years, had turned out to be exceptionally bland. The members of "Generation X" were characterized as blank and inert. The anthropologist Steve Barnett saw in them the phenomenon of pattern exhaustion, in which a culture runs out of variations of traditional designs in their pottery and becomes less creative. A common rationalization in the fledgling world of digital culture back then was that we were entering a transitional lull before a creative storm - or were already in the eye of one. But we were not passing through a momentary calm. We had, rather, entered a persistent somnolence, and I have come to believe that we will escape it only when we kill the hive.

When does a political joke become sedition? Rush Limbaugh is calling for a military coup, and the joke, if it is a joke, is not funny. Rush, speaking about President Obama's upcoming speech at West Point, expressed hope that military officials at the Academy would "detain" President Obama.

Regardless of one's politics, to suggest that military officials at the United States Military Academy detain the President of the United States is to suggest a military coup. Such a suggestion is sedition. Limbaugh is advocating military insurrection.

Watch the video.

Sorry, But I'm calling bullshit on that one.

Please read this article on Salon.com if you are feeling the least bit sympathetic towards Mr. Polanski.

Here's the opening couple of graphs for those of you with strong enough stomachs to face reality...

Roman Polanski raped a child. Let's just start right there, because that's the detail that tends to get neglected when we start discussing whether it was fair for the bail-jumping director to be arrested at age 76, after 32 years in "exile" (which in this case means owning multiple homes in Europe, continuing to work as a director, marrying and fathering two children, even winning an Oscar, but never -- poor baby -- being able to return to the U.S.). Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she'd rather not see him prosecuted because she can't stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let's take a moment to recall that according to the victim's grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm.

Can we do that? Can we take a moment to think about all that, and about the fact that Polanski pled guilty to unlawful sex with a minor, before we start talking about what a victim he is? Because that would be great, and not nearly enough people seem to be doing it.

The point is that drugging and raping a child, then leaving the country before you can be sentenced for it, is behavior our society should not -- and at least in theory, does not -- tolerate, no matter how famous, wealthy or well-connected you are, no matter how old you were when you finally got caught, no matter what your victim says about it now, no matter how mature she looked at 13, no matter how pushy her mother was, and no matter how many really swell movies you've made.

UPDATE: A few words to Harvey Weinstein, Woody Allen, Martin Scorcese and all of the other Hollywood heavyweights who are pushing for Polanski's release... I say fuck you all, up the ass, in a hot-tub, against your wishes, after you've been drugged with Quaaludes and champagne.

You are morally and ethically bankrupt if you think Polanski has served his debt to society by living the high life in France while avoiding justice for his crime.

I am flat out disgusted with the response to Polanski's arrest.

I'm appalled at the cries of outrage that officials would dare arrest him when he was on his way to an honorary film event.

Are you fucking kidding me? He's a child raper on the run from the U.S. justice department. I don't care if he's giving the Pope a blow-job when they come to arrest him. He drugged and raped a 13 year old girl. What part of that don't you people understand? Haven't you read her testimony from the case? Have you no decency?

Look I understand why Woody Allen is supporting Polanski. He's got a thing for young girls himself. But Scorcese? Monica Belucci? I'm very disappointed in you both. (And I always knew Harvey Weinstein was a complete tool.)

Are we...

Amusing Ourselves to Death

via Grimmy.com

America is more than a collection of policies. We are, or at least we used to be, a nation of moral ideals. In the past, our government has sometimes done an imperfect job of upholding those ideals. But never before have our leaders so utterly betrayed everything our nation stands for. "This government does not torture people," declared former President Bush, but it did, and all the world knows it.

And the only way we can regain our moral compass, not just for the sake of our position in the world, but for the sake of our own national conscience, is to investigate how that happened, and, if necessary, to prosecute those responsible.

Oops.

we're asking the wrong questions about torture--meanwhile the newspapers still label it as 'harsh interrogation techniques, like this semantic bullshit means we didn't do something horrible, unspeakable and immoral. Alas, the question still being asked comes in the form of today's New York Times headline story: "At Core of Detainee Fight: Did Methods Stop Attacks?"

That's not the right question or even assumption to debating torture. Torture is immoral and unspeakable under any circumstances. It's efficacy shouldn't even be considered. Why am I such an absolutist about this? Because once we torture we lose our soul. There is nothing left to fight for after that, no brutality that will not be considered or implemented. We are either civilized, enlightened human beings or we are not. The world does not judge us by our intentions, it judges us by our actions.

Grand unified scandal - Paul Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com

Let's say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

There's a word for this: it's evil.

I'm listening to wingnuts on the radio cry and moan about Obama's 'socialist' agenda. And a mere moment later, they are busy defending the rich assholes of this country and their massive efforts to privatize profit and socialize loss in the financial sector.

If they are such staunch defenders of so-called capitalism, then they should encourage the rich to take their lumps just like the rest of us. Live by the profit, die by the profit, I say.

Oh yeah, and if you ask them if all Americans should be entitled to universal health care, they certainly think it's a good idea.

Not very consistent, are they.