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Roasting Sacred Cows
Hans Gilde writes: "Pedophilia has been a big topic in the UK lately, there have been riots, beatings and vandalism resulting from [pedophile witchhunts]. In an attempt "to ask hard questions about the way society and the media deal with its most difficult problems" and point out "that famous people have a habit of denouncing things without knowing much about them", a comedian in the UK produced a TV show, described in an article in the NY Times, in which he actually got a member of Parliament to say the following, on the air, in all seriousness: "Using an area of the Internet the size of Ireland, pedophiles can make your keyboard release toxic vapors that can make you more suggestible."" This show is frankly hilarious, and the reaction to it is even better. You probably want to see the show, eh? It's available in .avi or Real and DivX.
> We're giving too much attention to a TV show with the intelligence of a prank phone call.
Hardly. If there's a single, take-home message from the series, it's that charities, parliamentarians, government, the press and mass media collude to make rational public debate impossible: "major news topics" derive their sole significance from the extent to which they afford lobbyists, parliamentarians and the news media a pretext for creating mutually self-serving moral panics.
So, in a programme that dealt with the social and media hypocrisy surrounding child sex abuse, the point was made that anyone dissenting from the current hysteria (and suggesting, say, that paedophiles require treatment rather than demonization) would be either ignored or vilified.
Funnily enough, within a day of transmission Morris was vilified in the tabloid press and the programme condemned -- sight unseen -- by three government ministers.
Compared with the rest of a brilliant series, the programme was arguably below par. But to conclude from the fact it was under-written that Morris is somehow a "hack" is frankly stupid.
I'd like to see you try that in London without getting mown down by a battered looking Datsun Sunny.
>So we should wonder: what was the point inthe
>history of Western culture where pedophilia
>switched from white to black? And why?
Easy: With the introduction of christianity....
This comment says it well, from the end of the article:
`"How Mr. Morris must be laughing," Harry Owen of Horley, Surrey, wrote in a letter to The Daily Telegraph. "Perhaps Channel 4, instead of apologizing, should have simply said, `We rest our case.' "'
It's funny how satire becomes reality in that way. It's kind of like the South Park movie; the whole thing parodied, prior to the fact, the reaction of everyone to the movie after it was released.
Such satire is the most brilliant kind -- when a satire makes fun of the very reaction people have tot he satire. It's when you know that the satire's creators have hit their target right in the center of the bullseye.
Look, you can't go around asking people to defend their positions logically like that. They are likely to hurt their little brains.
Well then, you had best not read Jonathan Swift's A Modest Proposal. Boy will you be in for a shock...
It's not the kids fault for being idiots and talking ot people online that they never knew and then going out behind their parents backs and getting molested. And it's certainly not the parents fault for not watching their kids internet habits. IT's all the pedophiles and their evil toxic vapors. Just like Microsoft is really good but open source has been drugging the water and making us think GPL is good.
--End Sarcasm--
I am !amused.
The Independent Television Commission ... said that 411 calls had come in to support the program.
Okay, i'm not going to say people should be forbidden from expressing their opinions on such issues, but is this really the right avenue?
"Hello, Information."
"Hi, i've got a bone to pick with you. The recent witch hunt against pedophiles is going too far. If we don't get a grip on this hysteria, we're--"
"Sir, i really believe this goes beyond my training as a telephone operator."
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
She masturbated to it. The point is that on camera she has to put up a big show of not watching.
It's like on IRC or AOL when you say you are putting someone on ignore by announcing that. Everyone knows damn well you did no such thing because you just have to know what's going on but at the same time you have to make believe you really did...even when the person makes a statements and you can totally think of the perfect zinger so you end up logging in as a second person and then repeating the comment with a joking laugh so you can feign surprise and deliver the zinger and thus make up for all those times the person outspoke you and thus caused you to put the idiot on ignore in the first place
oh bloody 'ell you've gone and ignore me now.
The tabloid press in the UK has, for the past few years, been using paedophiles as the new bogey men, and at one point there seemed to be almost a revulsion race to see which paper could revile them the most. One of them ("The News of the World") came up with the most disturbing: they would print photographs and addresses of known paedophiles. This seems reasonable, and it was defended by the NoW as such, but it lead directly the the aforementioned riots and, as the article says, witchhunts. This was entirely predictable.
The problem with the violence and the witchhunts is that things got out of hand, as they do when a mob tries to think. In one town they forced out a paediatrician by daubing "Paedo out" slogans on her house (see this). In other locations the naming of people a "Paedos" was enough to get them beaten up - there was a fair bit of score settling going on at the time - here is the BBC about Paulsgrove, the main estate where such things were happening.
There was also a bit of feedback going between the sections of press, hand wringing about the violence whilst implicitly condoning it - after all no one could be for paedophilia. So all was good in the world of the press - circulations were up, they were protecting children from evil, and they were secure in the knowledge that nobody could successfully attack them because that would mean that they were for paedophilia, and could instantly be slurred.
Enter Brass Eye. The press were livid, and instantly attacked. In fact, they attacked before the program went out, and the program was delayed for two weeks whilst the legalities were sorted out - Mr Collins was upset for some reason. The reaction to the show was amazing: every news bulletin, every newspaper, every channel reported it. And reported it negatively at first.
Then the press belated realised that a large section of the public were just not buying the story - see this for a fairly typical cross-section.
Certainly no one I know who has seen it thought it in anyway glorified paedophila. No one was particularly offended by it either. It wasn't about paedophilia - it was about media manipulation. It is vastly amusing to see the very same things that were so effectively satirised in the show wheeled out to attack it. This includes government ministers saying "I haven't seen the show but..." (I will except David Blunkett, the Home Secretary from this as he is blind).
...ummm that I believe is the point.
Have a look at this picture - it pretty much sums it up.
The internet ISN'T taking care of this problem by itself. And people are making money off of the rape of children. This is wrong. and if you think this is acceptable (i don't care what Ginsburg did) then YOU are wrong.
this isn't a "but what about the CHILDREN" sort of thing. We don't let children drive because given the time of development for the human mind, it's a crapshoot risk. we don't allow children to make sexual decisions with adults for the same reason. Yes, in the roman period, women and men were often married in their teens. guess what, this isn't the roman period. deal.
go to andrew vachss site for more info about predatory pedophiles.
Please prove you exist without resorting to a priori premises.
My opposition to pedophilia rests on one a priori assumption, which is fairly fundamental to my values: that imposing your will on others carries a high potential for evil. Another relevant assumption I make is that children, in general have underdeveloped choice-making capacity. This is not an a priori assumption, though proving that rhetorically is tedious and demanding. I would beg your indulgance on the point. (In fact, I will ignore you if you challenge me on it, as I have real work to do today. 8)
In the case of pedophilia, the potential evil attendant upon forcing one's will upon a person with limited capacity for choice is the disruption of normal human development caused by the untimly exposure to a powerful human drive that even adults have a hard time coping with psychologically. The potential for damage increases the younger the victim, and the closer the relation of the perpetrator.
In philosophical terms, the above argument has lots of holes. In common-sense terms, I believe it is nearly bullet-proof.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
This is overlooked by almost everyone.
The point of the show, and of many of Morris' other shows, is that is an attack on self serving publicity hungry semi-celebritys. For example - Phil Collins in a "Nonce Sense" T-shirt (Nonce being an English slang word for paedophile) going to schools, and blindly repeating absolute gibberish fed to him by Morris.
Most people will say that Phil was doing a good thing, by trying to educate children. I side with Morris, that it was a self-publicising act on his behalf, and that if he had any real interest in protecting children he would have easily spotted it as a spoof. As Eammon Holmes (UK daytime TV presenter) did.
Other sections included a news report on how children were being crammed into football stadiums to "Keep them safe". How far is this from the truth? Media hysteria makes parents (Like myself) believe that it is impossible to allow children safely out at night, whereas attacks on children are at a relatively constant rate (Can't link to a newspaper - sorry).
Chris Morris has attacked not children with this show, but he has attacked the misleading media, and attention craving celebrities. For this he has been denounced, his actions upset the status quo - by showing celebrities as fools, by lambasting the newspapers who terrify us with exaggerations of how unsafe we are.
He is even described in the UK media as "Elitist" , a bludgeoning attempt to ensure people will not try to understand his comedy, for fear that they will be associated with such a negative connotation.
The UK viewing figures for this programme were 2 million at the start, 1 million at the end. Yet everyone cannot wait to tell each-other "How disgusting it was", in a ferocious attempt to prove that they too are not paedophiles. As though the very act of laughing at, or even watching the show inspires one to go out and attack children.
Mainstream media hates this man for exposing them as liars and fools.
That just makes me like him more ;-]
I don't think I'm very happy. I always fall asleep to the sound of my own screams.
- It is very much a taboo. Even a show about it raises moral objections from the masses. A murderer gets complimented in jail; a pedophile gets murdered. My simple reply (in which btw I said I though pedophilia was distasteful!) elicited a "you sick fuck child rapist" response. Need I say more?
- There is a LOT to discuss. Is it indeed harmful? To whom? Can we minimise its incidenmce? Can we minimise its harm? Why are some people pedophiles? HOw can we minimise any harm caused? How should released pedophiles return to society? What therapies work best? Is the Internet bad for allwoing free communication? Should the Internet be banned becuase it contains child sex pictures? Is the harm partly or wholly culturally caused? I could go on for a while - and all these questions are taboo, as they generally just receive reactions like that one response to my post I saw that just saud "you sick fuck child rapist". That was a typical reponse not to a pedophile but to someone merely responding to a post ABOUT the subject! And that is what we should fix, and that is what the show no doubt hopes to achieve.
Michael---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Sure, it is a horrible subject: grown people should nothave sex with children. But pedophilia is by no means worse than murder. Yet murder is a legitimate subject for satire, comedy, thrillers, whodunnits: a whole industry has sprung up around it. Ask P.D. James, or read about Kinsey Millhone.
Pedophilia on te other hand is a taboo; today's taboo. Taboo subjects are subjects "not legitimate for discussion". "Taboo" implies a certain amount of irrationality. This should worry free thinking people. Past taboos have included non-Catholic religion, madness, witchcraft, sexuality, nudity, homosexuality (male and female), the earth turning around the sun, women having the same number of teeth as men, and so on.
When a subject is taboo, it is legitimate to investigate it. I would say, it is crucial. It is how progress in society is made.
Yes, sometimes that means investigating distasteful subjects. But the alternative is worse: a society run on the basis of fear, superstition, and unstated interests. That's not where I want to live.
Michael
---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
here
He put his boots up on the table and made a face. "The sig," he smirked. "You can waste your life in search of the sig."
Humour Is Subjective (i.e., do not tell other people what constitutes a funny subject)
Take an example: If I were to make a joke regarding Rome annihilating Gaul, would you respond in disgust and anger? Probably not. If I were to make a joke about the Holocaust, would you, then? Probably, yes, indeed. Why? Because you feel more of a close personal attachment to the event of the Holocaust than to the even of the conquering of Gaul. They're both tragic genocides on a similar scale. One is not greater than the other, but we have more personal, emotional interest in tip-toeing around the issue of the Holocaust. That doesn't make it rational in any way shape or form, however.
neither does the ignorance of elected officials when it comes to technology, or any other topic, for that matter. Sure, we all get a chuckle from hearing how dumb people can be, but these elected officials are there to make laws, and if they're clueless about certain facts, we end up with stuff like the DMCA.
So because legislation is a "serious issue", it should not be joked about? Are you saying that any joke that involves circumstances that are less than beneficial should not be made? Making fun of our misfortunes is nothing if not the basis for comedy itself. Generally, I find that people who refuse to view the world with any sense of humour become extremely cynical.
No, _you're_ wrong. The internet isn't some sort of evil robot that grabs children and puts them in porno films. Its just a place to view information that has already been acquired. When you solve a problem you don't attack it at the widest point. you attack it at a bottle-neck. The internet is the widest point where a large number of people view a relatively small number of things. If you want to get rid of child pornography, stop the _small_ number of people that create it not the _large_ number of people that host and view it.
-tfga
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The climate in the UK is very hostile towards men. In fact, British Airways has an official policy of not seating young children next to men when children fly alone. This is discrimination and stereotyping of men - could you imagine if blacks were treated this way?
2 30 206.shtml
I know this is offtopic, but Slashdot has a brother web site (based on Slash) that covers news on men's rights issues:
http://www.mensactivism.org
They deal with the decline of men's civil liberties with regard to sex crimes, and many other topics.
An Anony Mouse
PS - the BritAir source can be found at:
http://www.mensactivism.org/articles/01/03/17/0
Want to see some good kiddie porn? Check out the makeup/lighting/clothing/hairstyles of young girls in television commercials. How about Britanny Spears?
If people woke up to the fact that there are sexual images of children, all around them, maybe I would take this whole 'save the children' thing a little more seriously.
It is ok for the RIAA to parade a 'pre-teen-appearing' Britanny Spears in the media to sell product? It is okay for them to do it to sell clothing or shampoo?
Marketing and Advertising uses not so-subtle techniques like these with abandon, just because it is not seedy and badly-lite dosnt mean it is acceptable.... or does it?????
She read about it. How's that for detailed and useful knowledge of a topic you will be deciding on?
From there he did a radio show which became the BBC show The Day Today, which offered surreal news stories combined with the best parody of news reportage as stands in the Western world I've ever seen. His vaguely threatening goodnight, the use of insane graphics and pounding music... But then he got Brass Eye.
In the UK, humor and sex aren't as big a deal as violence, and you'd be amazed at what's shown on television here compared to the US. Before Brass Eye was even aired it became a news story, as several celebrities and politicians complained to the commisioning network, Channel 4, that he had gone too far.
During the height of Ecstacy hysteria in the UK, he had gotten politicans and celebrities to denounce the evils of a dangerous new drug ruining our children, called CAKE. As in, "We must ban cake." He did it so brilliantly that one of the Members of Parliament who he recorded denouncing cake ("which affects the part of the brain known as Shatner's Bassoon, which affects perception of time - cake is a made up drug, made up of chemicals") asked questions about it in Parliament. The then head of Channel 4 tried to get Morris to tone down the show's vitriol and abuse of celebrities. In the Science on Trial episode he had several UK celebrities talking about the dangers of "heavy electricity" which was killing people in the Far East. So Morris put a subliminal message in the final episode, calling his boss a cunt, which led to statements that he would never work for Channel 4 again. He returned to radio.
Until this year, when changes at Channel 4 led to a rebroadcast of the series and the commisioning of the new one off special on pedophilia. He had a famous London radio DJ stating that pedophiles had more genes in common with crabs than you or I, and there's no evidence for it, but it's a scientific fact! It went on. The result was instant, knee jerk tabloid hysteria, I think best represented in this picture. What you should know is that earlier this year, thanks to a name and shame campaign a major UK tabloid did on paedophiles, a paedatrician was attacked by an angry mob and had her car firebombed. A few days after airing of the programme, several politicans got in on the act, admitting they hadn't seen the show. One of them is even blind!
But thankfully the British public have shown their sense of good humor and more calls of support were received on Channel 4's complaints line then actual complaints, so the entire issue is now being hushed up.
I think what really grates about Morris is that he deigned to show that you cannot trust any of the mainstream media you partake of, that celebrity endorsements count for nothing. My favorite moment on the paedophilia special was a presenter for the BBC's technology show stating that internet padeophiles can use penis shaped sound waves to molest children. I think it's far more frightening to the public to know that those people that put a comforting, sickly gloss on the world as it is today are patently full of shit. The result of Morris' work may be greater than any piece of culture I've had all year, because it's made me question everything. I can no longer watch the news without laughing and being shocked by the idiocy and dramatics of it all. For that he deserves to be knighted.
** http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/ ** Human rights in North Korea. 1 million estimated dead from starvation.
Adequacy.org ran the article Open Letter to Channel 4: Brass Eye Was Unacceptable , denouncing Channel4 and BrassEye for these escapades.
If you want a good summary of the opposition, then I'd suggest reading it. It's a good read in any event.
When the cookdandbombd .avi mirrors were first linked to from the Plastic forums, they were immediately unavailable due to high demand. I was able to download the first avi from mirror4 and the second avi from mirror5 (only mirrors 1-3 had been linked to from the main page), but most Plastic readers probably didn't think of that. Now, cookdandbombd has stopped distributing the avis, and their front page says "closed for legal reasons" (copyright?).
What if, instead of hosting the avis themselves, they had put the avis on freenet and given out the key on their web site? That would have taken care of the Plastic effect (which, btw, is an order of magnitude weaker than the Slashdot effect) and also any legal problems arising from distributing the copyrighted show.
The shareholder is always right.
Out of curiosity, why do you assume that any sex with a person under the legal age is going to be non-consenting?
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
Remember, PLEASE share them back out once you get them! I've had 73 ppl download these from me already and there's only like 3 ppl on this section of gnet sharing this. Thanks.
-Jade E.
What people simply don't realize is that the exploitation of little kids is all around us. People are just too nieve to realize it. I saw a show on HBO (I believe) 3-4 months back about this little girl that professionally starred in beauty pagents. Her mother grilled her constantly over walking right, talking right, smiling right, sticking out her chest ("strut it like you'll have it in 10 years"), her numerous dance routines and memorized lines, etc... The demand put on that little girl was extreme. I believe the mother home schooled her as well so they could spend more time in training. The mother would pay professional makeup artists to literally make this girl look like a little Barbie Doll. They made this little girl (eight years old I think) look like a miniature whore. It was sickening. The girl made a mistake on stage during a speaking part and started bawling when she got off stage. The mother ripped her for messing up her lines and now her makeup. It was disguisting. The mother was exploting the little girl. Hell I heard Shirley Temple was viewed as crude by many because of her short dresses and scenes with black men (tap dancing and what not). This shit is nothing more than a witchhunt and the media is doing nothing more than fueling the fire. School shootings are the same way. The media make it out to be a disease that is spreading across the nation and getting wirse every day. That's total bullshit. The number of violent incidents on school campus is dropping every year. It's less than half what it was in in the late 70's. The media will never tell you that. Blood and guts sell. Controversy sells. Early in my mother's teaching career she worked at a school in southern Kansas. A girl (known as a slut to everyone) accused the woodshop teacher of something (touching, sexual assault, I don't remember). She had no proof he did it. He had know that he didn't. Her story kept changing every time she was questioned. Never the less he was suspended. There was a big public outcry against him. Blah blah blah. You've heard it all before. Finally he left and went elsewhere. Shortly after that the girl confessed that she made it up because he gave her a bad grade in his class. It didn't matter. If you go to that town today and bring up his name with a parent around the age of say 55 now they'll probably remember his name and go on and on about his sexual misconduct and shit like that. The truth came out. No one listened. He was still run off. Hmm, I'm starting to rant now. Well, let me close with something I've long since believed. The media should be held accountable for everything they speak or write. If they accuse a teacher of sexual misconduct, they should be held legally accountable if that person is found to be innocent. Now that doesn't mean I don't think they can't print something that's not proven to be true. Say for example someone is hauled into court on sexual charges. State that. Don't print something weeks before on how some kid said person X did something to me. Kids say things. Wait until there is an actual fact. Then print it. Someone being hauled into court is a fact. It's not a fact that they did something but it is a fact that there is enough reason to let a jury or judge decide. Also, if that story is put on the front page with a 72 point headline, the retraction should be just as big and on the front page. It shouldn't be hidden back under the Classifides. It should be given just as much importance as the original story was given. Well, enough of my ramblings. We now return you to your regularly scheduled force-fed media hype.