Maggie's Farm

My uncle (draft-dodger, left wingnut), now living in Copenhagen, once responded to question of mine about a Danish politician who had been caught in a house of ill-repute with an animal.

I only asked him if this was considered 'normal' behavior in Denmark.

To his credit, because I do agree with him at a base level on this point, he responded "who do you get to judge? You aren't normal, I'm not normal, so what is normal? If he wants to spend time with an animal, let him. Who cares who he likes to do it with, that's none of yours or my business? Yes, we allow that here. Who cares?"

Well, generally speaking, I don't. That is, I don't care if prostitution is legal. Someone wants to enter the profession, so much the better for them, I don't see why I need to criminalize it.

But prostitutes, in a legalized environment anyway, have a choice. Animals don't. I'm not sure Bessie the sheep is pleased or even comfortable with Joe Politician having a nice evening with her.

At least the woman can approve or deny her clientele, and receive some kind of remuneration for her 'efforts'.

I don't see anything normal about any of that behavior. But as my uncle said - what is normal? I have no idea. I know what I think is normal, and I am damn sure it doesn't match whatever 98% of the people who post here think is normal.

I also don't think I get to pass judgement or sit in judgement of these people. On the other hand, we all make value judgments, and if we don't, we're just living wrong.

As a value judgement, I see nothing normal in these behaviors. As for criminalizing these behaviors, well, I'm just not seeing any value in doing that, either.

I used to work for Univision in the 90's.

In fact, I'm very familiar with Entravision, for some very specific (but I won't explain why) reasons. Let's just say working with them was part of my job.

I'm rather shocked by that email, and by the sharp left turn. When I was there, Univision was owned by Jerry Perenchio, who was well-known for his support of RNC causes. I remember several executives, one year, making donations to a Republican candidate that Jerry had endorsed, simply because they felt it would curry favor with the big man. I don't know if it did or didn't, they just thought it was a good idea.

On the other hand, Jerry also hired Clinton's former head of HUD, Henry Cisneros, to run his company. I left several years later, but perhaps that is when the sharp left turn started. After all, Henry joined just about the same time Univision took its big stake in Entravision, as a means of gaining better control over its station group and expanding into new growth markets.

All that said, I was very surprised by the amount of Republican support generated at the local level when I was visiting the Entravision stations in the 90's. Plenty of the workers and even their clients would comment on how much they liked the Bush family.

I guess I shouldn't be shocked, however. Media, in general, has become full of either left-wing nutjobs or unquestioning boobs looking for a paycheck and willing to say or do whatever it takes to keep getting that paycheck. Usually whatever it takes means swallowing what little pride these people have and spouting the party line or some other kind of nonsense that will make them seem 'on board'.

At a recent media conference, I heard a speaker use the phrase "the intolerance of intolerance is the new tolerance", which was the title of my post a few days ago. The illogic of this comment is astounding and the man who said it is respected media insider (though he is little known outside the media world).

This same fellow once engaged me in a heated exchange about Nixon's role in "ramping up" the Vietnam War. I pointed out to him that Nixon actually oversaw the winding down of the war, and while he may have considered the increased bombing of North Vietnam and the Ho Chi Minh Trail to be a 'ramping up', it was anything but. If anything, Nixon did more to bring Hanoi to the negotiating table (for better or worse - I'm not saying it was right or wrong) than LBJ did. If ending the war was the goal (according to this slow-witted media insider, it was), then Nixon did it quite well, just not in a fashion this fellow thought was 'right'.

So yeah, most people in media are pretty stupid. That's no surprise to me. Neither is the fact that so many are left-wing and borderline fascist.

There are, without a doubt, many fascists in media.

However, because most of them don't understand what fascist means, the term is lost on them. They only define fascist as a Nazi or a hater of Jews.

It takes some explaining, with some, to offer up why they are truly fascist. But most are borderline. When they step over the line, and that line is explained to them, most step back.