To the Idiot Who Shot Charlie Kirk: Ya Dun Goofed

A big BIG slap upside the head to the shooter of Charlie Kirk! If this killing was an attempt to silence Charlie and his message/philosophy, then the killer has monumentally failed.  Viewership of his videos has risen by about 500% at least and there are about 18,000 new chapters of Kirk's organization Turning Point USA opening all over America.  Ironically, the shooter couldn't have done Charlie a bigger favour than this.

But, is this indeed what the shooter wanted to accomplish?  We now know the name of the killer is Tyler Robinson. Was he for or against Charlie, and why? What could've been the motivation? There's been speculation that because Tyler has a trans partner that this killing was inspired by the LGBTQ community. Others are saying because his family are mostly Trump-supporting MAGA that is was inspired by Trump's base. I've seen others speculate that it may have been Israel to blame.  Well, hey, I hate tomatoes on my sandwich so I think maybe a sliced tomato shot Charlie. No, of course I don't think that.

But I do think it's rather silly and stupid how people are projecting an identity onto this killer in order to confirm their own biases.   Somewhere in Toon Town, maybe Jinx the Cat is blaming the shooting on "those miserable meeces that he hates to pieces".  Whenever this or any tragedy like it happens, please everyone stay calm and wait for the pertinent details to come out before you give your AHA pointing finger some exercise.

This shooting comes as a shock and yet sadly not as big as a surprise as one would think. Charlie Kirk was one of those figures that had many fans who loved him and many detractors who hated him so much they saw red. I personally am neither one of these people.  He was all the way over conservative whilst I am much more of a libertarian/centrist kind of person.  Charlie said many things that I would disagree with. I know many of his detractors are posting a list of the many of his statements that they find particularly egregious, but too much of those have been taken out of context as an attempt to smear him.  So, what I'll do here is post a full video of his own words from his own mouth that of which I disagree.  Watch below:

Um... yeah.  I get the point of what he's saying but I think "submit" is a very clumsy word to use here.

Marriage is more like a partnership where signing the marriage license is like signing a contract.  Both parties must honour the conditions of that contract or the marriage has grounds for being dissolved.   Much like when Warner Bros merged with Discovery, the union of John Smith and Marcia Kazerminski should result in the new partnership of John & Marcia Smith or whatever conditions they've mutually agreed upon.  No "submission" required.  If Charlie Kirk were here in front of me I would absolutely debate him on this topic.  But, I certainly wouldn't shoot him if the debate "didn't go my way".

 Either way, that clip right there shows us a glimpse of what Charlie Kirk was about, his basic philosophy and how he carried himself.  From the looks of things, he was either an evangelical Alex P Keaton or a political Ned Flanders.  What is so scary about that? 

Why would anyone feel the need to "off" this guy and/or then celebrate his killing?  Celebrate his killing?? Yes, that has and is happening. Below is just a few examples from TikTok.

I want to address this particular one below separately because it's just so out of touch:

This person is sooooooo far into her bubble that her assertion is..... well...... adorable despite the vileness of her video.  Like I said earlier, I have a foot on both the left wing AND the right wing of this big political bird so I get a good idea about what both sides are saying.  If I knew this woman in real life, I could easily tell her that the right wing is not at all talking about "giving up their guns" because of this killing.  None of them are saying "this is a gun problem", they are saying "this is a leftism problem".  Just recently, President Trump took steps to declare Antifa a terrorist organization.  As much as I'd hate to see ordinary citizens targeted for their political beliefs, I just have to say that all of the instances of people celebrating Charlie's death certainly didn't help the situation.

But, as egregious as those responses (as well as 10s of thousands just like them all over TikTok) are, I found one to be possibly the most insidious.  Here it is:

Um.......... WHAT??!!  This person just equated the utterance of the phrase "fuck your feelings" with the shooting death of a man just making a speech. Someone actually thought this up, typed it all out, possibly proofread it, and then hit send thinking it was a "banger".  If you're still wondering "how could anyone be condoning a shooting death or even celebrating it?", well the sentiment behind the above post is a glimpse into the mind set that killed Charlie.

These people actually and unironically believe that words are the same as violence.  No joke. They for real consider the act of saying words that they don't like to be the same as punching, clubbing, or even shooting someone.  So, in their mind, Charlie Kirk's words were such DAAAAAAAANGEROUS weapons that a bullet to his body was an equally balanced justification.  I'd like to use an expression from the late great George Carlin to basically describe these people:

FUCKING STUPID!

FULL OF SHIT!

FUCKING NUTS! 

Whenever I hear anyone of these people talk, that is all I hear.  They act like Charlie Kirk's words have these "magic powers" that can make anything manifest somehow. As though he's just like Dorah the Explorer every time Swiper comes around. He and his troupe can simply hold up their hands and say:

"Swiper is only one of two genders"

...and in that instant, Swiper's "triple-spirit, gender-congealed, weasel furry" gender is completely erased and all "xuhr" can do is say:

"Awwwww MAN!!"

...as in "awwwwww I'm just a cis MAN!!!"

This is NOT how reality works.  Say for instance in the case of the trans community gender dispute, if all of the genders that deviate from the binary male/female are indeed true to science genders, then it shouldn't matter WHAT Charlie Kirk or any of his allies say.  Those genders will keep being scientifically sound and that is that.  Mr Kirk saying anything "to the contrary" about it is not a "horrific act of violence" it's just his own opinion expressed in word form.  Debunk his opinion thoroughly or move on.

The same goes for any issue Charlie Kirk and his detractors had any disagreement over. In that video above, Charlie talked about wives submitting to husbands. Him just saying that does NOT automatically push women out of their careers and force them to stay at home against their will.  It's just an opinion being stated. Nothing more and nothing less.  Debunk it or drop it.

Yes, I've heard the phrase "words have power". When it comes to that, I read from the book of Lenny Bruce, the man who was always getting arrested (never shot) for the "powerful" words in his stand up comedy routines.  He always said that words only have as much power as we as individuals choose to give them.  We all have our own thresholds and our own agency.  We are free to determine just how "offensive" any word or image is to "the royal us".  Nobody and I do mean NOBODY has the right to tell us what words or images we should find offensive or not.

I would even say that trying in any way to establish certain words as not only "offensive" but also "violent" is an absolute form of tyranny.  One group of perpetually angry interlopers demanding a universal condemnation of certain utterances taken to its most inevitable conclusion leads to a man being shot and killed.  This is why I do not and can NOT accept the premise of "words being violent" ever.  So no, "fuck your feelings" and "submit to your husband" are not "forms of assault", you literal morons.

And don't get me started on "schmuck-tastic terrorism".  It's a similar yet more insidious concept to the notion of "words being violence".  The definition of this "schmuck-tastic blahblahism" is basically "things get said that create an environment of badness so to stop the badness we need to label those things being said as terrorism so that people will take it as a serious threat and then...... some stupid dumb nothingness..... blahblahblah..." it's just a bullshit term created by bullshit people used to stifle speech and spread bullshit.  Yes, I know full well the proper term is not "schmuck-tastic" but this is a more appropriate term to use because you'd have to be a SCHMUCK to unironically believe any of that.

Oh hey, by the way, I'm sure there's plenty of you out there who don't recognize the author of that above social media post. You are fortunate people who live good clean lives.  I, unfortunately, do recognize the author. I won't keep you in suspense, it's this idiot:

Rather than go into detail here about this idiot's "legacy", I'll embed a video I made (OMG) 9 years ago where I commented on some other stupid things she said at the time.  Here it is below:

Oh, hey, and one last point I'd like to make to this psycho. Dude, I get that you wanted to "take Charlie down". You didn't care for his message as well as how far it was reaching. That's understandable.  However, there are ways of "taking people down" that don't involve murder and, more importantly, are much more effective.  As a for instance, I give you: Vaush! 

For those who've never "had the pleasure" of this guy, for quite a while he was prominent figure on Youtube, or as his corner of that website is affectionately known as: Breadtube.  He gained quite a following by screaming and shouting about how first America and then the world should and must be overtaken by a full communist revolution.  He referred to any backlash or any sentiment even slightly right of Lenin as, in his words, "DOG SHIT!!!"  You can bet that the "right wing pundits" on Youtube and elsewhere were in fear of him becoming "the voice of a generation". But, where be his rantings now, Horatio? Well, he and his channel were essentially nuked immediately after one folder chock full of child porn was found on his computer harddrive.  He was also sending many salaciously explicit texts to people he knew were minors.  All his detractors were saying "I kind of knew it" and many of his former supporters were just like "I was never there".  Vaush is still very much alive and kicking wherever he is, but he is certainly no big influence on anybody.  Of course, I highly doubt anybody would find any underage porn on Charlie Kirk's computer, or any porn for that matter.  Heck, I'm sure Charlie was the kind of person who would fast forward through all of the "naughty" scenes in Show Girls........... or Anchorman.

You see, Mr. killer person, THIS is the fate you were wishing for upon Charlie Kirk.  You wanted him discredited by his base and then slunk back into anonymity, not shot and killed. By killing him, you've practically turned him into a "Malcolm X" figure.  Yes, Malcolm and Charlie had wildly different philosophies, I know.  But, they were both shot because some brain-fried crank didn't like what they had to say. Likewise, both have become symbols of a movement after their deaths that are being used to "foment change".  Many places of business are terminating the employment of so many of the above TokTokers I mentioned that posted a video celebrating Charlie's death.  Trump has also overreached with his presidential power to get Jimmy Kimmel's show cancelled after Kimmel told an "untruth" about Charlie.  (Even if Mr. Kimmel was due to be cancelled anyway, Trump should absolutely stay out of it, as per the 1st Amendment).  This is what you've started, Mr. killer.  To quasi-quote Obi Wan Kenobi, you struck Charlie down and made him more powerful than you can possibly imagine.

And now for my last thoughts about Charlie.  There's a saying that I think is attributed to Ghandii. It goes something like: First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they try to stop you, then you win.  Well, given the events of the past week, I'd say all of this has come to fruition.  I don't remember the time period of him being ignored (probably because I was one of the people ignoring him) but I'm sure that happened. Any long time and loyal member of Turning Point USA can probably remember such a time for sure.  But, I do recall seeing him being ridiculed.  There were all sorts of silly memes online depicting him with a "small face".  And there was that South Park episode that did a send up of him.  I can emphatically state that someone shooting falls under the definition of trying to stop him which has thus accelerated him into winning.  With his organization growing so rapidly in just this past week, how could you call it anything but winning?

I'll end this post with a video made by a British comedian Jonathan Pie, a man who has a much more nuanced and insightful take on this situation than I could have.Listen and enjoy!

R.I.P. Charlie Kirk. If you were the barrier between peace and violence, we need you and other slike you now more than ever.  

Don't do it, Donald

 Don't do it, I say. Take a step back and think about it, Don. You do NOT want to go there. Back off before it's too late.

For those wondering, this is the specific thing of Trump's doings that I'm talking about:

You can read the full article here: Trump's boner

I know I know.  Of all the things Trump has done since being re-elected (dropping bombs on Iran, blocking the Epstein files after campaigning on a promise to release them, adding several trillion more to America's national debt) I pick THIS to kvetch about.  Well, sit tight, dear reader, and you'll easily see why I chose this issue to address.

For the record, I'm not bothered by the thought the Washington football team being called the "Redskins" again.  That's not my issue.  I'd be fine with the name being changed to the "Washington Kaffirs" thereby upsetting every South African.

Yes....... EVERY South African

They're just words, people. Pull that bug out of your ass already. 

What DOES bother me about this move by Trump is that it could set a horrible 1st Amendment damaging precedent.  He's using his presidential power to interfere with the business of a privately owned football team franchise.  The supreme court ruled that nobody can force someone to write words on a gay couple's wedding cake that he does not want to write.  So too, that same supreme court ruling applies to a current president telling a football team what words or images they can or can not put onto their jerseys.  This is basic Free Expression 101.  Trump is really really overstepping his bounds here.

What if Kamala Harris had won that election back in 2024 and one of the first things she focused on was renaming "problematic" street names and various other properties? 

What if she did some strong arm tactics to force that cake professional and other such professionals to put words on cakes and other things?  Well, Trump and his MAGA minions would be crying "blatant censorship" and "deeply unfair" and in this case they would be correct.  And, hey, she was Vice President under Joe Biden for the past 4 years. Did she and Joe do ANY such overstepping? Did they even ever just ONCE abuse the office of the presidency to compel the speech of citizens to be either expressed of suppressed against their will?  Did they ever ever EVER......... oh shit wait, yes they did. Watch the video clip below. 

Wow! The team of "Joe-Mala" did the very thing the 1st Amendment was designed to prevent. They should've been impeached for that alone.

So, ok.  Neither Republicans nor Democrats are perfect parties.  They both have people that will usurp or bend your constitutional rights to suit their wills and/or their egos.  But, just because Joe and Kamala are terrible does NOT let Trump off this hook.  If he campaigned on being better than them then he needs to demonstrate that.  THIS right here with the Washington football team does NOT do that.

From this point on, I'm going to type as if Trump himself is reading this.  Fat chance of that, but I feel compelled to do so.  Geronimo! Here I go:

Hey, Donnie Don Don!  Did you know there were some rumblings about this team changing their name back to the Redskins anyway? Did you know that? This name restoration could've happened without your involvement, and it would've been all legal and constitutional.  Although, with this name change, there's a chance they could've gone snarky and referred to "red skin potatoes" instead...

                                

It's a possibility!

                                                                    

...but that's not likely.

Or, hey, Orangey Orange Donnie Donnie Don Don, maybe just maybe the team owners were considering renaming their team to.............. The Trumps! 

Maybe they're so loyal to you that they'd name their team after "one larger than life powerhouse of a guy who takes no guff and gets things done".  That's the kind of symbol pretty much every sports franchise wants to pattern themselves after.  "The Washington Trumps!"  It has a certain ring to it.  But, after this bizarre and unconstitutional strongarm overreach tactical move of yours, this is not possible anymore.  They might keep it as the Commanders just out of spite.

But, it might not be too late.  If you back off and leave them alone right now, you might have a chance to save your presidency, your legacy, and most importantly (as your entire campaign and movement have screeched about these past 10 years) save America.  Help restore the 1st Amendment to its absolute glory please and thank you.

Okay, my little rant is over and I new feel good. I hope everyone else out there feel the same.  Ciao for now.

The loss of Bob Saget

 

By now, most have heard the sad news of the passing of Bob Saget at the relatively young age of 65.  At that age he could've still had a few decades to continue to share his gift of comedy to the world.  But, for some celestial reason, that was not to be.  As a result, he is "for the ages" now.

I never had the pleasure of meeting him in real life.  However............. I did get him angry on Twitter once.  He was posting a string of jokes on Twitter presumably to test them with his followers.  One of those jokes, to me, looked eerily familiar.  It reminded me of a similar joke that Steve Martin had told.  So, like a little shit, I responded to him saying, "Stolen from Steve Martin".  Almost immediately, he gave me a quick follow and then sent this little DM:

After that, he blocked me.  Needless to say, I'm still blocked by him.  I guess it's up to the "estate of Bob Saget" to have me unblocked now, and what would be the point of that anyway?  Going by his no holds barred stand up routine, I thought there was nothing in this world that could "push his buttons".  But, it looks like I found that one thing that does.  Sorry, Bob.

There has been, of course, so much outpouring of grief and sentiment about Bob from fans and coworkers alike.  That's been the bulk of what I've seen anyway.  I've also seen tiny little rumblings of various conspiracy theories surrounding his life and his death too, but that's best left ignored.  The one bit of sentimental content I do want to address with this blog entry is any post that makes any statement like "...oh no, entertainment is going to suck now with him gone..."  There is some objective truth to that statement, in that us being deprived of his comedic abilities will leave a big hole felt by many.  But, at the same time, I consider that a defeatist attitude that helps nobody.  In contrast, here's how I look at this.

Consider the time when Bob Saget first came to prominence.  That happened when he was cast in the sitcom Full House.  He had done other things on TV before, one example being a stand up comedian character on a short-lived show called Bosom Buddies.  However, it was the Full House gig that put him in that spotlight and made him a house hold name.  That happened in 1987.  Well.......

....that happens to be the same year that Jackie Gleason died.  You can bet that the same cries of mourning we see for Bob Saget now were all being cried for Mr. Gleason back then.  Many people considered "entertainment to suck now" after the passing of such an entertainment talent and legend.  But, as you can see by the dates here, it's more like one entertainment torch was passed on to another.

One could say the same thing about Betty White's passing.  Her entertainment career first started back in the early 1950's about around 1952-ish.  Well.....

...that's the year Curly Howard died.  He was succumbing to the strain of his massive stroke while young Betty White was having her first screen test.

We've also lost another big titan in the movie industry, Sidney Poitier.  He's been in many ground breaking movies throughout his career, but his big movie debut was in 1950.  That is also the year....

...Al Jolson died.

We recently lost a great pioneering musician Mike Nesmith.  Most people know him as one of The Monkees whose TV show debuted in 1966.

That's the year famed silent film star Buster Keaton died.

I could go on and on matching celebrity deaths in this way but I think you get the idea now.

Geez, Dave! Thanks for reminding me of all these deaths. Now I'm extra sad.

Well, death is a part of life, kiddo.  It comes for all of us, even the supposedly immortal celebrities we look up to.  As much as I'd like all great talented people to live forever, I'd also be sad to see a 136 year old Al Jolson wandering around Hollywood desperately looking for a way to stay relevant. 

The point of bringing all of this up is to show that the entertainment industry as a whole is bigger than one person.  People have been coming to it and going from it since the beginning of human history and it continues unabated just so long as there are people out there wanting to be entertained.  A good way to deal with Bob Saget's passing is look at what talented person is getting famous now.  Who is carrying the torch that Bob dropped with his passing?  Perhaps Mr. Saget's body of work has inspired this individual directly.  Maybe, in 30 or 40 years, this young talented starlet receiving well deserved adulation and fame will "shed this mortal coil" which will have millions of people mourning.  But, like now, some other young starlet will pick up the torch and continue on to entertain a whole other generation.  Or hey, this new young starlet can also feel inspired by Bob Saget and/or any of the other celebrities I mentioned above.  That's a distinct possibility too.  Inspiration can come from anyone at any time.

I'll end this blogpost with, of course, a sample of Bob Saget's legendary stand up routine.  What else would be appropriate here, really?  Let Bob's shining example help you through troubled times or inspire you to be all you can be.  Enjoy!

Is Hannah Gadsby Funny?

 

That's the basic sentiment that comedian Dave Chappelle postulated in his response to the recent backlash of his latest stand up comedy special.  In an effort to appease any trans or otherwise LGBTQ activists protesting his show, Mr. Chappelle announced that he would agree to meet with them under a few conditions:

1. Anyone he meets with busy have seen his stand up special The Closer in its entirety.

2. They must meet him at a place and a time of his choosing.

3. They must ADMIT that Hannah Gadsby is not funny

I'm thinking that Dave threw that last condition in just as a way to rankle Ms. Gadsby since she is one of Dave's most vocal critics of his show.

If any of the people who are following this situation were to be asked this question, most of the responses would range from "HELL YEAH!!!" to "FUUUUUCK NO!!!!" with very little falling in-between.  Of course, if one were to compare the stand up acts of either of these two, Mr. Chappelle would easily come out the winner.  His venues are always well attended with pretty much every member of that audience roaring with laughter. Meanwhile, Ms. Gadsby's are also adequately crowded but the laughter sounds tepid and reserved at best.  

That being said, I'm not really on board with declaring a comedian being "not funny" as though it were a statement of fact.  Hannah might not be as big a draw as Dave and is probably very VERY far down most people's "Funniest People of All Time" list.  However, at the same time, she does have her audience who does appreciate everything she says and does in her routine.  You'll have a hard time convincing her she's "not funny" after she's been in an auditorium full of people laughing and cheering at most of what she's said.  This goes for every comedian that's ever been declared "not funny" by pockets of the general populous such as Carrot Top, Galleghar, or Jay Leno to name a few.

As I see it, the issue here is not about the talents (and/or non-talents) of Hannah.  The issue causing the big cultural divide here is the OVER-INFLATED HYPE around her comedy routine.  Too many critics (possibly paid off or coerced in some way) seem to be artificially trying to prop up Hannah Gadsby as this "...bold new fresh approach that will revolutionize comedy..." or something to that extent.  What these critics fail to realize is that is not how paradigms in mediums get shifted. It has to happen organically as a choice of the people in the audiences.  A quick check of just the ratings on the website Rottontomatoes can demonstrate this point easily.

The results are inversed.  With Dave Chappelle, the critics are giving him bad reviews in order to bring his rating down while the general audience is giving him much more favourable reviews.  For Gadsby, her critics are heaping praise upon her to get those numbers up. Sadly for her though, the audience score does not agree and is much MUCH lower.  In terms of her place and her legacy in the history of comedy, this makes her the exact polar opposite of the great Lenny Bruce.

Back in his day, the late 50's to mid 60's, Lenny Bruce was quite a controversial figure.  He absolutely pioneered the "stand up philosopher" approach to comedy in which he unabashedly spoke his mind and never backed down.  His routine would go on to influence comedians like George Carlin, Mort Saul, Richard Pryor, and pretty much every other comedian to come after him.  Dave Chappelle's stand up is absolutely on the same trail that Lenny blazed.  Really, he was the bold fresh revolutionary that todays critics are purporting Hannah Gadsby to be.  However, there is a significant difference Lenny and Hannah.  

In Lenny's day, he was NOT being praised by critics.  In fact, his harshest critics were always having him arrested.  He was always getting hauled in to the nearest police precinct under penalty of violating something called "obscenity laws" or some such trumped up charge.  He was arrested and tried so often that many of his later stand up routines were just of him reading verbatim the transcripts of any one of his trials.

Thankfully for Mr. Bruce and comedy in general, the people were on his side.  Not only did people flock to his shows time and again, many of those so-called "obscenity laws" were relaxed which helped pave the way for many bold comedians I mentioned above and many more.

The exact opposite seems to be happening as far as Hannah's concerned though. As demonstrated by the Rottontomates score above, it's the critics that are with her while the vast majority of the people........... not so much.  

I'd even say that the people are more so siding with Dave Chappelle in this debacle over his Netflix special.  He's the Lenny Bruce in this situation. While not being charged and arrested, he's certainly under threat of what's called "cancellation" that meaning he could have more difficulty finding performance work in the future.  But that's the risk he's willing to take to exercise the right to free expression.  

Hannah Gadsby, on the other hand, has taken it upon herself to reiterate what the mobs protesting

Chappelle's special keep saying.  They say that his jokes are "harmful" to the trans community and so his special MUST be pulled from Netflix immediately.  I am on "Team Chappelle" for this very reason.  There is no such thing as a "harmful" joke.  People are only "harmed" by a joke if they make the conscious choice to let a joke feel harmful to them.  A person choosing to feel "harmed" by a joke is certainly not the comedian's fault.  Even if the comedian's intended purpose was to deliberately hurt the feelings of his chosen targets, in the interest of free expression, the listener is still free to interpret that joke in a way that does not feel hurtful.  That person is also free to not frequent to auditorium in which the comedian is performing nor watch it on any medium.  If more people understood how this freedom works, the backlash against Dave Chappelle would not be nearly as insidious as it is now.

Despite me being entirely on the side of Chappelle here, this does not mean that I am fully condemning Hannah Gadsby.  I certainly don't dislike her as a comic and I wish her no ill will at all.  Like I said earlier, her audience may not be as big or enthusiastic as Dave's, but she does have an audience that she entertains on a regular basis.  If she can hold on to this niche market then she has a long enjoyable career in stand up ahead of her and nothing that I or anyone can say will take that away from her.  But, as the question is posed in the title of this blogpost: Is Hannah Gadsby Funny?  That is up to individual interpretation of course.  If you personally enjoy her stand up, by all means see her do a live performance. If you don't, save your time and money by avoiding her venues altogether.  Everyone concerned will be happiest with this arrangement.

I will end this post with saplings of each of the aforementioned comedian's routines. They are all being presented here objectively and you the reader can judge for yourself which one suites you best.

Have fun and keep laughing.

Jon Lovitz has something to say

 I was poking around the inter webs recently (as many many many of us tend to do ESPECIALLY under Covid lockdowns) when I stumbled upon an article that piqued my interest just a tad.

The link to that article is here.

As a birthday present to myself, I will make a blog post (as I've done here and on the main blog) about exactly why this article caught my eye in this way.

Firstly, I'd like to state that his comparison of what we call "cancel culture" to McCarthyism is relatively accurate.

"urm............ duuuuuh........... mick.... coffee-ism.......... durrrr........ wutts dat?"

Oh right. I should realize that there could be a number of people reading this that are either to young or just not so astute about history. So, I need to take some time to make sure everyone is as informed a possible on this subject before continuing.

What Jon Lovitz has done here is compare today's practice of getting people in trouble for a social media post or just anything said in public (or even in private) to that of the House Unamerican Activites Committee hearings that Senator Joe McCarthy set up un the late 1940's and continued to use well into the 1950's.  You see, at the time, Joe felt that there may be too many communists in the United States making concerted efforts to subvert America.  His mission was to root them all out and neutralize them whether it be through deportation (for anyone not born on American soil) or to suppress someone's ability to work as a professional.  This "red scare" that Senator Joe was pushing had the hugest impact on Hollywood where so many creative person's were called to testify before his committee of very VERY partial judges.  A testifying person only had two choices: 1) to "admit" to being a communist subversive, or 2) give the names of everyone they knew who had "subversive leanings".  Worse still was that the criteria to be called to testify was simply to be "suspected" of communist sympathies. If, 30 years ago, you had been in a Grade 2 class with someone now under investigation (and you hadn't even seen of thought about that person since), that would've been enough to make you a suspect.  It was a very bleak time in American history full of human rights violations that should never be repeated ever again.

So hopefully you can see how publicly condemning someone for 10 year old tweets or just hitting the like button on something J.K. Rowling posted is similar to what Joe was doing all those decades ago. Although, one key difference is that back then it was being back then it was a sitting senator carrying out this suppression. In this era, we're just doing that to each other. At least Joe and everyone on that HUAC panel were getting paid their salary for their efforts. The people forming online mobs (or in some cases "in the street" mobs) are getting.......... what exactly? Nothing but a release of emotional masturbation, that's all.  (um.... hey.... to anyone coming on here to say "nO nO nO wE aRe FiGhTiNg FoR sOcIaL pRoGrEsS... yeahNO....... it's emotional masturbation. Own it.)

As you can guess, I'm definitely on side with Mr. Lovitz. I also dislike the chilling effect of self-censorship this mob rule has brought onto politics, art, and free speech in general.  The proponents of this mob rule even have to gall to profess that they're "holding people accountable" (this is of course more of that emotional masturbation I mentioned earlier).  It's somewhat ironic that these same people have a problem with an independent journalist known as Andy Gno. He has taken it upon himself to document and report on the activities of Black Block Antifa and frequently does so on his twitter account.  Many of his critics say that Andy presents a highly skewed image of Antifa because he's got a very pro-conservative bias against them, thus all of his reports are at the very least suspect.  Oh ok.  I'm not here to defend nor condemn Andy, so for the sake of argument let's say these allegations about him are true.  From his perspective, he considers himself to be............. wait for it..................... holding people accountable. If his push for accountability is a highly prejudicial overreach based on ideological biases, then so is the other push.  In a truly free society, NEITHER push for "accountability" (which is merely an entire populous acting as judge, jury, and executioner) should be happening.

Anyway, I brought up this whole thing with Jon Lovitz not to merely profess my alignment with him on this topic.  I do so because just a few years back, Jon was saying something different entirely.

I think we sadly can all remember the huge tragedy that happened at Charlottesville back in August of 2017.

It shocked and horrified many people who watched it on TV and online, and it surely left plenty of physical and mental scars on people who were actually there.  It was after this tragedy that the efforts to suppress speech and expression really got ramped up.  People were calling for the curtailing of speech that upset them. The most extreme example that I saw at the time was the United Nations actually suggesting that then President Trump repeal the First Amendment because "we're afraid of what those alt-right thugs will say next".  Online, Jon Lovitz himself was one of those voices calling for such suppression. "NAZIS SHOULD SHUT UP!!!", was the basic sentiment of his tweets that day.  I remember getting into a twitter feud with him about that very thing. I reminded him that denying speech for anybody, no matter how abhorrent their views of humanity are, leaves too much wiggle room for the suppression of other people's speech.  Well, needless to say, he and everyone on his feed that supported his position were not in the mood to hear any constitutional platitudes that day.  Things got heated for sure, but Im proud to say that neither of us got nasty. We didn't sink to ad hominem and we certainly didn't point to either of our ethnicities in an effort to shut each other down.  Yes, Jon Lovitz is a Jewish man and so it is quite understandable that he would be upset over a line of people with nazi sympathies chanting their mantras in the streets.  All the same, I felt he needed to be reminded that the US constitution has to work for everyone all the time no matter what.  Eventually, he did calm down to a point where both of us could come to an agreement.  I took a screen shot of the tweet exchange that ended our heated discussion on what I think is a positive note:

There it is. He certainly didn't want to throw away the First Amendment. He just didn't enjoy hearing those alt-right people chanting.  That was his biggest concern at the time.  I think maybe now that he's seeing the big chilling effect that anti-free speech sentiment in the wake of Charlottesville has wrought, he can see just how important it is to uphold free speech rather than protect the feelings of those who have trouble handling words.

For real, the absolutely all time dumbest notion to have emerged from that event was that "words can be violent and cause harm therefore such violent words must be suppressed for everyone's safety".  BULLSHIT!!!  Words cannot be violent or hurt anyone or anything. They just sit there being words.  Words are either a brief expulsion of carbon dioxide and water vapour from the mouth, a splash of ink on a sheet of paper, or a tiny swath of digital bits taking up an equally tiny amount of bandwidth on a website.  That's all they are.  In fact, the only time in the entire history of Planet Earth and the universe that words have ever ever EVER and I mean EVER caused any harm was back in 1989.  It was in a made-for TV movie in which Don Adams reprised his Maxwell Smart character that he first made popular in 1965. It was called Get Smart Again.

In that show, the chief is fed up with trying to exchange secret messages to Max through the Cone of Silence because it has always malfunctioned one way or another.  However, one of the engineers at Control Headquarters is very proud of his new invention.  He calls it the Hall of Hush.

How it works is that, whenever either of them says something, the words physically manifest into the room instead of being heard. This way they can foil any bugging devices that their rival KAOS might've planted.

The problem quickly becomes apparent when Max fills the entire room full of words due to his rambling about the merits of this invention.  The room becomes so full of words that the only way Max and the chief can have any room to move is by eating some of the words.

Of course, having to eat a word or two wouldn't count as having pain inflicted upon oneself.  However, just before they start eating, the chief does inform Max of the pain he's feeling.

Right there.  A headache.  That is the only pain ever inflicted upon a person by a word.  A fictional chief in charge of a fictional organization professed to having a headache caused by all of the words physically floating around their heads.  Although, this being a show based on fiction, those words were added afterwards through technology so the actors never really experienced any headache from those words anyway.

So that's the ONLY example of words causing pain. Any other time anyone has claimed to be "harmed by words", it was only because they allowed themselves to feel harmed by those words.  We all have our own agency. We all have the ability to assign as much or as little power to words as we see fit.  That was the philosophy of (certainly who I consider to be) the patron saint of free speech the great Lenny Bruce.  If that brave and courageous man were alive to see the social media mobs demanding the "cancellation" of people who say things that upset others, he would be beyond horrified.  I think, for the good and prosperity of humanity, we need to return and emulate Lenny Bruce's philosophy as much as possible.

I'll end this post with a classic performance of Mr. Lovitz. For his commitment to free expression, he deserves to have his best work showcased for the world to see.  Whether the entire world is reading this blogpost or not is immaterial. Enjoy!