"Negro" is wrong in Sweden too
 
A local Green Party politician from central Sweden kicked up controversy for singing a song about a "negro village" in Africa during a recent children's charity fundraiser.

The incident took place on Sunday when Rune Tessin, a Green Party member of the local council in Åtvidaberg, took the stage at an event to raise money for "Min Stora Dag" ('My Big Day'), a charity which helps sick children fulfill their dreams.

One of the songs chosen by the 71-year-old Tessin featured lyrics about a "negro village" (negerby) down in Africa.

Following the event a video of the Green Party politician's crooning appeared on YouTube, much to the dismay of party colleagues.  "It makes me sad, disappointed, and angry," Bror-Tommy Sturk, Green Party chair for Östergötland County, told Sveriges Radio (SR).  "This isn't how Green Party members express themselves. I don't think anyone should express themselves in this way."

But Tessin defended his decision to sing the "negro village" tune and had a hard time understanding why his performance had ruffled feathers.

Tessin admitted that the word "negro" might be considered offensive in the United States because there are "more stereotypes attached to the word and it's more sensitive"

Source

It's actually the scientific term for sub-Saharan Africans,  though academics these days usually say "sub-Saharan Africans" to be on the safe side.  Why use one word when three will do?

It's offensive to be called Australian?

Few Australians would think so

A CZECH-BORN woman has been found guilty of racially abusing her New Zealand-born neighbour by calling her a "stupid, fat Australian".

The Daily Mail reports that the row started after New Zealander Chelsea O'Reilly called the police following a fight between her neighbour Petra Mills and her husband in Macclesfield, England.

Ms O'Reilly said: "She called me a stupid, fat Australian b****. Because of my accent there can be some confusion over my nationality. She knew I was from New Zealand.

She was fined 110 pounds ($168) for racially aggravated public disorder, 50 pounds to be awarded to Ms O'Reilly and 500 pounds to cover all court costs.

SOURCE

An English point of view, I guess.  Just about everything is offensive there if somebody complains

When Feminists Criminalize "Sexist" Speech

Writes Phyllis Schlafly at The Moral Liberal:

"England, [and] 18 other nations including Germany and France signed an absurd United Nations treaty about Women that requires them to pass new laws making sexist comments a crime and outlawing "psychological violence," which they define broadly to include statements "seriously impairing a person's psychological integrity through coercion or threats." This is sold to the public as part of a phony campaign against domestic violence...."

As with hate-speech prohibitions, these laws introduce a level of subjectivity into punishment that's striking. Who will define what constitutes "sexism," "psychological violence," and "seriously impairing a person's psychological integrity through coercion"?

Such laws give government the latitude to punish people selectively based on whether they or their words are in political favor.

Yet, in the same way that hate-speech laws are used as a hammer against Christians but not Muslims, how many "sexism" charges do you think will be brought against women? Will these laws be used to suppress sentiments such as "Boys are stupid. Throw rocks at them" or products such as the "All Men are Bastards" knife block?

It's more likely that they'll be trotted out to, among other things, suppress criticism of abortion under the pretext that it impairs the "psychological integrity" of women who have had or are contemplating abortions.

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"Incompetent" is racist?
   
Rep. James Clyburn (D-S.C.) said Tuesday that a letter from nearly 100 House Republicans urging President Obama not to appoint Susan Rice as secretary of State employed racially charged "code words" to make its case.

The letter, signed by 97 House Republicans, says Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, "is widely viewed as having either willfully or incompetently misled the American public in the Benghazi matter" — language Clyburn saw as racially loaded.

"You know, these are code words," Clyburn, the third-ranking Democrat in the House, told CNN. "We heard them during the campaign — during this recent campaign we heard Sen. Sununu calling our president lazy, incompetent, these kinds of terms that those of us, especially those of us who were grown and raised in the South, we would hear these little words and phrases all of our lives and we'd get insulted by them.

"Susan Rice is as competent as anybody you will find, and just to paste that word on her causes problems with people like [incoming Congressional Black Caucus Chairwoman] Marcia Fudge and certainly causes a big problem with me," he added.

"I don't like those words," Clyburn said. "Say she was wrong for doing it, but don't call her incompetent. That is something totally different.

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Anything "non positive" is hate speech?

Here's email that got Alex Myers, an Australian exchange student currently studying journalism at SUNY Oswego, part of New York's state university system, in trouble. (He was given a class assignment to profile a public figure and chose Oswego men's hockey coach Ed Gosek, and reached out to Gosek's fellow coaches at other schools.)

My name is Alex Myers, I work for the Office of Public Affairs at SUNY Oswego. 

I am currently writing a profile on Oswego State Hockey head coach Ed Gosek and was hoping to get a rival coaches view on Mr Gosek.

If you have time would you mind answering the following questions.

1. How do you find Mr Gosek to coach against?

2. Have you had any interactions with Mr Gosek off the ice? If so how did you find him?

3. What is your rivalry like between your school and Oswego State?

Be as forthcoming as you like, what you say about Mr Gosek does not have to be positive.

Thank you, Alex Myers.

One coach wrote back that he found the last line of the email offensive. A day later, Myers was suspended indefinitely, pending a judicial hearing. The grounds:

Myers was charged with two counts. The first, a general charge encompassing "dishonesty," stemmed from Myers identifying himself as an employee of the Office of Public Affairs, where he was interning, even though that job had nothing to do with the class assignment.

The second charge is unfathomable. The university cites the section of its code of conduct that covers "harassment, intimidation, stalking, domestic violence, or creating a hostile environment through discrimination or bias toward any individual or group." Most chilling, the section also covers "invasion of privacy." For doing research for a profile of a public figure.

I know college kids like to call any authority figures "fascist," but man, Oswego, you're not exactly making your university a place where ideas can be exchanged freely.

This one has a happy(?) ending. After FIRE got involved, Oswego dropped the harassment charge. And at a disciplinary hearing last week, Myers was spared a suspension.

Of course, the "hate speech" prohibitions are violations of our right to free speech.

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Stanley Fish reviews a book on hate speech

Prof. Fish does one of his pretences at even-handedness below.  He is generally an opponent of free speech so that shows below in what he does NOT say.  He makes clear that the case for regulating hate speech lies in the assumption that it is crippling to minority groups who are subjected to it.  That assumption is of course the most arrant nonsense.  Two groups that have endured masses of hate speech over the years are Jews and East Asians (Chinese and Japanese).  Just how crippled and crushed are they?  They are in fact disproportionately affluent and in prominent positions in most countries where they live as minorities.  It would be more consistent with the evidence to conclude that criticism is strengthening

No topic is more frequently debated with less resolution than hate speech. This is made abundantly clear in a new collection of essays written by some of the leading contributors to the debate. The volume is called “The Content and Context of Hate Speech: Rethinking Regulation and Responses,” and it is edited by Michael Herz and Peter Molnar.

What you learn in the course of reading this book is that there is no generally accepted account of (1) what hate speech is, (2) what it does (what its effects are) and (3) what, if anything, should be done about it. To be sure, everyone agrees that it is hate speech when words are used to directly incite violence against a specific person or group of persons. But as Arthur Jacobson and Bernhard Schlink point out in their contribution to the volume, on such occasions the words are instrumental “to an incipient assault,” and it is the assault, not the words, that the state criminalizes. (It is, say the courts, “speech brigaded with action.”) There need be no debate about what to do in the face of that kind of speech because it is already being done by extant laws.

The rest are all hard cases. Is it hate speech when, in a paper with scholarly trappings, someone says that the Holocaust never happened and was invented by Jews in an effort to induce guilt and gain money? Is it hate speech when a pamphlet explains how Muslim Americans plan to impose Shariah law and subvert the traditions of this country? Some who consume such statements will certainly feel hatred for Jews and Muslims, and no doubt those who make such statements intended that result. But no call to violence is issued and one might say — in the United States it will always be said — that while it is hate speech disguised, the disguise is good enough to remove it as a candidate for regulation.

Then there is what we might call genteel hate speech — casually produced anti-Semitic and racial slurs in conversation and in countless British novels. It is certainly hateful speech, but it reflects less the intention of the speaker or writer than the cultural background of the society he lives in. If it is hate speech, it is so distant from any specific design to wound that a legal remedy against it seems quixotic and unenforceable. And yet, demeaning speech that flies under the legal radar because it is an extension of what people regularly say and even more regularly think may in the end be more harmful than the direct, frontal insult.

And what about hate speech that is never uttered, but is implied by the structure of institutions? When the law in many states reduced black Americans to the status of property, wasn’t it being said, in the most forceful way imaginable, that blacks were more like animals than humans? When women were denied the vote for so many decades, wasn’t it being said that they were perpetual children and unworthy of an independent existence? And, to reference an example invoked by Peter Molnar in his essay, isn’t the statue of Teddy Roosevelt in front of the American Museum of National History that shows him on a horse flanked by the figures of a Native American and an African-American a form of hate speech declaring the natural subservience of the “red” man and the black man?

Let’s suppose that we could sort through these versions of hate speech (and there are many more) and come up with a baseline definition of what it is; we would still have the problem of specifying its effects. You can’t cogently debate whether to regulate something unless you have first identified the harms it produces. Bhikhu Parekh, political philosopher and a member of the British House of Lords, is quite confident in his account of those harms. Hate speech, he says, “lowers the tone of public debate, coarsens the community’s moral sensibility, and weakens the culture of mutual respect that lies at the heart of a good society.” In addition, hate speech “violates the dignity of the members of the target group” who lead “ghettoized and isolated lives with a knock-down effect on their children’s education and career choices.”

Not necessarily, says Nadine Strossen, a professor of law and a past president of the A.C.L.U. We are not, she insists, “automatically diminished just because some bigot says something negative about us.” Indeed, we are better off knowing about the hateful things being said, first because it provides “valuable information,” second because it gives the targeted individuals “an opportunity to respond” and third because it “highlights … issues that can be addressed in other ways, for example through education.”

Behind Strossen’s and Parekh’s assertions are two very different views of human beings. For Strossen, the hate speech recipient is (or can and should be) a resolute individual standing up for herself in the face of verbal assault and emerging stronger from the encounter. For Parekh, the hate speech recipient is the vulnerable victim of forces that rob her of dignity and deprive her of the resources necessary for human flourishing, resources that therefore must be supplied by the state in the form of hate speech laws. Strossen’s view follows from a strongly libertarian reading of the First Amendment and is pretty much official doctrine in the United States. Parekh’s view reflects the more communitarian concerns of other Western democracies that balance free expression rights against the right of the society to order itself in decent and humane ways.

Michel Rosenfeld draws the relevant contrast with respect to the United States and Canada: “Under the American view, there seems to be a greater likelihood of harm from suppression of hate speech … than from its toleration.” But from a Canadian perspective, “dissemination of hate propaganda seems more dangerous than its suppression as it is seen as likely to produce enduring injuries to self-worth and to undermine social cohesion in the long run.”

Rosenfeld observes that the two countries “differ in their practical assessments of the consequences of tolerating hate speech.” Not quite; what the two countries differ in is their respective assumptions concerning what must be protected: on the one hand, a rights-based individualism that can take care of itself and would be diminished by nanny-state intervention, on the other, a psychological and societal fragility that must be shored up by law. In one vision, hate speech is an opportunity; in the other it is a virus. Given such two different accounts of the effects of hate speech, it is not surprising that there would be two different accounts of what to do about it, or what not to do about it, and no hope of reconciling them.

More HERE

Another emptyheaded Anglican cleric

"Very Reverend" indeed!  He's probably never even heard of salvation or read Romans chapter 1.  His gospel is secular:  It's "hatred and bigotry" to preach Bible teachings about homosexuality

From Wikipedia:  "The Potter's House is a Pentecostal bible-based fellowship of 1,744 churches in 112 nations throughout the world with 61 ministering evangelists"



TERRITORIANS were more likely to find the gospel at work at Throb nightclub than Potter's House Church, a senior religious figure has said.

The Very Reverend Jeremy Greaves from Darwin's Christ Church Cathedral yesterday slammed Potter's House after the NT News revealed it had been using a Halloween show as a ruse to preach its anti-gay, anti-abortion message.

"It is no wonder the church has become irrelevant to so many when the loudest voice in Christianity is one of hatred and bigotry," Rev Greaves wrote in a letter to the NT News.

"The Gospel is more in evidence at Throb on a Saturday night with their clear message of welcome and acceptance than it is in those churches that continue to peddle such a narrow understanding of the faith."

SOURCE

Hate speech and social media: can public shaming go too far?

The comments below are from Britain's Leftist "Guardian" so that is rather refreshing.  It suggests that not all Leftist talk about free speech is hollow

The re-election of Barack Obama provoked, perhaps not surprisingly, some racist, offensive and just plain stupid reaction on social media.

But the decision of websites such as Buzzfeed and Jezebel to pick out some of the more egregious examples – many by high school students – has prompted a debate about the ethics of so-called "social media shaming".

A discussion between Buzzfeed's Matthew Buchanan and Read Write's Fruzsina Eördögh came to a head on Monday night when Buchanan posted this piece in defense of the two news blogs:

When people say things out loud that the public has collectively – or like, a lot of it, anyway – agreed are offensive, hurtful, or stupid, it's within the purview of the public to retort, to challenge, and to chasten.

Eördögh sees things differently. She says that since Twitter users are unaware when and where their content is being republished, the ethics of doing so are pretty murky, especially in the cases of minors.

Users have a right to know what is happening with their communication, and they don't have to participate in surveys, research, or even in media articles if they don't want to. Sometimes communication between friends really is just communication between friends. Collecting their data could even be a copyright violation.

This is just the latest in an ongoing discussion about free speech on the internet, one that's often taken place on the Guardian. This time, however, teenagers are involved. On Jezebel, Tracie Egan Morrissey lamented how many of the racist tweets came from high school students: "If you believe the children are our future, then our future is f*cked" she wrote. She contacted the principals and superintendents of the students' schools to "find out how calling the president – or any person of color, for that matter – a 'n*gger' and a 'monkey' jibes with their student conduct code of ethics".

Did Morrissey go too far? Not according to Buchanan, who says that teenagers need to learn to take responsibility for their actions online. "The internet is real," he wrote. "When you say things on the internet now, they carry real weight and meaning."

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Must not speak the truth about Muslims in Britain

He stressed that he did not say ALL Muslims

A Tory MP has sparked controversy after claiming ‘gangs of Muslim men are going round and raping white kids at this moment in time’.

Kris Hopkins, MP for Keighley, said the extraordinary claim was a ‘fact’ and urged government agencies to tackle the problem.

But he has been criticised by Muslim leaders in his constituency, who said he overstepped the mark during a Commons debate.

Mr Hopkins, a former leader of Bradford city council, also claimed Muslim men were ‘fundamentally’ sexist towards women, and politicians had to challenge behaviour and culture.

Speaking in a parliamentary debate on child sexual exploitation, Mr Hopkins claimed mainstream parties had failed by not speaking out about the racial and cultural aspect to some abuse cases and extremists groups had filled the vacuum.

He told MPs: ‘The British National Party will use grooming as a key element of its campaign in the Rotherham election campaign, which will start soon.

‘Not all British Pakistani men are abusing white kids. There is a minority, though. The media coverage gives long lists of notorious abusers - including vicars, priests and celebrities - who are all white and non-Muslim.’  The ‘vast majority’ of child abusers in this country are white, he added.

‘But we should not get away from the fact that gangs of Muslim men are going round and raping white kids at this moment in time.

‘That is an horrendous thing to say, but it is the fact of what is happening. I want to explore some of the state’s agencies’ behaviour towards that, and some of the community’s associated behaviour and culture.’

‘Fundamentally, there is a sexist behaviour by Muslim men towards women,’ he said.

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"Racist" to ridicule Arab terrorists?

It’s raining Israeli bombs in Gaza yet again and as the death toll mounts some people are having themselves a laugh at the expense of the dead. I’m talking about #HamasBumperStickers, a twitter hashtag that caught on like wildfire yesterday mostly among people who despise Palestinians (and Arabs in general) and think it’s funny when Israel kills them.

While I’m not usually one to amplify the trolling rhetoric of heartless bigots, I feel it’s important that these particular individuals be shamed and ostracized for their sick jokes, especially since the hashtag they are using has apparently been trending worldwide.

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You can read the bumperstickers here.

What strange mentality is it that ignores the constant rocket fire onto Israel by the Gaza Arabs?  I guess they are "good" rockets.  The Left are good at selective vision but they are bit players compared to Muslim propagandists.   You wonder what goes on in their brains.  They must know what the reality is.  Even Rachel Corrie knew that.

Facing death wishes, Kim Kardashian deletes pro-Israel tweet


Gratuitous picture

Earlier today, Twitchy called attention to Kim Kardashian’s tweet offering prayers to the people of Israel.

"Praying for everyone in Israel"

That tweet resulted in a torrent of hateful tweets, including death wishes.  Kardashian tried to mollify the anti-Israel mob with this:

"And praying for everyone in Palestine and across the world!"

Now both of those tweets are gone from Kardashian’s Twitter account.  But Twitchy is forever.

Source

Leftist hate as per usual

Greek journalist who published list of 2,000 'tax dodgers' is made to stand trial AGAIN

Attack on free speech in the birthplace of democracy?  Seems sad

There was fury across Greece today after it was announced that a journalist who published the names of more than 2,000 Greeks with Swiss bank accounts is to stand trial again.

Costas Vaxevanis has been told that his acquital earlier this month for breaking data privacy laws after publishing the so-called ‘Lagarde List’ was 'faulty.'

The Athens Public Prosecutor’s office said that Mr Vaxevanis must now be tried again by a higher court on the same charges.

If found guilty, Vaxevanis could be jailed for up to two years or face a fine. ‘The prosecutor believes that the decision in favour of the journalist is legally wrong,’ a court official said.

The speedy arrest, trial and acquittal of Mr Vaxevanis for publishing the so-called 'Lagarde List' had aroused international concern and captivated recession-weary Greeks angry at the privileges of the elite.

Given to Greece by French authorities in 2010, the list contains the names of 2,059 Greek account holders at HSBC in Switzerland to be probed for possible tax evasion.

In his defence, Mr Vaxevanis accused politicians of hiding the truth and protecting an 'untouchable' elite. He said the trial was politically motivated, calling it 'targetted and vengeful.'

Source

Tweet what you like in Britain ... as long as you don't have many followers

I suppose we must be thankful for small mercies

It might be the one of the few occasions in life when it's better to be unpopular than have lots of friends.  Twitter users who make 'grossly offensive' comments online could escape prosecution if they have barely any followers on the social media site, the Director of Public Prosecutions has suggested.

But those who are followed by thousands could face the full force of the law if they publish offensive remarks as more people will see them, Keir Starmer said in a conference speech earlier this week.

His remarks follow a row about free speech after a teenager in Kent was arrested earlier this week for allegedly posting a photo of a burning poppy on Facebook, reported the Daily Telegraph.

The arrest of Linford House, 19, prompted civil liberty groups to campaign for free speech, claiming police were threatening the man's rights to express himself - even if what he posted was insensitive.

Mr Starmer's comments come before he publishes guidelines to cope with the new issues arising from expression on social networks, after meeting with police, publishers and internet companies.

Daniel Thomas, a footballer from Port Talbot, Wales, was arrested in the summer after a homophobic message was posted from his Twitter account about Team GB Olympic diver Tom Daley.

But the 28-year-old was never prosecuted, in part because he only had only around a hundred followers - and while the content was offensive it was not seen as a criminal offence, the DPP said.

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Mont. man challenges law banning offensive speech

The Montana Supreme Court could be left sorting out which profane words are OK to hurl at someone as it weighs the case of a man who argues a sexual slur he used against a public employee is constitutionally protected speech.

Randall Dugan of Belgrade used a sexual slur with a Gallatin County Victim Assistance Program worker during an October 2009 phone call, after the worker said she would not help him obtain a protection order against his children's mother, who was to be released from prison. He then hung up.

Dugan was convicted under the state's Privacy in Communications law, which prohibits the use of electronic communication to offend another person with obscene, lewd, or profane language.

Dugan's public defender Kristen Larson argued the state law is overly broad and violates free-speech rights in both the Montana and United States constitutions.

She argued that Dugan did not call with the intention to harass, but only used the slur after becoming exasperated with the call.

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People Targeted for Anti-Obama Speech

Several public school teachers are facing investigations for posting items on social networking sites that opposed President Obama and his agenda. Parents raised concerns regarding the teachers’ posts, prompting the school districts to launch investigations. Similarly, teens who posted anti-Obama messages on social networking sites are being targeted by a website called Jezebel, which not only reveals the identities of the students who made the posts, but reported the students to their schools.

In Rock Hill, South Carolina, a middle-school teacher was placed on leave after posting a message on her personal Facebook page about Obama and food stamps. “Congrats Obama,” she allegedly wrote. “As one of my students sang down the hallway, ‘We get to keep our food stamps’ … which I pay for because they can’t budget their money … and really, neither can you.”

According to a school spokesperson, several parents had called the school complaining about the teacher’s post. The teacher was forced to apologize.

“People outside the school system that saw her posting and some of them said they were offended by it,” spokesperson Elaine Baker said. “She used poor judgment according to our social media policy. Teachers are kept to higher standards.” Baker continued, “Sometimes you just can’t speak out publicly about what you’d personally like to say, about anything.” She told television station WSOC that teachers in general should “watch what they post on Facebook.”

Similarly, a high-school teacher in Columbus, Ohio, is under investigation for posting an anti-Obama message on his personal Facebook page.

“Congrats to those dependent on government, homosexuals, potheads, JAY-Z fans, non-Christians, non-taxpayers, illegals, communists, Muslims, planned murder clinics, enemies of America, Satan You WON,” the unidentified teacher wrote.

The Linden McKinley High School teacher is being investigated, though he has been permitted to remain in the classroom during the process.

Source

Methodists ain't what they used to be

As most readers here will probably be aware, there are some pretty wishy-washy Methodists in America these days.  Some branches could just as well be called the Church of Political Correctness.  They are just as bad in Australia, though they are no longer called Methodists there any more.  In 1977 they absorbed some congregations from other denominations and renamed themselves the Uniting church.

They have a theological seminary in Sydney called the UTC.  They claim that the UTC vibrates and that it believes in "a biblical witness open to ongoing scholarship and contemporary insight".  In other words, ditch that silly old Bible if it doesn't suit you.   Vibrate instead?

Canadian Andrew Fraser must be a masochist of sorts.  He is a retired law professor who was booted out of his teaching job at an Australian university because he dared to mention publicly the usual academic research findings about African IQ.  Nobody tried to argue with him on the facts.  They couldn't. They just abused him and said he was guilty of hate speech.  A summary of events here. 

And it appears that Andrew may also be religious.  He enrolled in a course at UTC!  But he did something intolerable there.  In one of his student essays, he defended the Bible and its teachings as the word of God!  Heresy! 

They couldn't really fail him over that so they withheld his marks for a year and then gave him the lowest possible pass mark.   He is challenging his assessment in front of a tribunal but I dont like his chances.  Saying that the Bible is the word of God is not allowed in today's Methodist church!  The Wesley brothers would be amazed.

Andrew gives detail of his fight with them here

Britain is awash with real crime so cowardly police arrest a kid for poor taste

A teenager who drunkenly posted a picture of himself burning a poppy on Facebook was in police custody last night.

Officers arrested Linford House after they received a complaint about the image that was published in the early hours of Remembrance Sunday.

When police called at his parents’ home that evening, the 19-year-old had already taken down the image on a friend’s advice..

His father Keith, 50, branded him ‘idiotic’ and said the whole family had been disappointed by his behaviour.  But he questioned whether it was right to hold the teenager.

‘He has been stupid but it’s totally out of order to arrest him over one complaint,’ he said.

House was arrested under the Malicious Communications Act, which carries a maximum sentence of six months in jail and/or a £5,000 fine.

The family from Aylesham near Canterbury has the support of civil liberties groups, which claim the arrest is an infringement of free speech.

Nick Pickles, from pressure group Big Brother Watch, said: ‘It is not illegal to offend people and, however idiotic or insensitive the picture may have been, it is certainly not worthy of arrest.

Convictions for internet abuse have more than doubled in the space of five years, alongside the enormous growth in social media sites.  The number has grown from 498 in 2007 to 1,286 in 2011

Source

See HERE for the disgusting real crime situation in Britain.

"Racist" fashion outfit

Small minds at work



The annual Victoria’s Secret fashion show.

Yes, the well-known supplier of women’s garments is under fire for an outfit inspired by Native American heritage, with some shouting cries of “racism.”

Model Karlie Kloss was seen in the fashion show last week with a massive headdress that reached the floor, turquoise jewelry, animal print clothing and tasseled heels.

“Use of the symbols, [culture], art, traditional dress of a culture you don’t care enough to learn about is EXPLOITATION,” one Huffington Post commenter vented.  Another added: “Not only is our Sacred Wabonnet being paraded by a bone thin model wearing a smile and [leopard] underwear, the Squash [Blossom] necklace she wears is Sacred to the Dine Navajo people… Genocide and assimilation continues. We are looking for a heartfelt public apology from VS.”

It wasn’t long before Victoria’s Secret did just that, not only apologizing but pulling the look from future broadcasting and advertisements.

Source

Government pressure to remove billboards against voter fraud is not “market forces”

Earlier, I wrote about illogical but widespread claims (found on Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and elsewhere) that billboards noting “Voter Fraud Is a Felony” were illegal voter intimidation or suppression, and explained why those billboards were constitutionally protected speech. (Putting aside the legalities, why would anyone even object to “suppressing” a fraudulent, illegal vote, such as a repeat voter who dilutes the votes of valid voters, or someone who steals their identity?)

In response, a commenter exulted in the fact that the billboard company, Clear Channel, took down the billboards under political pressure, writing that the billboards were “malicious messages” and defending the billboards’ removal by saying “that only market forces” were “brought to bear. Now, everyone knows that voting is a right, not a crime!”  But illegal voting can be a crime, such as the fraudulent votes cast by former Maryland Congressional candidate Wendy Rosen.  (She withdrew her candidacy after it was discovered that she had illegally voted in both Maryland and Florida). 

And the billboards were removed under pressure from government officials, like Cleveland City Councilwoman Phyllis Cleveland.  The wife of U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown, who also pressured the company to take down the billboards, has claimed that “Voter fraud is a myth” in Ohio, “just as it is everywhere else in the country.”  This claim on her part was obviously false.  But such claims are often made by people who know better.

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18 year old girls must not look sexy in Britain?

A TV advert showing a teenager posing provocatively in skimpy school uniform has prompted a barrage of complaints from parents.  Advertising watchdogs said the 30-second commercial for Kingsmill fruit and fibre bread had triggered claims that it ‘sexualises children’.

The advert shows a schoolgirl in the kitchen at breakfast. Her younger brother then relays a warning from their father: ‘If you think you’re going to school in that skirt, you can think again.’

The girl, played by actress Tara Berwin, responds by defiantly hitching up her mid-thigh length skirt to strike a provocative pose.

One outraged viewer wrote on a web forum: ‘Perhaps it’s because paedophilia is very much in the public consciousness at the moment but shouldn’t this be illegal? Nearly seeing up the skirt of  a minor?’

The advert featuring 18-year-old Ms Berwin and nine-year-old Lewis Hardaker is the latest in a £4 million campaign to promote Kingsmill bread.

But criticism of the advert, which was uploaded to YouTube, prompted a response from Ms Berwin. She said: ‘There’s no need to patronise me, I haven’t done anything wrong.’

A Kingsmill spokesman said: ‘It captures the playful interactions that are typical of day-to-day family life and demonstrates our understanding of modern families and their needs.’ 
He added that the advert was cleared for broadcast by the appropriate industry body.

Source

Video at link.  A mountain made out of a very small molehill, I think.