DON'T MENTION IT, COLBY HALL (UPDATED)

Take a close look at the Mediaite.com web page about Rush Limbaugh's chest pains as it was captured late night, December 31, 2009.



Here was my post to the thread minutes later:


This is the way the thread looked this morning:


It's called a "hat tip," Colby. I know, you just couldn't remember the phrase for it.

You're welcome.

UPDATE: Colby Hall responds on the thread:


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SOUNDTRACK FROM FLIGHT 253 - THE MOVIE

James Brown - "Hot Pants"

AC/DC - "TNT"

Bruce Springsteen - "I'm On Fire"

Buster Poindexter - "Hot Hot Hot"

Debbie Harry - "Backfired"

Queen - "Put Out The Fire"

Madonna - "Burning Up"

Tony Camillo's Bazuka - "Dynomite"

and the one you knew was coming...

Jerry Lee Lewis - "Great Balls of Fire"

DUTCH DIRECTORS JASPER SCHURINGA AND THEO VAN GOGH: THE ANGLE THE MSM WILL DELIBERATELY IGNORE

I was shocked to discover that the man who doused the flames begun by self-described Al-Qaeda operative Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in his apparent attempt to blow up Northwest Flight 253 over American soil was, of all people, a "Dutch video director" named Jasper Schuringa (at right in a Facebook photo). Why? Because it was another Dutch director whose untimely demise on November 2, 2004 set the current tone of cowardice in the art world toward criticism of Islamist extremism.

Director Theodor "Theo" Van Gogh, great-grandnephew of legendary painter Vincent Van Gogh, died on an Amsterdam sidewalk after being shot off of his bicycle, stabbed in the chest multiple times as he begged for his life, shot and stabbed again, and finally, having a knife plunged in his chest by his assailant.

What provoked the deadly attack? Van Gogh had directed and co-produced a 10-minute film titled Submission (which is "Islam" translated into English) from a script written by Dutch Member of Parliament Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a Somali-born woman who rejected Islam. The film portrayed a composite veiled Muslim woman (wearing a partially transparent burqa) speaking aloud the prayers of four females mistreated by faithful Muslim men in their lives in seeming accord with the Qu'ran. Passages that purportedly condone or authorize whipping as punishment for fornication, forced marriage, domestic violence and sexual molestation are written across parts of women's beaten bodies in the film.

As a prominent politician, Hirsi Ali was entitled to some sort of security. Civilian Van Gogh, on the other hand, received death threats after the film's release, but didn't take them seriously, dismissing the idea that he should employ a bodyguard. Obviously, he should have; the knife that you can see sticking out of Van Gogh's chest as he bled to death on the street was more than just the murderer's coup de grace, it attached a five-page document to him that included an open letter to Hirsi Ali. The message: You're next.

Who killed Van Gogh? A radical Muslim Dutch-Moroccan named Mohammed Bouyeri (below in mugshot), then 26, who was apprehended soon after he fled the scene of the crime. He was wearing a djelleba, a long traditional Muslim formal garment, and on his person, he had a copy of a poem anticipating his glorious death in a shootout, which, of course, didn't work out for him (sound familiar?)

Bouyeri refused to speak in his own defense at his trial because he didn't recognize the authority of the Dutch government. He did have this to say to Van Gogh's mother after he was sentenced: "I don’t feel your pain. I don’t have any sympathy for you. I can’t feel for you because I think you’re a non-believer." No regrets from Bouyeri either: "I take complete responsibility for my actions. I acted purely in the name of my religion ... I can assure you that one day, should I be set free, I would do exactly the same, exactly the same." He was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole, the most severe sentence the Netherlands could have given him.

The brutal murder of Van Gogh and the deadly Islamist violence that targeted Denmark and Danish interests after the publication of political cartoons satirizing the prophet Mohammed have served to muzzle artists around the world who pride themselves on being bravely acerbic on the topic of religious fanaticism. Their generally-agreed upon standards of artistic integrity ought to have them shining a light and holding a magnifying glass over the terrorism, oppression, and violent abuses against women radical Islam tolerates. Instead, with the image of Van Gogh's corpse sprawled on a downtown Amsterdam street fresh in their minds as if yesterday (if their memories of the fatwa against novelist Salman Rushdie were forgotten), they cower and surrender the principles they want you to believe they value more than anything.

Producers and directors' fear of reprisals for treating Muslim terrorists the way they regularly target (and often slander) Christians and Jews has made itself manifest in many ways. Just a sample: The switch of the nuke-wielding Palestinian terrorists of Tom Clancy's novel The Sum of All Fears to neo-Nazis in the film version; Clancy protege Vince Flynn revealing that none of his best-selling spy novels had yet been turned into movies because he demanded that the terrorist villains remain Arab fanatics and not -- in one change proposed by a studio executive -- Filipinos (not making it up, folks); Viacom's Comedy Central cable channel allowing the animators of South Park to splatter an image of Jesus Christ in excrement, but censoring an image of Mohammed simply standing in a doorway (more on that here and here); director Roland Emmerich's admission that while St. Peter's Basilica and the massive Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro were OK to CGI-obliterate in his latest end-of-the-world flick 2012, he pulled his punch when it came to the Grand Mosque in Saudi Arabia.

Call it serendipity, call it synchronicity, call it karma, call it divine intervention, call it what you want. That one Dutch film director should be killed by a Muslim terrorist while another Dutch film director possibly saved at least hundreds of lives from a Muslim terrorist is a remarkable coincidence. And one that you will likely read about only in places like mine, an unremarkable blog, because the mainstream media is also caught up in the same political-correctness game as the so-called art world.

THE KEVIN GOTKIN PROBLEM: Mediaite.com Columnist Plays The "You Really Hate Me!" Game

NOTE: The following is my reaction to this editorial from Mediaite.com's Kevin Gotkin, who takes on the Wall Street Journal's Peggy Noonan after she wrote this December 19, 2009 column titled "The Adam Lambert Problem" regarding the controversy over the shocking performance by the 2009 American Idol runner-up on ABC-TV's live broadcast of the 2009 American Music Awards.

Mr. Gotkin:

Before reading your column, I read the Peggy Noonan piece at your link. Then I returned and finished reading your reaction, and noted this comment:

This is [a] story of poor journalism.

I agree wholeheartedly. But the poor journalism is not Noonan's, it's yours. (Not that this is new to Mediaite).

First of all, the illustration you chose to accompany your editorial would be fitting if you were taking on Rev. Pat Robertson, Dr. James Dobson, or Phyllis Schafly, whose objections to the expanding influence of the gay rights movement are deeply based in religious belief. Peggy Noonan is not of that sandwich-board ilk, and it's dishonest of you (or the person who chose that image) to imply that she is somehow.

Then, you employ the deceitful device used increasingly by professional opinionators left and right: “code language.” That is, to make the words of someone with whom you disagree seem more objectionable to the uninformed by suggesting the reader shouldn't believe the words that were actually spoken. No, readers should ignore the actual meaning of words, and instead embrace your perception of what their darker inner thoughts must be.

You wrote, “Noonan’s problem is that she hinges on homophobia.” Then, after quoting a paragraph in which Noonan almost apologizes for making Lambert's perverted display the topic of a column (“I don't mean to make too much of it”) you wrote:

“Translation from poorly codified indiscretion: Gay people are ruining America.”

Those are just your warm-up pitches, as you continue:

I can’t ignore disturbing shorthand homophobia. It’s a not-so-subtle way of talking that allows people of like minds to say just about everything except the offensive things they actually want to say.

Of course, Kevin, it never seem to occur to people like you that perhaps the reason why they don't say “the offensive things” is because they actually don't want to say them.

This is eerily reminiscent of another writer who hears things that weren't actually said – The New York Times' Maureen Dowd, who made a fool of herself when she wrote that “Fair or not,” she “heard” Congressman Joe Wilson silently call President Obama “boy” in his “You lie!” outburst in Obama's health care speech. Dowd can be found on that Pulitzer Prize list you linked, and her continued presence on it devalues its prestige.

This is also the main weapon used by the likes of Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, and other race hustlers (let me interject at this point that I am a black man); they are cocked and ready to accuse people of bias or bigotry without a shred of evidence, sometimes demanding a ransom of millions (in “donations”) to remove the tar they've slathered on their targets.

All such arguments are predicated on the idea that one knows what other people are really thinking if they don't accept (or openly reject) your values. Joe Wilson calls Obama a liar (accurately)? He's a white guy from South Carolina, so he's a bigot – he just doesn't say “boy” out loud. A cartoonist draws up a gag about a mad chimpanzee being the author of the stimulus bill? Obviously, the chimp represents Obama, even though Obama didn't write the bill, and the cartoonist said that wasn't his intent at all. Carrie Prejean doesn't think same-sex marriage should be instituted into law, so that must mean that she secretly despised the gay men that helped her win Miss California USA.

See, there's so much you can learn about people's true motives and feelings by what they don't say. Right?

Your argument against Noonan falls apart like a Jenga puzzle when you start defending gay values. I'm not saying that gays don't have values, I'm saying that in her piece Noonan never accused gays of not having them. Once again, that was your perception of Noonan, fair or not. She was specifically focused on the deliberately provocative performance by Lambert ("faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash”) and the fact that it all took place on broadcast – that is to say “free” -- television. As Noonan wrote well before she specifically addressed Lambert:

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

You responded by suggesting this was evidence of Noonan's "poor journalism" because of her shaky "reasoning," and that:

Without distrust for the “alternative” lifestyle Adam Lambert now represents, Noonan’s piece comes across as aloof and out of touch. But with it, she rallies the base. Proof? That fact that she didn’t write this article after the Britney and Madonna kiss.

If you knew as much about Peggy Noonan as I do, you would know that she's not a big fan of "rallying the base" -- she did just the opposite a year ago, joining a chorus of urban intellectual conservatives in extolling the potential of Barack Obama to be a great centrist Chief Executive. I knew that wouldn't happen.

I never went to J-school, (I'm presuming that you did, Kevin -- maybe I'm wrong) but I always try to check my facts. Sometimes I fall short, and write something that is technically inaccurate, but I always try to get the big honking hippopotamus facts right. Such as the fact that the Britney-Madonna liplock was NOT on broadcast television, it was ... on cable, specifically the 2003 MTV Video Music Awards.

Another huge error of yours was linking a 1993 Andrew Sullivan NYT editorial about gays serving in the armed services openly as an example of "Gay Values, Truly Conservative." I won't go into the salacious details of Mr. Sullivan's values in practice (all of you who have the stomach for that can Google his name with the phrase "milky loads" or "power glutes"), but I wouldn't cite a man obsessed with Sarah Palin's uterus as a good way to get people OVER homophobia.

But I guess such dead-end rhetorical devices are a part of what you call "journalism that speaks through ingenuity instead of ignorance..." Is that what you believe you've accomplished here, Mr. Gotkin, this collection of prejudicial, presumptive, stereotypical assertions based in a gelatinous foundation? You are mistaken.