Saturday, June 29, 2013

Why I Envy Liberals Part II...free speech edition



 

In September of 2011 I wrote the above blog about political issues. In the context of events of the past couple of weeks I feel that a follow up is in order. This time it involves celebrities and free speech, more specifically, how some speech is freer than others.

Paula Deen is in many ways the quintessential southern woman, with her gawdy make-up, big hair and syrupy drawl. Watching her show is a hoot since she plays up so many stereotypes that non-southerners have of southerners. All of her recipes are slathered in “buddder” and her cackling laugh is enough to make even the most pretentious among us laugh or at least smile. Well, after it was discovered that Paula has used the “n” word on numerous occasions in her life, she lost everything faster than a New York minute, the judgment fairly dripping from members of the media who confessed shock and horror that a 60 something southern woman could possibly ever used such outrageous language. I couldn’t help but picture Captain Renault blowing his whistle and declaring to Rick that he was “shocked, SHOCKED to learn that there was gambling going on in here!” But such is life in the politically charged atmosphere of 2013 America…unless you happen to be a liberal celebrity like Alec Baldwin.

Baldwin’s career as an actor and political gadfly for all things Progressive has been littered with profane explosions, from degrading humiliations of his own daughter, infantile temper tantrums on airplanes, to sometimes violent exchanges with photographers, and now with the advent of Twitter, countless homophobic tirades and F-bomb laced eruptions. In our hyper sensitive world where any negative opinion expressed about homosexuality is greeted with almost unanimous indignation by the thought and speech police in the media, Alec Baldwin, by virtue of his lockstep liberal reliability always gets a pass. I see Mr. Baldwin pitching Capital One’s credit cards to me in commercial after commercial with the clever tagline, “What’s in your wallet?” Mr. Baldwin still makes movies and stars in the widely acclaimed TV show, 30Rock. His movies are not boycotted by the Rainbow Coalition and there aren’t streams of angry activists outside Rockefeller Center demanding that NBC cut ties with this unrepentant homophobe. Mr. Baldwin’s latest Twitter explosion was as follows:

“I’m gonna find you George Stark , you toxic little Queen and I’m gonna f*** you up…you lying little b****, I’m gonna f*** you up. I’d put my foot up your a** but I’m sure you would like it too much.”

How long would it take for any public conservative to lose everything if this sort of talk came from him or her? About as long as it took for Paula Deen to lose everything over a word she never said on her television show, only in private legal depositions and other private moments.

Liberalism is a “get out of jail free” card for hotheaded celebrities. Nice.

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