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Y'know, it's a shame I hadn't found this thread earlier. I happen to live in central Wisconsin, which is a both a fairly conservative area and fairly religious area. This leads to a lot of overlap of conservative and religious radio programs, which are mostly focused on purely theological grounds, so they tend to be rather inoffensive unless you have strongly-held religious views. However, two programs in particular, Crosstalk and The Janet Mefferd Show are practically shills for the Republican line. I listen to them often, because I enjoy being angry. Crosstalk, which broadcasts on the national VCY network from Milwaukee, is known mostly for being hosted by crotchety old men who yearn for it to be the 1950's again. They have a strong relationship with WND, formerly WorldNetDaily, which I'm sure has been mentioned in this thread before. Often, WND will "report" on something, Crosstalk will talk about "a shocking news story over at WND" as if it were factual, and the daily guest will either be the WND reporter themself or an "expert" that says exactly what the hosts want to hear. As such, they were very vocal during the height of the Birther movement, and although they've calmed down about it, you'll still see them reporting on any "new development in Obama's legitimacy" with bated breath. In fact, despite nominally being a Christian show, the actual subject of theology is barely brought up in more than a passing fashion - on their website, only 51 of their past shows are tagged "Christianity", while 114 are tagged "Current Events" and 188 are tagged "Government". Add a strange obsession with/hatred of homosexuality and a smattering of "the government is going to take away our guns and imprison us" conspiracy theories and you have Crosstalk. Janet Mefferd, on the other hand, is much more vocal in her advocacy of Christianity - an ultra-orthodox, extremely conservative version of Christianity, mind you - but that doesn't mean she's any less political. After every commercial break in her show, which runs three hour-long episodes daily, she's described as "radio's fresh, insightful voice", but her theology resembles something out of a Nathaniel Hawthorne story and her social views are somewhere to the right of Rush Limbaugh. She usually devotes at least one episode daily to purely-religious matters, and the other two have more to do with current events. This usually takes the form of Janet railing on "the culture", saying that the Church should completely disassociate itself from secular culture one minute, and whining that secular culture isn't doing exactly what the Church says the next. She has obvious contempt for liberals in any form, be it political or theological, and although she's able to mask it as simple diagreement most days, she has a tendency to melt down whenever liberals make any actual political progress. Her spiteful, jealous rage on her first post-election program this year was amazing to behold. She also has a very cozy relationship with many hate groups, hosting people like Peter Labarbera and Pamela Gellar on a regular basis. Also, just to add to the awful, she was a very vocal supporter of Todd Akin after he made his "legitimate rape" comments, agreeing with him and at one point even accepting funds from his re-election campaign. I'm mostly describing them just because I want to make sure it's okay to talk about Christian media in this thread - I listen to these shows often, not to be all r/atheist, but because their social views are so incredibly backwards. They have a penchant for saying horrible, awful things, and inviting horrible, awful people on their shows. I think this thread could be a good place to dump some of their more heinous sayings, because there are a LOT of them, but I wanna make sure that the religious angle doesn't make it too iffy before doing so - I'd keep it in the realm of the political, to be sure. tl;dr: yo Religious Right shows say some crazy political poo poo too, is it alright to talk about here or would it lead to too many derails 
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Dec 18, 2012 23:09
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Neremworld posted:I haven't been able to listen to Janet Mefferd in a long time but you're pretty much absolutely correct. She loves hosting really crazy people, though sometimes she'll host liberals and quietly disagree with everything (but only when she doesn't want to hurt their feelings). She is actually a local for me who only went national in the past couple of years. I do have a funny story of how she found a post I once did that was very critical of her and she talked about it on the air and I called her and she was weirdly sweet to me, which is probably where she differs from most of the people with terrible opinions. Though she may have gotten harsher since I heard her last. Also on the station she originates from is Xseratives Speak, which is more or less about GenX conservatives. The host is a black guy who is still really... well, sometimes I don't think he gets why people fight for civil rights. He unironically has the Conservative knockoff of the ACLU commercials all around his show (and they ALSO have a show on the same station). Ha, yeah, Janet's gotten a lot more vicious and one-sided over the past few years. The only time I can remember her interviewing anyone even remotely liberal over the past few years is when she had an atheist come on to explain that an article he wrote on patheos or some other religion blog did not, in fact, call for the execution of all Christians. More recently, she got into a shouting match with Alan Chambers, president of Exodus International over his outrageous claim that homosexuals can be Christian and maybe they're not all just hell-bound disease machines. Then, after Chambers poo poo-talked her on Facebook after the interview, she hosted a bunch of Exodus members who demanded that Chambers step down, and devoted a lot of airtime to whining about how she was being unfairly attacked and how Alan Chambers was a meanie. She does not take being challenged well. In reality, most of the time, she just nods and "mhmm"'s through most of her interviews, and besides giving an uncontested platform to crazy right-wingers, she doesn't strike you as overly crazy herself. Once the interviews are over and she gets into "Well here's what I think" mode, though... 
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Dec 19, 2012 02:15
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fake edit: ^^^Oh hey, building on that concept... Well, you can tell WorldNetDaily is getting desperate. After seeming to finally give up on their plan to crash the electoral college to keep Obama out of office, they have now posted an open letter to Chief Justice Roberts saying that if he swears in Obama, he's violating the Constitution and will be impeached. quote:In addition to the nationality of Mr. Obama Sr. listed on Barack Obama’s birth certificate, we know that Obama Sr. was not an American citizen because of correspondence surrounding his stay in this country. quote:Given the gravity of this situation, we therefore urge you to take the honorable course of action and refuse to administer the oath of office to Mr. Obama. And yes, this will also require you to explain to the nation in the clearest possible terms why you have been compelled to take this most extraordinary action. I mean, I hate picking on WND because it's essentially the estranged e-mail forwarding racist uncle of the news media, but remember, Rick Santorum is now an official contributor to the site. They have an audience. And since they're essentially the last bastion of Birther thought left, it's interesting to see how they implode.
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Jan 3, 2013 21:32
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Cordyceps Headache posted:I don't think many people realize what the root word of "gypped" is. Which isn't really an excuse, but I've heard it used by kids who probably didn't know what "gypsies" meant. Yeah, I'm only in my mid-twenties and I recall a few daytime cartoons from when I was little using "gypped". I'd wager that the vast majority of American kids that even use the term nowadays don't realize that it's pejorative. It's just a term that we picked up from hearing the adults using it.
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May 26, 2013 01:06
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pentyne posted:Most people who support the FRC honestly believe all gays are potential pedophiles. It's one of the rallying points of the religious socially conservatives. Never mind the facts that the vast majority of child sexual abuse comes from men living heterosexual lifestyles who target young relatives or friends' children. Well, it's not even specifically pedophilia; most of the anti-gay talking points that make the rounds only make sense if you view it from their worldview that LGBT people are inherently predatory in nature. Take, for example, the reaction to the latest report on sexual assaults in the military. Groups like the FRC and AFA explicitly blame the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell on the rise in sexual assaults in the military, which doesn't make sense even on its face - unless you already believe that gays are just more likely to rape people. Why? Well, because they're gay, that's what they do. The whole "gays force themselves upon others constantly" meme is steadily reinforced in right-wing media in both blatant and subtle ways. Any pro-LGBT legislation isn't passed, it's "shoved down our throats". Any LGBT-inclusive policies in schools are "indoctrinating our kids" into thinking that being gay is okay, which we can't have. Any media coverage of someone coming out of the closet is hero worship and over-celebratory, now can we get back to the actual news? Why did he even come out of the closet, anyway? Shut up, we don't care!
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Jun 25, 2013 18:37
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FuzzySkinner posted:Good on Gutfield for saying such a thing. I listened to the Janet Parshall show yesterday on my way back from work, and what struck me was the venom she had for the person who requested the police records. Janet's well-trained, super-positive-and-happy voice took on a hard edge whenever the subject turned to that "someone that decided to dig this up, years after the fact." And it got me thinking. It's easy to see the Duggar situation and think "Oh, Christian and right-wing media is just playing defensive because one of their poster families got exposed for being lovely people, this is all just for PR." And, to a certain extent, that's true. For Fox News, it does mainly boil down to a cynical "We've gotta salvage this somehow, the Duggars are in too deep with us". But the loudest, most-adamant defense of Josh Duggar comes from Evangelical circles, and it seems to be quite genuine. I think that's because, for them, this is bigger than just the Duggars. Their whole worldview is under attack. It's not really talked about much in secular spheres, but the Evangelical practice of "keeping things in the family/church" is precisely what led to this whole situation. If you're the sort of Evangelical that truly believes that you answer directly to God, and that the government should be subservient to Him, then to you, the Duggar's actions make total sense. Why would you get the police involved? Church elders have seen this all before, they know how to handle it. Sometimes, all it takes is a "stern talking-to" to get your kid back on the right track. At the end of the day, Josh stopped molesting, so it totally worked, and it was kept within the family and church, like It's not that they're defending Josh Duggar just because he's a semi-famous Evangelical. They're defending him because he represents their system of self-governance, in their minds, working how it should. And that's why Parshall got so angry at the person who filed the FOIA request for the documents. It's not just that they were the one who shoved the Duggars into the spotlight. They were the one that shoved the entire Evangelical worldview into the spotlight, and the fact that it and the Duggars are getting so roundly criticized means that the FOIA request may as well have been from Satan himself.
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Jun 6, 2015 17:50
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  This gross man-baby apparently has the authority to determine when you should and should not use the n word. Also, Fox News had on Deneen Borelli, a black woman, who accused Obama of "dragging in the gutter-speak of rap music" and referred to him repeatedly as "rapper-in-chief". Getting paid lots and lots of money for saying things does weird things to people.
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Jun 22, 2015 21:35
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I think by the time anyone makes up their mind to be a professional One Of The Good Ones, their conscience is already long dead.
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Jun 22, 2015 21:42
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We've seen Beck go through this cycle again and again, though. He comes out with a good, thoughtful opinion. Then he invites people on his show to talk about it. Then his opinion starts to shift with each passing guest, and now he's adamantly against what he stood for earlier. All it took was a few interviews with David Barton and Rick Santorum to get him from "eh, let gays get married, who cares?" to "We must fight the black-robed tyrants at all cost! The gays are burning our country to the ground!" As soon as Roy Moore comes on his program and says "Well, really, it's not about racism, it's about freedom", expect him to completely flip the script.
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Jun 22, 2015 22:24
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:Ever wonder if Matt Walsh approves execution of gays? I've actually seen a few fundamentalist Christians defend Swanson (the pastor) because he says in that speech that the American government shouldn't be executing gay people now. To be fair, he does say that. However, they leave out the part immediately afterwards, where he says that the American government should be executing gay people only after giving them time to repent. Totally fair! Although this is Matt Walsh we're talking about, odds are he never even watched the video and is just in knee-jerk "Christians not bad, Christians good!" mode.
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Mar 14, 2016 17:48
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FuzzySkinner posted:Anyways. I don't know what the hell happened to Beck to drag him more and more down into the depths of insanity. I recall when I first was introduced to him? He was like a diet Rush Limbaugh. He used to make jokes, and was very self-deprecating. Think more along the lines of a morning zoo dj meets say...Red Eye/Greg Gutfield type. I dunno, I think Glenn Beck's descent into actual madness happened fairly recently. He got an inflated ego during his later Fox News years, and it certainly didn't get any better once he surrounded himself with yes-men after starting his own "network". But he didn't start his whole "I am an actual modern-day prophet, God is speaking to me directly" schtick until about a year or two ago. (EDIT: Or, at least, he didn't make that his CENTRAL schtick until then. He's always been that sort of religious sort of loopy, but he didn't set himself specifically as a Mouthpiece for God.) His political rhetoric hasn't changed - it's still "progressives evil, Good Old Fashioned Values good" - but now he's switching between hysterical claims of "God has blessed this nation with his Holy Constitution and we can accomplish anything" and hysterical claims of "God has cursed this nation and we are doomed (please buy gold)" every other week. It really does seem like he goes through manic and depressive episodes. I think his current "Ted Cruz is like thiiiis close to being the Second Coming" line of thought is due to him being unable to reconcile that it's Republicans and not Democrats that are going to give the nomination to an actual fascist. The party he's been helping for the past 10 years is raising up the boogeyman he's been warning us about all this time, and the Good Old Fashioned People he's attempting to appeal to are the ones that are voting for him. Not only is his worldview in peril here, but he feels guilt in his role in raising Trump to the forefront. So now he's desperately clinging to God's Candidate in an attempt for absolution. Crunch Buttsteak fucked around with this message at 17:29 on Mar 26, 2016 |
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Mar 26, 2016 17:22
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The fact that Christianity is splintering into a bajillion denominations and constantly pointing at everybody else and saying "YOU'RE GOING TO HELL AND GOD HATES YOU!" is a major component of why it's on the decline in America. I think it's pretty solid worldwide but the madness going on in America is driving people out of Christianity as a whole. The people get into those splinter denominations join them because that hate and bile appeals to them, though. There are tons of tiny Independent Baptist congregations dotting the landscape, operating out of strip malls, that have made "this individual congregation are the only people who are saved, and we need to scream at everyone else that they're going to hell" their central identity. They operate exactly like the Westboro Baptist Church, but since they don't use the word "fags" on their signs, people just think they're harmless wackos, as opposed to deeply sociopathic people perverting religion to their own end. It's how people like Steven Anderson manage to attract anyone to join their congregations. The thing drawing people in isn't "Let's worship Jesus" or "Bake sale after service", it's "Hey, gently caress those people, am I right?!" I mean, sure, the vast majority of Christians are horrified by that kind of thing, but "Christian Sociopaths" are totally a thing in America. Fred Phelps wasn't the only one.
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Mar 28, 2016 23:21
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Dapper_Swindler posted:on a different religious topic. this always bothered me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvYQh5xwO4I are these people especially the john goodman looking fucker just out right lying or bullshitting each other. I feel like all these evangelicals constantly play a game of "the emperor has no clothes", all if them believe each others increasingly insane bullshit, because if they dont it means god doesnt exist or that everything in their faith is a lie. I mean Goodman is talking about how he was part of a massive satanic cult that he was central role of and he rebuked Shiva goddess/god of death who appeared before him. clearly he made that up. but why. is it for money, is it because he is a jaded rear end in a top hat who wants to play rubes. Yeah, there's an entire industry in America that's essentially "make crazy bullshit up and connect it vaguely to Jesus" and it can make bank. This appears to be a local channel, but check out Sid Roth's "It's Supernatural" some time if you feel like being angry. The guy has made an entire career from sitting across from someone making ridiculous, Jesus-y supernatural claims, expressing amazement with zero skepticism whatsoever, and then shilling for both that person's book and his company's products, usually with the promise of "blessings" if you buy/donate a large amount. My favorite was the guy who claimed that "the song of quantum angels infiltrates the time dimension" in order to make trips go by way faster for True Believers (and you can learn how to say special prayers to them for only $29.99! Drive from New York to L.A. in only 3 hours!). Or the guy saying that if you say his special prayers (a book of which is only 49.99!), you will be physically transported to heaven, where God himself will absolve you of your sins, and get you out of any legal trouble here on the physical plane. It's all about preying on superstitious people, and Christians are not exempt from being superstitious. There's a big difference between someone with a grounded, educated faith, and someone who thinks that if you pray special prayers, Jesus will swoop in and heal your cavities. If you can convince that second group that you have any sort of special knowledge, and it has something to do with the familiar trappings of Christianity, you can get a shitload of money from them, especially if they're desperate or in trouble and are looking for a way out. Assuming you don't have a conscience, of course. And, to be fair, it's not just Christians who do this - hell, look at all of the "psychics" who manage to trick people out of millions - but televangelists like this are way more common than you'd think, and American Christianity as a whole either doesn't notice or doesn't care.
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Apr 9, 2016 21:35
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Drakhoran posted:Evangelicals aren't that small a group and they believe dramatic conversion stories are good at converting other unbelievers. Thus having a dramatic conversion story to tell can earn you prestige and attention within the evangelical community. If you're sufficiently good at telling said story you can even make quite a bit of money doing so. There are a few "ex-terrorists" running around the Evangelical talk show circuit, and they are the absolute worst people imaginable. All of them are faking it, of course, but their conversion stories are so scary and dramatic that none of their fat, white, scared audience even thinks about questioning them. They're the main source of the "every Muslim wants you dead, they're gonna take over America and kill us all" meme that's so popular in Evangelical circles nowadays. They're a relatively new phenomenon, they replaced the previous "ex-satanists" from the 80's and 90's. Never underestimate the Evangelical ability to whip up fear for political gain by lying their asses off.
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Apr 9, 2016 22:00
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Crowsbeak posted:I for some light reading read the "ex-satanist" stories. I cannot help but think those people had some screwed up fetishes. Eh, the Satanic Panic of the 80's and 90's was a clusterfuck of both secular and religious paranoia. When even state-run psychological organizations were convinced that millions of Satanists were controlling day care centers across America and abusing Our Children, it's hard to lay the blame completely on the people who decided to cynically take advantage of the moral panic. I mean, they're still assholes, but they're like the "ex-terrorists" of today - they realized that there's money to be made taking advantage of a society's fears, and confirming them through telling really scary stories to an already-terrified populace. The Satanic Panic is a super interesting subject that nobody really talks about anymore, but it's a little outside of the scope of this thread. If you have an afternoon to kill, it's fun to read up on, though!
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Apr 9, 2016 23:28
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Holy poo poo, I'm listening to conservative radio stations today, and they are flipping the gently caress out over the trans-inclusive order. Like, even the ones who try to put up an air of civility are literally yelling about how the perverts are coming for Our Precious Children, and the rapes this will undoubtedly cause will all be Obama's fault. Todd Starnes is a stubbed toe away from saying "Grab your guns, patriots, the time has finally come".
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May 13, 2016 20:35
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FuzzySkinner posted:I'm just kind of amazed how these people frame their narratives. Yeah, the Religious Right has been beating the "we are a disorganized grassroots that needs to rise up together if we want to rule" drum since the 90's. I think it's mostly their way of reconciling the fact that Christian Nationalists totally blew the shot they had in the 80's. Back then, they had a lot more public support, a much more sympathetic (or, at least, cooperative) president, the boogeyman of communism, and a full-blown anti-Satanism moral panic. And they STILL didn't get what they wanted. So, they kind of reacted like how modern Republicans react when their candidates lose elections. It's not that their goals and ideals alienated the American public; no, it was just that there weren't enough of them organized and voting. Christian Reconstruction cannot fail, it can only BE failed. Plus, the "we're the scrappy underdog up against the big bad Homosexual Steamroller" narrative is a great way to get scared fat asses into pews, and make them feel like heroes for donating to Liberty Counsel.
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May 20, 2016 14:37
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Part of it is that they believe the apocalypse is coming and America tolerating the gays is going to make it come faster. This is what I think people fail to realize about them and why this trans-bashing bathroom thing makes a lot of sense when you actually get hardcore fundies. It'll be really interesting to see how even that narrative is going to change as America keeps on goin' on. Ever since the Obergefell decision, the far-right fundamentalists have been screaming that gays getting married is a slap in the face to God, and it proves that we're actively abandoning him. So, God is giving the entire nation over to judgment, and his "hand of protection" isn't going to save us anymore, and we're at the verge of collapsing, and Jesus is going to come and save all of the faithful from the Tribulation, any minute now you guys Meanwhile, America has just kinda been doing what it has always been doing. The only major terrorist attacks have been on foreign soil, our economy's continuing to improve, and even with the scary election stuff that's happening, most Fundamentalist Christians are perfectly willing to pull the lever for Trump. It's only a matter of time before the whole "pray for our country, we're close to the end" meme will go away again, the question is just how long it's going to last. My only fear is that if, heaven forbid, another major terrorist attack or natural disaster hits America, there are going to be Fundamentalists who try to punish sexual minority groups for making God abandon us. The Religious Right has turned LGBT individuals into the ultimate scapegoat, so the moment anything bad happens on a national scale, we're going to get blamed for it. That happened after 9/11 too, but somehow the anti-gay and anti-trans narratives are even more heated than they were back then, at least within the Christian Right echo chamber.
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May 20, 2016 19:51
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nachos posted:doesn't this already happen? Yes, but it hasn't been the worst case scenario. Steven Anderson has yet to become a gay-hunting warlord.
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May 20, 2016 20:29
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Seeing how upset some people are getting about the very concept of Captain America having a boyfriend, I think a lot of them are just assuming this is the standard "PC bullshit" that's coming out of nowhere. Not only do they miss the possible subtext in the movies themselves, they have no idea just how much gay fanfiction and fanart there is out there, and how eagerly it's consumed by a whole lot of people. One of the (admittedly, many) reasons why the Marvel movies have been such a success is because it appeals to the shipper demographic. It's not too highly visible, outside of some "did you know that some people are drawing your character kissing this other character?!" segments in late night talk shows, but it's a bigger group of people than one would expect. I just want to sit Crowder down in front of archiveofourown and watch him desperately try to reconcile it all. Not only do a lot of people, mostly women, on the internet think a big tough manly American icon might be gay, they've been doing it for years before the movies even came out. Speaking of Crowder, even though the vast majority of people using his dumb hashtag are mocking him through it, he's still so giddy about it trending that he doesn't care. gently caress that guy.
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May 25, 2016 14:13
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WoodrowSkillson posted:weirdos jerking it to captain america banging bucky are not a significant part of the avengers success. You'd be surprised. Also it's mostly women who are seeking an emotional payoff, instead of gross dudes who need something to jack it to. I'm not saying that the fandom culture is the sole reason that Marvel movies are a success, that would be dumb. My point is that it's not insignificant. The whole "Give Captain America a boyfriend" idea started in the fandom culture, and given that now it's apparently A Thing on Twitter, you can't just say that it's just a tiny group of weirdos that don't do anything. It's like the ensuring popularity of Star Trek. It's mostly due to the quality of the show, yeah, but also in the background there were a LOT of people writing about Spock and Kirk smooching, even back in the day.
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May 25, 2016 15:15
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WoodrowSkillson posted:the number of people who only saw the avengers because they want to see captain america loving another character, who would not have seen the movie otherwise, is vanishingly small I think you have a distorted view of what fandom culture entails, and would like to elaborate my point more, but eh I'll just stop this derail here My initial "I want to force Steven Crowder to look at gay porn" point has been lost
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May 25, 2016 15:28
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WoodrowSkillson posted:"fandom culture" Hey man, it's an actual thing. I wrote a few papers on it in college. Blame academia before throwing lovely smug quotes around it. Aesop Poprock posted:Don't worry. I'm pretty sure Steven Crowder looks at gay porn Nah, he seems like the type of dude that solely watches lesbian porn, just because the mere glance of another man's penis causes an internal crisis.
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May 25, 2016 15:53
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Yesterday, I flicked on my car radio and managed to find my way to Sean Hannity's show. He was in pure smug douchebag mode, like always, but he was interviewing a bunch of women that had accused Bill Clinton of sexual assault in the 90's. "Hillary says that rape victims deserve to be believed... unless they're accusing her husband, that is  "Now, I was way too young when these accusations were coming out to really pay attention to them, and they pretty much vanished as soon as Republicans were able to nail Clinton with the Lewinsky blowjob. Was there any validity to the accusations, or was it the Benghazi of the 90's? It's just hard to find much information about them without it being completely politicized. While I do believe that rape victims should be believed, their stories made Clinton out to be some sort of cartoon villain. One of them claimed that the Clinton political machine is still having her gang-stalked, and kidnapped her cat recently just for revenge. It stunk of a constructed story aimed at taking down Clinton, not actual testimony.
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May 30, 2016 16:52
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i am the bird posted:I'd like to know what they mean by "I used to support" LGBT causes. You know, the cause of perverts and abominations. It's like the people who say "Hey, I'm not a racist, but black people have been really loud and angry recently, am I right?". They're just saying what they have always thought, but frame it in such a way so that they have "support" instead of just being a flat statement of prejudice.
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May 31, 2016 15:25
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Perestroika posted:It's funny how at the beginning of the whole trans debate, one of the most common conservative arguments was along the lines of "Why should we need to change our laws for such a tiny minority? There are only a handful of them around in the first place!". Yet now there are apparently roving packs of them going around in every city, and you can't even go to a single public bathroom without stumbling over at least three transpeople in the process. It's interesting how moral panics always end up with conservatives jumping at shadows like this. It always starts out with The Other being a small, sinister, powerful group, but ends up with The Other being around every corner. Like during the Satanic Panic, initially it was "oh no, there's a small, elite group of Satan worshippers who are abusing our kids", and it ended up growing and growing throughout the 80's until there was a card-carrying Satanic coven operating in secret on every street in America. Based on no evidence, of course. It's like the echo chambers that these people listen to harp on the same "scary" minority groups so much, they start to get a distorted view of reality. It's how people can say that the Muslim Hordes are taking over America with a completely straight face. It sort of becomes like a manic delusion at some point. Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:https://twitter.com/mattwalshblog/status/738515686591463424 "And then everyone around us clapped"
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Jun 3, 2016 17:03
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Dapper_Swindler posted:from what i remeber. each of the cases usually started because one of the parents or guardians had an diagnosed mental illness like schizophrenia and started claiming the the places were run by satanists or whatever. then the evangelicals would take advantage of the situation. Really, the Satanic Panic is so interesting just because it arose from such a shitstorm of causes, both religious and secular. There was a big "always believe the children no matter what they say" push in psychology at the time, and the government was giving out grant money to help victims of abuse. It was all good-intentioned, but it started to incentivize therapists to focus more on abuse victims rather than people needing other kinds of therapy, since they got way more money for it. Also, the idea of "repressed memories" and hypnotherapy was getting big, so even if kids weren't SAYING they were abused... well, maybe therapists could, y'know, MILDLY SUGGEST that something actually happened to them. Those ideas eventually collided with the burgeoning "Satanic conspiracy" theories of Warnke and other evangelicals. That's why children's claims of being flushed down toilets and being dressed as pumpkins while watching babies getting eaten were taken completely at face value, and why kids were badgered into giving false confessions. The ideas of "kids never lie, and even of they said nothing happened, they could just be repressing it" were already there. Then the Evangelical community came along and exploited the hell out of it. Not that it was PURELY Evangelicals, of course. I had a friend in high school whose mom wouldn't let him play DnD with me because she watched a scary 20/20 episode once.
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Jun 3, 2016 19:26
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:https://twitter.com/frcdc/status/747059485517160449 Hahaha, go gently caress yourself Tony Perkins. You barely even have any arguments that anybody listens to anymore besides "b-b-but they're being mean to us!" The fact that this shitstain of a human being is still invited on TV to represent Christianity is baffling to me. I can only take solace in the fact that he has watched his life's work be completely overridden.
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Jun 26, 2016 22:53
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So, Breitbart discovered a guy named Theodore Shoebat this week. Theodore's father, Walid Shoebat, was semi-famous in conservative Evangelical circles, for claiming he was an "ex-Muslim, ex-terrorist" who converted to Christianity and now warns us all of the horrible threat that all Muslim citizens are. His story is full of holes and reeks of bullshit every step of the way, of course, but his son Theodore is the main focus here. Theodore Shoebat is god damned crazy, declaring himself a "proud Christian fascist", and being so extremely anti-gay that he advocates for a literal Inquisition to kill everyone who isn't straight. He also claims that Jesus would have personally beaten gay people to death with His own hands. Although LGBT people are usually the target of his unhinged rants, he advocates killing pretty much anyone who doesn't agree with his hard-line, barbaric twist on Catholicism, including people who listen to rock music, anti-gay activists who don't hate the gays as much as he does, and people who work at Chik-Fil-A. Theodore's loud Christian Supremacist views, and his father's defense of them, have gotten Walid mostly blacklisted by Evangelical circles nowadays. Still, even though his days in the limelight are over, Walid Shoebat was a moderately big name in the "clickbait" side of Evangelical radio - "What this ex-terrorist has to say will shock you! Protect your family from the jihadi hordes with one weird trick!" So, what happened for Breitbart to suddenly give the Shoebats attention? Well, Theodore attacked their pet homosexual, Milo Yiannopoulos, unsurprisingly saying he should be killed. Surely, the article about it would mention his family's extremist views, his father's former fame, and how his warped version of Catholic fascism is leading him to say things like this, right? Right?  Oh god drat it. The article only mentions his Christianity in passing, saying that he "now considers himself a Christian", he was "raised by a Muslim-Palestinian family". The comment section proves that their plan worked - most comments assume that Theodore Shoebat is a Muslim, and the few posters trying to correct people are usually shouted down. I've been following the Religious Right as a hobby/means of low-level self-harm for years now, and seeing this guy suddenly being used as an anti-Islamic weapon in the right-wing media's attempt to pit gays versus Muslims legitimately sickens me. This guy's a loving case study on what happens when Christianity is tied to fascist ideology and naked bigotry - what's, y'know, actually happening in America today - but instead, the only reason people are going to know about him is because a right-wing clickbait website said "Hey, look! A MUSLIM-raised Christian threatened our favorite fag!"
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Jun 28, 2016 02:09
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Mel Mudkiper posted:It would be kind of funny though if a bunch of muslims shout Quran verses at them or something and they try to spin it as a sign of inherent muslim bigotry This is 100% going to be what happens. There are probably going to be a few protesters, and Milo will try to make it seem like protesting a Pride parade is some exotic, bizarre, barbaric invention of the Mohammedans, and proof that they are the True Enemy to the Gays. Cognitive dissonance will take care of the rest.
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Jun 28, 2016 02:17
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BigglesSWE posted:Some great movies on those lists tbh. There Will Be Blood is a goddamn masterpiece. Though it isn't too pleasant towards priesthood so I do wonder how it holds up amongst the right wingers. I've met a bunch of conservatives that love movies that are critical of individual religious people - they just get uncomfortable when that criticism is aimed towards Christianity in general. Like in There Will Be Blood, they're perfectly content with the priest being portrayed as a greedy rear end in a top hat megalomaniac, because that's just one guy who doesn't represent True Christianity. Like, they kinda "focus" their critical view down in a way, so characters like that don't threaten their pre-existing worldview. This can get kind of ridiculous - my friend completely missed that Reverend Tuttle from True Detective was totally a stand-in for Franklin Graham Religious Right-types. Because of COURSE a politically-corrupting rich televangelist is a bad guy, but that doesn't happen in TRUE Christianity! It's only when movies wave giant "CHRISTIANITY IS BAD" flags that this kind of person gets upset. But the last movie I remember doing that was The Invention Of Lying, which should not be watched by anyone.
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Aug 16, 2016 01:36
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Mat Staver was recently on my home state's pride and joy, VCY America's Crosstalk, to talk about whether or not concerns over Hillary's health are legitimate. Talk about her pneumonia quickly went out the window, though, as most of the program was dedicated to wild speculation - "She said she was overheating, but then changed her explanation to pneumonia! Why the change, Hillary?!" and "She wore really thick glasses to the Benghazi hearing! That MUST mean she has blurred vision, which could indicate a serious nerve condition!" I mean, nothing about the speculation was particularly new. The thing is, Mat Staver is the head of Liberty Counsel, a Christian "pro-family" legal group that got famous for defending Kim Davis. Why the hell did they bring him on to vomit up Breitbart talking points, of all people? I really think this election is going to be the death knell for "establishment" anti-gay groups in America, regardless of the actual outcome. If Hillary wins, there's such little chance that they're going to accomplish any of their goals, they might just do what Mat Staver is currently doing, and become generic alt-right mouthpieces, instead of focusing specifically on gay people. If Trump wins, I think they'll be swept up into the "Parrot everything that Lord Trump says" media empire that will rise up in his wake. Either way they'll lose their identity, which they're already very tenuously holding onto after the Obergefell decision. There will still be some holdouts, sure. But gone will be the days of the Family Research Council going on Fox News to talk about how children "need a mother and a father". Instead, we'll see the Family Research Council going on Fox News to talk about "black on black crime".
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Sep 21, 2016 22:26
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I flicked on Sean Hannity's radio show when I was driving earlier today, and he's very upset about Trump's tax records being released. He's spinning like a motherfucker, of course. His argument boils down to "Hey, it's perfectly legal! And, hey, the Clinton foundation wrote off losses as tax exemptions too!" But what really struck me is just how quickly he can turn his apparent opinion on a dime. When Trump writes off losses, it's totally fine, a smart move, and shows how much business sense he has. When the Clintons write off losses, it's them exploiting a system that average Joes like Sean and his audience can't take advantage of, is another example of how sleazy Hillary is, and proves that Bill Clinton is a serial rapist maybe-I'm-just-asking-questions. Like, through a combination of changing his tone and vocabulary, he went from being pro-tax code to anti-tax code within the same goddamn sentence. Hannity is an evil walking bag of trash, yes, but he's a skilled propagandist when he wants to be.
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Oct 3, 2016 22:30
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Mr Ice Cream Glove posted:I've got some terrible news guys, Oh man, I can't wait for the "The gay mafia ran them out of business!" talking points throughout talk radio. Despite the fact that they raised around $350,000 through money begs, and their fine was $135,000, so they actually made quite a bit of money from this whole thing. And they're undoubtedly going to be very welcome on the conservative Christian radio martyr circuit for years to come. Also, I forget, were these the guys who doxxed the people suing them? Or was that a different case?
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Oct 5, 2016 00:43
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Man, I'm listening to Hannity right now, and he's downright ANGRY at his audience. Like, he's already in full post-election conservative meltdown mode. I think he's seeing the writing on the wall, and is trying to be the first one to say "I told you so, America! Don't come crying to me!" Plus, he broke out "Barack HUSSEIN Obama" and brought up ACORN again, of all things. Dude's not in a good place.
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Nov 7, 2016 21:25
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I've caught a little bit of Sean Hannity's radio show over the past few days since I've been traveling, and I've noticed that he's really hitting the "I have folders of information, I have tons of stories that I'm sitting on, I've done all the digging, and I'm just waiting for the right time to strike with it" narrative pretty hard. He's really trying to portray himself as a Serious Journalist who's sitting on tons of dangerous information, which he's bringing to you, True America, at such a high risk to himself. Pay no attention to the faux "scandals" surrounding Trump, he's figured out the REAL scandals you should be worried about! Has this always been a part of his shtick, or is this a new thing from him? I'm not a regular listener to him or anything, but I remember his persona in the Obama days being more of a down-to-earth aw-shucks conservative every-man. Hearing him portraying himself as a conspiracy thriller protagonist was equal parts illuminating and eyeroll-worthy.
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Aug 4, 2017 21:38
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STAC Goat posted:I think its always been an element of his shows, although he's turning it way up. He's always been the guy who tips his toe in the alt right and conspiracy poo poo and all that. Calling Clinton a pedophile with Epstein. Being a champion for the Bundys. Secret Baltimore Cops who say the Freddie Gray trial is all a coverup for a lesbian affair between the mayor and DA. Hannity's always been a nutbag who spins baseless conspiracy. Yeah, I mean I'm aware that most conservative pundits have been at least dabbling in conspiracy thought at least since the Clinton days. It's just interesting to chart how that dabbling has changed over the years. It went from "I mean, the Lewinski affair started as a rumor too, so I'm just saying this Epstein thing..." to "Well, shoot, it's just horse sense that Obama is a Kenyan Muslim!" to "wake up sheeple, the Lamestream Media is lying to you!" What type of conspiracy theorist that conservative pundits pretend to be has a lot to say about the American zeitgeist at the time.
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Aug 5, 2017 01:57
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boner confessor posted:yeah, it's just cult team building. you, my good cool and smart listeners, are the only ones brave and perceptive enough to recognize there is evil in the world, unlike all of the coward stupid liberals etc. It also follows Fundamentalist logic, in that everyone who doesn't agree with you is either stupid or evil. Anyone with strong leftist views that they won't back down from, then, aren't just people who disagree with you - they're knowingly, mustache twirling villains, who will stop at nothing to take down True America. It's not just enough to say "we think the other side is wrong" in the current RWM sphere, you need to portray it as a Good vs Evil battle. Early Glenn Beck at least made a token effort at portraying liberals as well-meaning but misguided, but he quickly realized that people just wanted him to write the word "SOROS" on a chalkboard every night.
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Aug 8, 2017 17:55
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My home-town right-wing Christian radio talk program - VCY America, if anyone's keeping score - isn't even bothering with denouncing the Nazis at Charlottesville. Like, their position is seriously "These were patriots who love America, and were merely peacefully protesting before the leftists showed up". They do eventually admit "Well, there were maybe some white supremacists, but what about Louis Farrakhan? See, both sides are equally bad!" It's not exactly the most listened-to right wing media out there, but it's what I grew up with in my podunk Wisconsin home town. VCY stands for "The Voice of Christian Youth", but has a 60-year-old host that appeals purely to old, bitter Freeper types. The radio show has always had racial resentment bubbling under the surface, but usually they just shunted it off onto Muslims. I guess they've another outlet who have dropped all pretenses since Trump got elected.
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Aug 14, 2017 23:08
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| # ¿ May 21, 2024 00:21 |
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Did anyone else catch Hannity's radio show today? I just listened to the tail end of one of his segments and it made me want to put a gun in my mouth. He had on two guests to talk about Charlottesville, and while one of them seemed fairly reasonable ("violence is bad no matter what, but equating both sides here is ridiculous"), the other was practically a Trump mouthpiece, saying "BUT ANTIFA" every time the other interviewee made a good point. It got really bad when the more-conservative guy started saying that, since antifa is a Communist organization, and Communists killed way more people than the Nazis, that Antifa might actually be the more dangerous group. That, and when the reasonable guy said "Well, on the one hand, we have a group who hates Jews, Blacks, Latinos and gays..." and the other guy interrupted with "So does Antifa!" People who listen to conservative talk radio really don't care about reality, do they?  (that was a rhetorical question, of course they loving don't)
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Aug 17, 2017 23:07
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