Another moral outrage failure for Bozell

Brent Bozell, founder of the Parents Television Council, finally has written a column condemning NBC over M.I.A. giving the middle finger during this year's Super Bowl halftime show: "Another Fleeting Failure for NBC". Of course it's predictable he'd be outraged, but this column is stilted in several ways. He opens: "Super Bowl XLVI was a good football game, marred once again by the bohemian elite at NBC." Well, the last time the "bohemian elite at NBC" played the Super Bowl (that was in 2009 with the Cardinals and Steelers and halftime with Bruce Springsteen...but I don't recall Bozell complaining that NBC had a commie pinko labor advocate perform!). I personally disagree and see this game more a carbon copy of the 2008 one with the same teams (Patriots and Giants) and a similar ending: Eli Manning with a last-minute winning drive and Tom Brady failing to reach the end zone as time runs out.

Of course after reporting how NBC couldn't blur out MIA's middle finger on time this conservative Christian activist must play the persecution card: "The same network skillfully edited God out of a clip of children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance during last year's U.S. Open golf tournament." Funny how he dismisses complaints from Muslims about drawing Muhammad yet leaving God out of the Pledge of Allegiance (by the way the ORIGINAL Pledge didn't include "under God")!

First he misleads readers into thinking that M.I.A. used a similar routine from the halftime show in the music video:

While she was launching the obscene gesture, she was rapping, "I'm-a say this once, yeah I don't give a (S-word)." That's in the newly recorded Madonna song they were performing ("Give Me All Your Luvin'"), and it's also in the video. How does NBC not prepare for a bleep and a camera shift when it knows it's coming?

I rewatched and then noticed at 2:17 mark of the video (that's during Nicki Minaj's performance) M.I.A. had her middle finger up albeit with a bandage on the finger:



HOWEVER, during her rapping part of the song (including the "I don't give a..." line) she actually uses her index finger, as Bozell concedes: "In the Madonna video, [M.I.A.] points her fingers like a gun."

Concluding his column, Bozell dismisses Sasha Frere-Jones's criticism of the PTC (but Bozell didn't mention that the PTC declined to file complaints formally with the FCC): "[Frere-Jones] tried to be offended instead that the Super Bowl show featured 'ad after ad that likened women -- negatively -- to sofas, cars and candy.' He raised his middle fingers to 'anyone who thinks profanity is somehow more harmful to our children than images of violence and misogyny.'" Bozell lets his mindless authoritarianism get in the way of addressing the issue of misogynistic ads like the GoDaddy ads and the Teleflora ad featuring Adrianna Lima. Bozell has complained about media misogyny in the past (see "MTV, Both Sleazy and Sour" from Dec. 10, 2011; "Exploiting the Teen Temptress" from Dec. 18, 2010; "Moms vs. Hip-Hop" from Oct. 20, 2006). But somehow, Super Bowl ads get a free pass even if those blatantly objectifying messages reach millions of children. Where's Bozell's outrage? (I don't want to know where his hands were on Super Bowl Sunday.) Maybe football is such an obligately macho sport that you can't have it without the cheerleaders or woman-hating ads. Plus, apparently Bozell is more scared about kids who are scarred for life because of an unnoticeable middle finger! (Case in point, that middle finger registered so slowly in many people's eyes including to NBC's control room staff.)

Credit to post #18 on Free Republic's repost of Bozell's column: "M.I.A.'s bird-flipping is far less offensive to me than the behavior tolerated by the NFL of so many of their players." (Michael Vick, Donte Stallworth, Plaxico Burress, and other players with criminal records come to mind.)

Bozell, take your blindfold off.

The conservative cultural crusader Brent Bozell's latest column "The Double Standard on 'Hoes'" attacks Nicki Minaj's horrible new song "Stupid Hoe". In a way as a heavy Republican-hating lefty I wish I could actually agree with him for once! But I take issue with this passage:

It seems rather clear that Imus deserved some punishment, even if his dismissal might be excessive. So why were the Reverends [Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton] applauded universally for their activism?

Because all of their fuss wasn’t about “public decency” or “degradation” or media companies “mainstreaming racism and sexism," not really. It was about race, and about how whites cannot say “indecent” things about blacks, not even in jest. But blacks can use those very same words, however they wish, with the ugliest of intentions if desired, with impunity. Where are Jackson and Sharpton over 'Stupid Hoe" now? Cricket, cricket.

Did Bozell and the other CONservative pundits miss how the black activists also took rappers to task after the Imus controversy? Like Sharpton's march on May 3, 2007 calling for an end to the use of the B-word and N-word in hip hop lyrics? Or Def Jam Records founder Russell Simmons calling on record labels to drop the B, H, and N words? Or Sharpton's National Action Network having a Decency Initiative that "advocates against the entertainment industry’s use of capitalizing off of denigrating lyrics to describe black culture."

Funny how Bozell warns his readers: "Don’t hurt your brain trying to make sense" of the lyrics of the Minaj song. Well, I think that many people have lost more brain cells reading Bozell's selectively-researched rants and Catholic apologetics. Furthermore, Bozell contradicts himself by asserting that rappers can advance their careers by using "ho" but then pointing out "YouTube watchers gave the Minaj video about twice as many Dislikes as Likes" (as I type this the video now has 111,027 likes and 232,539 dislikes.) Given that reaction I don't think Bozell has much to whine about now.

Furthermore, on the Dec. 23 edition of Fox News' Sean Hannity TV show Bozell called Obama a "skinny ghetto crackhead". So after that instance Bozell has lost his right to call for decency in culture.

Dear Brent Bozell, you're not entitled to have everyone respect your beliefs

Ah, Brent Bozell. The man who longs for the days when people would unquestionably submit to conservative Christianity and when TV was so squeaky-clean that CBS couldn't show Elvis shaking his hips. Now he's out with his latest "wah wah wah why won't the media respect my beliefs" column "The Anti-God Book, By 'God'":

Those prestigious publishers at Simon & Schuster selected All Saints Day to unleash the book world's latest attempt at mocking Christianity. It’s called "The Last Testament, by God."

The author is David Javerbaum, a top writer for 11 years for "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central, perhaps America's leading religion-hating TV network. Is it any surprise that the critics are loving it?

Publishers Weekly raves, "The Almighty opens up in this blithely blasphemous satire of monotheism." God, in this alleged autobiography, is "a complex, troubled Deity: vain, petulant, desperate for praise and burnt offerings, guiltily pensive in the after-wrath of unhinged smitings. Adherents of every Abrahamic faith will find plenty of hilarious, offensive manna for thought in these revelations." Kirkus Reviews bluntly adds, "Damned comical. Amen."

”Hilarious, offensive.” What they mean is that it’s hilarious because it’s offensive.

When has Bozell ever said that Rush Limbaugh is popular because he's offensive? It's true in a sense that Javerbaum's book is offensive to a certain segment of the US population, but keep in mind that fewer Americans choose to be religious in this age. Could it be why it's easier in the mainstream to mock religion? I thought that people like Bozell advocated free market economics (that's why he founded the Business and Media Institute as part of his right-wing Media Research Center).

Furthermore, Bozell neglects to mention Simon & Schuster's conservative imprint Sentinel that has published authors such as Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, and Alfred Regnery.

When he criticized anti-Christian themes he perceived in the Showtime programs Dexter and Californication (keep in mind that Showtime is a pay cable network) in "Jesus Is Not a Serial Killer", he huffed that Showtime executives lacked respect for Jesus, the figure who makes us good if we follow him, concluding: "You think of the hundreds upon hundreds of people involved in this Showtime enteprise - the actors, producers, promotional and marketing staff, the blue-suit executives in New York, the advertising agencies. And of those hundreds and hundreds, not one will stand up to defend Our Lord? How sad."

Uhh, Brent, there is plenty of pro-Christian programming all over the broadcast channels, and there are even entire cable networks (EWTN, God TV, TBN, Word Network) that are devoted to preaching the Gospels. Again, considering how those cable networks with those violent TV-MA programming that Bozell thinks are rotting American culture: what's the value of those cable channels being premium if Bozell got to be CEO and fill the schedule with G-rated films, Leave It to Beaver reruns, and Sunday school all week? Since the mid-1990s with the Parents Television Council, Bozell has been pushing for the mainstream TV networks to be more family-friendly (hmm, code word for pro-Christian?), and that's why you'll hear the PTC complain every time a TV show dares to be sexual or has a dramatic storyline that happens to be violent. But do TV audiences really prefer tame, non-confrontational programming or the shows on premium cable? Let the ratings tell the story. If there wasn't such a demand for Dexter, TV networks would've stuck with the tame side.

All that Bozell can do to justify his archaic views is to play the religion/persecuted Christian card. That's it: no reasoning, logic, or reality-based evidence whatsoever.