Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/10/09/ellens-issues-copyright-take.html
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Thanks for the takedown notices, Barbra … I mean, Ellen. I had no idea you and Prince Bush were buds until now.
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yes, he was a total monster and i hated every moment of his presidency. but she’s not wrong.
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This is unreasonable. Have celebrities who have friendships with the various Congresspeople who approved that invasion been treated in this way? Have the celebrity friends of Hillary Clinton been taken to task? Not to tu quoque here but this seems like a lot of scapegoating for a military action that pretty much every US citizen that was a voting adult at the time who didn’t actively and aggressively protest the war for its entirety should share some culpability for. It’s certainly not DeGeneres’s cross to bear simply because she somehow befriended Bush the Younger. If there can’t be some minimum level of consistency in our outrage I think it can safely be labeled manufactured.
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No? Aren’t some behaviors bad enough to warrant shunning? Isn’t ordering torture among them?
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Bush and his cronies manufactured the WMD story line that led us into what was an otherwise unfounded conflict*. (*Unless your dad and Saddam Hussein had a beef when you were a kid.) Would the support for the invasion have been so uniform if fairly presented? I don’t forget these thing, either. Bush 43 wasn’t a good president, and has only salvaged any ability to appear in public (a) because his dad was very decent, and (b) because Trump is as obnoxious as he’s been.
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I have lots of friends that have different values and beliefs than mine. None of them ordered the torture and murder of thousands.
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Ellen’s allowed to associate with whomever she pleases, just like everyone else.
That said, Bush 2 remains on my personal list of The Unforgiven; and frankly, I don’t give a good got damn how “normal” his presidency looks in comparison to the relentless shitshow that we have in office right now.
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She’s not wrong about being kind and civil to people and putting politics and ideology aside when one can. That’s difficult to do with a major politician who’s unrepentant about creating a false pretext for a war of choice that got hundreds of thousands killed and who authorised torture and whose approach to politics helped set the stage for Il Douche.
If I found him eating in the same restaurant I’d walk out in disgust. To be seen kidding around with him in public would not only be unlikely for me but would also be totally unimaginable to me, and I’m not a celebrity who regularly touts my progressive cred.
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If it were just hanging out together on zoomy footage, it would have blown over.
The things animating this now:
- The speech, making explicit her indifference to historical atrocity in the name of contemporary civility.
- Perfect example of the amoral, spineless, please-love-me liberalism that Trump and his cronies eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
- The immediate prospect of fresh new atrocity in the region under U.S. auspices
Personal interest in posting:
- Abuse of DMCA to chill obviously fair-use criticism.
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the rich protect their own (the only class solidarity you’ll see in the USA), and then the usual cadre of sycophants show up in the comments to say ‘‘it’s really not that bad’’ - why don’t you just save us all time and say the lives of countless Iraqis and Afghans don’t mean shit to you?
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This is a nice reminder that we are all culpable. I don’t think anyone is blaming Ellen for the war, but neither should any of us, including Ellen, get too comfortable with the atrocities we committed.
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I read this as:
“There was a whole stadium of people sitting right beside Ellen and Bush. I suppose the PC crowd would like them to all have their heads shaved and lose their homes tomorrow, I suppose?”
If there can’t be some minimum level of consistency in our outrage I think it can safely be labeled manufactured.
Is it “outrage” or is it just widely-held disagreement? And I don’t think Ellen is the only person in the world that would encounter some pushback for making a cute public appearance with him. She’s the one who did, but thousands of other celebrities thought to oppose the Iraq war would have got the same headlines. That part’s consistent.
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And he was so decent, they chose him to lead that club committed to spreading decency abroad, the CIA of the 1970s.
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I heard they were very decent in Central America in the '80s too
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Ellen’s selling Abu Gravy, I ain’t buying.
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