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Gene Simmons, the KISS rock star, has a reality show called "Gene Simmons' Family Jewels." Last night's episode showed his daughter, Sophie, preparing for a school paper on the military. Gene took her to Camp Pendleton so she could see the real thing close up. They took a ride in what looked like an amphibious tank and did a few hours of basic-training type exercises.
Later on in the show, he and Sophie visited a veteran's hospital. Gene told veterans he spoke to that without them, there would be no freedom in America, because they protect us. He went back to the base with a rock band and performed for the soldiers. And at different times during the episode he said (quoting from memory): "I've been all over the world, but America's the place I call home," and "I love America." The last word of the show was spoken by Gene, with heartfelt admiration and affection: "America."
It's been so long since I saw those sentiments expressed on TV that I'd forgotten it could happen. Gene and his family have done a great thing by putting this episode together. The series, which has multiple airings of each show, was seen by an average of 1.3 million viewers for just the first airing of each episode, in its first season.
The very Liberal Bill Maher gets it about Islam. This is a huge indication that Conservatives and Liberals may find themselves in agreement on this tremendously significant issue.
But let me back up for a minute before I transcribe some of Bill's comments. Last week in an article titled, "'What Accounts For The Almost Psychotic Aversion To Knowledge About Islam?'", I noted:
Westerners believe that all major religions are about finding happiness. They find it almost incomprehensible that there may be a widely-followed religion that is a rejection of that - that is about rejecting happiness on earth - that tells you that the only way to achieve heaven is to attack those who do not share your religion -- to attack them in every way, including through physical violence. And indeed, it is almost incomprehensible to us that there could be a religion that teaches its followers to act so brutally against their own earthly happiness. But many who practice Islam describe it as being precisely that, and practice it in exactly that way.
A perfect example of this was provided by one of Bill's guests in the clip above - I believe it's the actor, Steven Weber.
Weber: But I mean, don't those people [terrorists] represent a more extremist view, of Islam? You know? Aren't religions at first, aren't they supposed to appeal to people's moderate tastes - moderate instincts? To win them over? And then aren't they co-opted by extremists - by radical extremists?
That's exactly what I was referring to. Americans believe that all religions teach peace, love, and understanding, and help people pursue success and happiness. Weber cannot yet begin to even consider the possibility that Islam may not conform to this description.
I should note that while I do not believe that Islam conforms to this description, I do agree that this is a description of a what the word "religion" means, in the Western sense of the word. This is why former Muslims I've quoted on this site state that Islam is not a religion in the Western sense:
In the film, Islam: What the West Needs to Know, former Muslim Walid Shoebat points out that Westerners consider religion to be about a person's relationship to himself and to God. Islam is primarily a political and legal structure, and is first and foremost about man's relationship to his fellow man, specifically, the relationship of enforcing Sharia law on all fellow men.
Wafa Sultan: "...Islam should not be considered a religion, but a political ideology that applies its policy violently."
Now, here's Maher's response to Weber, transcribed from the clip:
Maher: No! They're not all alike! It was extremist to begin with. Mohammed was a warrior. The big lie is that all religions are basically alike. They all preach the same thing. Well of course the Bible is full of a lot of violence. I mean, God in the Old Testament is a psychopath - he just kills, kills, kills, for no reason, good reasons, bad reasons, he's jealous, he just wants to kill. [Laughter]. He is. He's the rifleman. [Laughter]. But he doesn't seem to aim it so much at outsiders. He wipes out the Jews except for Noah because they were bad to him or whatever. But he doesn't keep saying, as the Koran, it seems to me [....] it seems to me that in the Koran god keeps saying, if you're not one of us, you're an infidel, and burning would be too good for you.
...And they still whack people. You know, every religion has elements in it that are very mafia-like. Godfather III, a movie I liked and nobody else did, but I thought it was a good movie, was about how the Catholic church, is very much like Michael Corleone's mob family. But the Catholic church has calmed down a lot since the 14th century. But, you know, [to Hirsi Ali], there's a death threat on you. There's a death threat on people in your country that still speak out, there's a death threat on Salmon Rushdie. They still whack people, in Islam. There's still a lot of, you disagree with me, we'll settle it by getting whacked.
When someone like Bill Maher, known for his very Liberal views, gets it, there is reason to believe that word may be getting out.
This Is London has an article saying that Michael Richards (Seinfeld's Kramer) has said anti-Jewish things as well, during his standup act. I believe all the top writers and actors on Seinfeld, other than Richards, were Jewish. We know from the Letterman show on Monday that Jerry is a very good friend of his. It appears to be possible that Richards, while a brilliant comedy actor, is not a gifted comedy writer; that he was just trying to shock, as comedians often attempt to do; and that he's not actually prejudiced against Jewish or Black people.
Glenn Beck's "The Extremist Agenda," which aired this week on CNN Headline News, is currently available in its entirety via YouTube:
Glenn Beck's "The Extremist Agenda"
Comments on it are flooding in from around the blogosphere:
The Jawa Report: "If you didn't see Glenn Beck's important documentary on the radical Islamist agenda, you need to.
No, I take that back. It is your friends and family that are still in denial. They need to see this video.
...If you have friends who are still in denial about the threat of political Islam, then why don't you do something useful with your e-mail contact list and send them a link to the video?"
Euphoric Reality: "Some of it shocked even me..."
GOP & College: "You will be shocked at what the Media has NOT shown you from the Middle East."
Freedom's Zone: "In the one-hour special, Glenn Beck will show you the shocking images on Middle Eastern media that help fuel rage against Israel and the West."
LGF: "With this show and Fox's recent broadcast of Obsession, US mainstream media actually seems to be starting to report facts about the global jihad that you could have found at LGF any time in the last 5 years. I can't help wondering why this didn't happen immediately after 9/11."
Trying to Grok reports that the show will air again this Sunday - and that it got big ratings for its network:
CNN Headline News is re-showing the program Exposed: The Extremist Agenda on the Glenn Beck Program on Sunday night at 7:00 and 9:00. Check it out if you missed it last night.
UPDATE:
The show ended up being the second highest rated show in the history of Headline News.
CNN deserves huge credit for airing this breakthrough show. Don't miss it.
Comcast is to be applauded - it has decided against giving Al-Jazeera distribution. This denies a platform for radical Islamists to preach jihad to U.S. citizens, at least for the moment.
LONDON -- Al-Jazeera Intl. has all but conceded defeat in its effort to gain U.S. distribution in time for its worldwide launch Wednesday.
Execs at the nascent English-language offshoot of the Arab broadcaster said Comcast Communications pulled the plug on talks Monday on a deal the net considered essential to gaining a beachhead in the U.S.
...Sources within AJI speculated the reasons for the pullout had to do with U.S. uncertainty about Al-Jazeera's editorial agenda.
...But Comcast denied the decision had anything to do with politics. "It comes down to a capacity question. We're not adding a lot of new channels," said Comcast spokeswoman Jenni Moyer.
As of last week, Al-Jazeera reportedly also was in talks with Cox Communications, but those won't come to fruition before Wednesday.
Al-Jazeera also had hoped to get carriage on one of the two major satellite TV operators, DirecTV or Dish Network. Dish wants to carry AJI on its Arab-language tier, where it carries the Arabic Al-Jazeera. DirecTV doesn't carry either net, but said it is "keeping options open."
It is to be hoped that no other company will give Al-Jazeera a platform from which to spread a pro-Jihadist message.
It seems unlikely, but it can't be ruled out. A September 28th post on this site about South Park, which had been linked by Pajamas Media, began with the words, "So it begins." And this week's episode of South Park ended with the same words.
It was a really funny episode. There's a line in it along the lines of "If only there were no religion, there would be so much less violence in the world. No Muslims killing Jews. No Christians picketing abortion clinics." That is so great.
Then they get to the future, and everyone's an atheist, and the United Science League is having a war with the United Science Association. It was hysterical.
First of all, I want to applaud NBC for reportedly deciding not to show Madonna on the cross in her upcoming concert special. NBC is showing that it will not have double standards for Christians and Muslims.
Second, I want to note how this incident is an example of what Matt Stone and Trey Parker of South Park are talking about when they say, that either everything is okay to show, or nothing is. Because MSM bowed to the threats (mostly to kill each other) of radical Islamists, and didn't show the Mohammed cartoons, we now find that Madonna can't do her whole act on TV.
So I applaud NBC for their decision, and observe that the thing that would be even better, would be, to show the Mohammed cartoons, and also let Madonna do her whole act.
So it begins. Western pop culture knows exactly what to do with people who can't take a joke. We annihilate their mistaken beliefs with comedy. South Park led the way with its episode earlier this year, daring Comedy Central to air a cartoon of Mohammed. Jay Leno again showed the way last week, when he let us see that it was okay to make fun of radical Islam, with this joke:
Iraq has demanded that Pope Benedict issue an apology for statements he made linking Islam to violence. Well, where did the Pope get that crazy idea, huh? I'm stunned! Well, maybe the apologies will stop the church burnings, and the "Death to the Pope" chants.
And with this billboard (which had to have been network-approved), Comedy Central is saying to Matt and Trey, the creators of South Park, that they'll tolerate jokes about Muslims alongside jokes about everybody else. Once this starts in our pop culture, it will snowball and become unstoppable. Our pop culture entertainers have become expert in this kind of thing over the past several decades of going after every so-called sacred cow that anyone could identify.
Islam won't know what hit it. Reform-minded Muslims will have their eyes opened, and will have ammunition provided to them, in their efforts to bring Islam out of the 7th century, and into the 21st.
This is how we defend our freedom of speech. We don't let anyone tell us what we can and can't say - what we can and can't make a joke about - or what we can and can't publish. If someone doesn't want us to make a joke about something, we make all the jokes about it. And it starts just like this, with little digs.
And sure, in response it may be that from time to time the Islamists will demonstrate their stupidity by rioting, burning their own buildings, killing each other - and maybe even getting a few of us, like the nun who lost her life to radical Islamists earlier this month. But you know what? This is a war, and since the enemy can't fight our armies directly, it's one that in many ways is fought in the media. The radical Islamists are already doing everything they can to kill Westerners. They're going to find something to riot about even if it's a goofy story about flushing a book down toilet. (Consider, as Thomas Sowell put it this week, "the physical absurdity of trying to flush the Koran -- or any other book -- down a toilet.") And they're going to try to do that whether we tell them what boneheads they are or not.
It's up to our government to fight this war, that the radical Islamists have declared on us, militarily and politically, until we win it. And in the meantime, it's up to our media, and to all of us, to keep defending our freedom of speech, by using it.
These Islamists wanted a media war, with their assassinations staged in front of MSM photographers. Now they're going to see what media war really looks like.
Radical Islamists: get ready to laugh, you morons.
The set of the pilot episode of the "This Just In"
(Image is merged from two smaller photos. Click for a larger image.)
There was a taping last night of a pilot episode for a possible "Daily Show" style show of news-oriented comedy, with a more Conservative angle on the news. I won't let the cat out of the bag by describing any of the material, but I will say that it was hilarious. Regular readers of Conservative and Libertarian blogs would be delighted to find material they are familiar with used for laughs for the first time on TV. It would be great to see this become a regular series. This kind of show has been very successful when presented with a Liberal slant, but the red-state half of the country doesn't yet have anything of this sort to watch. So this seems very likely to attract viewers. The great cast and strong writing of this pilot indicate that the viewers would come back for more.
Are you ready to see Capt. Kirk's Star Trek, with all-new digital effects, space ships, and planets?
Wednesday's episode of South Park was not only extraordinarily tasteless and unfunny -- it also didn't have any of the show's main characters in it. Not one.
I don't think I'm too far out on a limb to say that the South Park writing staff may be on strike due to last week's censorship of their efforts to show a cartoon of Mohammed.
I wouldn't put it past Matt and Trey for one second. They're the biggest profit center of the network. They may be on strike -- that is, refusing to do an episode with the main characters, and refusing to do a remotely funny episode -- until they get uncensored. And you know what? They'll win. They'll win precisely because the network has shown that they can be bullied, when it censored them in response to radical Islamist intimidation. And the network is in more immediate danger from the loss of its biggest income-generator -- South Park -- than it is from some hypothetical response from the radical Islamists.
This may be the gutsiest move we've ever seen from the writing staff of a TV show.
And by the way -- if that's what's really happening -- Wednesday's episode was hilarious: it was intentionally unfunny.
Let's see how this plays out.
SOUTH PARK CREATORS KNEW IN ADVANCE THAT COMEDY CENTRAL WOULD CENSOR IMAGES OF MOHAMMED:
Parker and Stone were angered when told by Comedy Central several weeks ago that they could not run an image of Muhammad, according to a person close to the show who didn't want to be identified because of the issue's sensitivity.
I'm glad to see that Matt and Trey weren't taken by surprise by the decision of their network. Instead, the episode was a satire of a decision the network had made weeks previously.
From Business Week:
In May, TiVo is rolling out what may sound like the ultimate in chutzpah: ads on demand.
Ads are entertaining enough that a service that offered the opportunity to select which ads you want to see, could work. I know I'd want to see a lot of the ads for movies, TV shows, Macs, iTunes, and any number of other things, particularly if I were thinking about buying the products being advertised. And if I heard through the grapevine that some ad was particularly entertaining, I'd probably have a look at it.
THE TOP AMERICAN TV SHOW WORLDWIDE, is CSI:Miami. Which probably makes it the biggest TV show in the world.
YOU HAVE TO GIVE CBS CREDIT for including this line of dialog in tonight's premiere ep of counter-terrorism series, "The Unit":
There's no truth in the news, and no news in the truth.
The ep had a great script by leading playwright, David Mamet.
