Sex-Crazed Co-eds Going Broke Buying Birth Control

[PanzerJaeger]

Aaaand it did not take long for the raw political calculus behind the latest entitlement expansion to come to the forefront. A new DNC flyer being sent to millions of likely voters in key battleground states not so subtly asks women to consider: "What have the Republicans given me for FREE lately?" I don't know whether to laugh at the blatant shamelessness in this handouts-for-votes scheme or cry at the prospect of its likely success.

[Crazed Rabbit]

CR

[Lemur]

I think it's unacceptable that Limbaugh gets his clock cleaned essentially for holding onto an unpopular opinion. If this isn't censorship, I don't know what is.

As others have pointed out, censorship is what a government does; free-market boycotts are a different animal.

Also, I find Rush's three-day slander of a woman to be something other than "an unpopular opinion." Seventy-odd different instances are documented below the tag. See if you can get through them all; I could not. If you can listen to it and think anything but "vile," or "foul," you may want to adjust your moral compass.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

But it's not really advertisers choosing where to spend their money. They are responding to a perceived threat of boycotts. Imagine, say, companies yanking all funding and shutting down a talk show after the host made anti-Christianity comments because some powerful church groups were going to make a huge fuss about it. It's not really a stretch to call that the censorship of public opinion or something. And it's not like that can't be a much more powerful anti-free speech force...

In this case it's well deserved. But I have to laugh at "caught on tape", who are they kidding???? And the dinging counter thing is stupid.

[Lemur]

[Advertisors] are responding to a perceived threat of boycotts. Imagine, say, companies yanking all funding and shutting down a talk show after the host made anti-Christianity comments because some powerful church groups were going to make a huge fuss about it.

That sort of thing happens all the time; witness the kerfluffle with Ellen and JC Penney. In that case, the group threatening a boycott turned out to be nothing more than a tiny church in Florida, and everyone had a good laugh. In the case of Rushbo's slutgate, the advertisers perceive a more substantial public sentiment.

Are you suggesting that boycotts are bad, or a form of censorship, or what, exactly? There will always be groups demanding this or that and threatening a boycott. The trick, for companies that want to peddle their wares, is to distinguish which ones are worth paying attention to.

And again, censorship means the law says you cannot write or say something. If, on the other hand, you are shouted down by your neighbors for saying something offensive? Not censorship. Their free speech is going up against your free speech. Freedom of speech does not and never has meant freedom from consequences.

It's not really a stretch to call that the censorship of public opinion or something.

I think it's pretty clearly under the "or something" category.

[Tellos Athenaios]

But it's not really advertisers choosing where to spend their money. They are responding to a perceived threat of boycotts.

Boycotts by their customers, to be precise. They don't want to be affiliated with Limbaugh because Limbaugh upset their customer base. Potentially stifling? Yes. But this form of mob rule for good or ill is how the free market works.

Anyway companies "pull" adds routinely, wait for the thing to die down and then quietly put them back up. They just want to dodge that bullet of public outcry.

[Lemur]

Anyway companies "pull" adds routinely, wait for the thing to die down and then quietly put them back up. They just want to dodge that bullet of public outcry.

Maybe, maybe not. Limbaugh's audience is overwhelmingly old and male; not a highly desired demo. And he's been getting away with high fees for that audience for some time, notably by claiming "20 million" listeners using some very creative math.

I think, given how this has played out, and its timing, that the media landscape will emerge from Slutgate a bit changed. Further reading here.

The difference this time is that Limbaugh’s advertisers and his stations had already begun to feel ripped off. To quote my station-manager friend again: “I don’t mind paying for content. But I do mind paying for trouble.” So advertisers revolted against the TSL strategy, with Sears, JCPenney, and many other sponsors dropping the show. Many of the local advertisers who buy their ads from the local stations rather than from the syndicators have been ordering that their purchased minutes be placed on some less-controversial program.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Are you suggesting that boycotts are bad, or a form of censorship, or what, exactly?

mmm, they can be a form of censorship like I said, whether it's bad depends on what's being censored.

And again, censorship means the law says you cannot write or say something. If, on the other hand, you are shouted down by your neighbors for saying something offensive? Not censorship. Their free speech is going up against your free speech. Freedom of speech does not and never has meant freedom from consequences.

??? If someone talks about "self-censorship" would you tell them that it's only censorship if the government was involved? They would say to you "that's why I said self-censorship". It's perfectly ordinary english to use the word in various ways like that.

I don't think you mean that bit about shouting someone down falling under the category of free speech.

Potentially stifling? Yes. But this form of mob rule for good or ill is how the free market works.

True. But I wouldn't want to be overly dismissive of criticisms of the treatment Rush is getting, only to have it come back and bite me later when people are using boycotts as a weapon against some idea they don't like...

Come to think of it, I think one of the major plot points of that Edward R Murrow movie was that the sponsors didn't like the trouble that his going after McCarthy caused them and were pushing his boss about it.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Maybe, maybe not. Limbaugh's audience is overwhelmingly old and male; not a highly desired demo. And he's been getting away with high fees for that audience for some time, notably by claiming "20 million" listeners using some very creative math.

Was talking more in general. If something is said or done on TV that gets people all hot and bothered that routinely translates into some shuffling of feet amongst the advertisers.

EDIT: Advertisers on Limbaugh's show might also use it as an opportunity to get a better deal, going by what you wrote.

[Lemur]

If someone talks about "self-censorship" would you tell them that it's only censorship if the government was involved? They would say to you "that's why I said self-censorship". It's perfectly ordinary english to use the word in various ways like that.

Um, okay, sure, if you're referring to "censorship" in a casual, non-legal way, then sure, but when people raise the censorship issue in relation to this case, they seem to mean it in the legal sense. In the same light, I could say that so-and-so "slaughtered" me at basketball, but if I claimed so-and-so was guilty of slaughtering, you might take it a bit differently.

I don't think you mean that bit about shouting someone down falling under the category of free speech.

Everybody has free speech, including the people who think what someone is saying is utter nonsense. To choose a recent example, Jeremaiah Wright was caught on tape saying "God **** America," which caused immense and immediate scorn to be heaped on his head from most everyone. He was, in essence, shouted down. Not censored (unless you want to take the super-broad conversational definition of "censored," which seems to be where your head is at).

Like I said, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. If you want to say something controversial, or offensive, or distasteful, or foul, that is your right. But be prepared for others to use their free speech to tell you off.

[Tellos Athenaios]

True. But I wouldn't want to be overly dismissive of criticisms of the treatment Rush is getting, only to have it come back and bite me later when people are using boycotts as a weapon against some idea they don't like...

Come to think of it, I think one of the major plot points of that Edward R Murrow movie was that the sponsors didn't like the trouble that his going after McCarthy caused them and were pushing his boss about it.

That's obviously the problem in general: we on the ORG seem mostly agreed that it won't be such a "bad thing" in this instance, but unless you take away the control over on which show adverts get shown you can't really prevent it. Then again, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that being paid a comfortable salary to spout your opinions on TV is the only way to express yourself; I think if it were a matter of principle people would find they could make themselves heard without adverts, too.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Um, okay, sure, if you're referring to "censorship" in a casual, non-legal way, then sure, but when people raise the censorship issue in relation to this case, they seem to mean it in the legal sense. In the same light, I could say that so-and-so "slaughtered" me at basketball, but if I claimed so-and-so was guilty of slaughtering, you might take it a bit differently.

It was being talked about in terms of being unacceptable, and of someone being shut up for having an unpopular opinion. I don't see why you object to the use of the word, it is very frequently used to refer to something other than government/legal censorship, and it's not at all important that we aren't talking about government/legal censorship.

Everybody has free speech, including the people who think what someone is saying is utter nonsense. To choose a recent example, Jeremaiah Wright was caught on tape saying "God **** America," which caused immense and immediate scorn to be heaped on his head from most everyone. He was, in essence, shouted down. Not censored (unless you want to take the super-broad conversational definition of "censored," which seems to be where your head is at).

Like I said, freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequences. If you want to say something controversial, or offensive, or distasteful, or foul, that is your right. But be prepared for others to use their free speech to tell you off.

mmm, yes, but we aren't talking about someone being told off. It seems pretty simple to me. Take the Murrow example. Advertisers effectively shutting down someone for raising a ruckus, according to the movie. Who cares that it isn't the government doing it, and that the advertisers have a legal right to do it? They weren't right to do it. Free speech is valuable for a reason, and that reason is often harmed by people trying to shout down someone for saying something they don't like. I think you've gotten yourself all twisted up in the legalism.

That's obviously the problem in general: we on the ORG seem mostly agreed that it won't be such a "bad thing" in this instance, but unless you take away the control over on which show adverts get shown you can't really prevent it. Then again, let's not kid ourselves into thinking that being paid a comfortable salary to spout your opinions on TV is the only way to express yourself; I think if it were a matter of principle people would find they could make themselves heard without adverts, too.

Yeah, I agree. Really I'm objecting to the "well, they're free to do that" superficial kind of statement. I mean, in a different scenario we might want to organize a counter boycott to the companies who are removing advertising support, or something.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

This kind of thing makes the rush limbaugh story that's going around seem like a joke...

Where Pimps Peddle Their Goods

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF

I WENT on a walk in Manhattan the other day with a young woman who once had to work these streets, hired out by eight pimps while she was just 16 and 17. She pointed out a McDonald’s where pimps sit while monitoring the girls outside, and a building where she had repeatedly been ordered online as if she were a pizza.
Alissa, her street name, escaped that life and is now a 24-year-old college senior planning to become a lawyer — but she will always have a scar on her cheek where a pimp gouged her with a potato peeler as a warning not to escape. “Like cattle owners brand their cattle,” she said, fingering her cheek, “he wanted to brand me in a way that I would never forget.”
After Alissa testified against her pimps, six of them went to prison for up to 25 years. Yet these days, she reserves her greatest anger not at pimps but at companies that enable them. She is particularly scathing about Backpage.com, a classified advertising Web site that is used to sell auto parts, furniture, boats — and girls. Alissa says pimps routinely peddled her on Backpage.
“You can’t buy a child at Wal-Mart, can you?” she asked me. “No, but you can go to Backpage and buy me on Backpage.”
Backpage accounts for about 70 percent of prostitution advertising among five Web sites that carry such ads in the United States, earning more than $22 million annually from prostitution ads, according to AIM Group, a media research and consulting company. It is now the premier Web site for human trafficking in the United States, according to the National Association of Attorneys General. And it’s not a fly-by-night operation. Backpage is owned by Village Voice Media, which also owns the estimable Village Voice newspaper.
Attorneys general from 48 states have written a joint letter to Village Voice Media, pleading with it to get out of the flesh trade. An online petition at Change.org has gathered 94,000 signatures asking Village Voice Media to stop taking prostitution advertising. Instead, the company has used The Village Voice to mock its critics. Alissa thought about using her real name for this article but decided not to for fear that Village Voice would retaliate.
Court records and public officials back Alissa’s account, and there is plenty of evidence that under-age girls are marketed on Backpage. Arrests in such cases have been reported in at least 22 states.
Just this month, prosecutors in New York City filed charges in a case involving a gang that allegedly locked a 15-year-old Long Island girl in an empty house, drugged her, tied her up, raped her, and advertised her on Backpage. After a week of being sold for sex, prosecutors in Queens said, the girl escaped.
Liz McDougall, general counsel of Village Voice Media, told me that it is “shortsighted, ill-informed and counterproductive” to focus on Backpage when many other Web sites are also involved, particularly because Backpage tries to screen out ads for minors and reports possible trafficking cases to the authorities. McDougall denied that Backpage dominates the field and said that the Long Island girl was marketed on 13 other Web sites as well. But if street pimps go to jail for profiteering on under-age girls, should their media partners like Village Voice Media really get a pass?
Paradoxically, Village Voice began as an alternative newspaper to speak truth to power. It publishes some superb journalism. So it’s sad to see it accept business from pimps in the greediest and most depraved kind of exploitation.
True, many prostitution ads on Backpage are placed by adult women acting on their own without coercion; they’re not my concern. Other ads are placed by pimps: the Brooklyn district attorney’s office says that the great majority of the sex trafficking cases it prosecutes involve girls marketed on Backpage.
Alissa, who grew up in a troubled household in Boston, has a story that is fairly typical. She says that one night when she was 16 — and this matches the account she gave federal prosecutors — a young man approached her and told her she was attractive. She thought that he was a rapper, and she was flattered. He told her that he wanted her to be his girlfriend, she recalls wistfully.
Within a few weeks, he was prostituting her — even as she continued to study as a high school sophomore. Alissa didn’t run away partly because of a feeling that there was a romantic bond, partly because of Stockholm syndrome, and partly because of raw fear. She says violence was common if she tried connecting to the outside world or if she didn’t meet her daily quota for cash.
“He would get aggressive and strangle me and physically assault me and threaten to sell me to someone that was more violent than him, which he eventually did,” Alissa recalled. She said she was sold from one pimp to another several times, for roughly $10,000 each time.
She was sold to johns seven days a week, 365 days a year. After a couple of years, she fled, but a pimp tracked her down and — with the women he controlled — beat and stomped Alissa, breaking her jaw and several ribs, she said. That led her to cooperate with the police.
There are no simple solutions to end sex trafficking, but it would help to have public pressure on Village Voice Media to stop carrying prostitution advertising. The Film Forum has already announced that it will stop buying ads in The Village Voice. About 100 advertisers have dropped Rush Limbaugh’s radio show because of his demeaning remarks about women. Isn’t it infinitely more insulting to provide a forum for the sale of women and girls?
Let’s be honest: Backpage’s exit from prostitution advertising wouldn’t solve the problem, for smaller Web sites would take on some of the ads. But it would be a setback for pimps to lose a major online marketplace. When Craigslist stopped taking such ads in 2010, many did not migrate to new sites: online prostitution advertising plummeted by more than 50 percent, according to AIM Group.
Alissa, who now balances her college study with part-time work at a restaurant and at Fair Girls, an antitrafficking organization, deserves the last word. “For a Web site like Backpage to make $22 million off our backs,” she said, “it’s like going back to slave times.”

[Montmorency]

She says violence was common if she tried connecting to the outside world or if she didn’t meet her daily quota for cash.
“He would get aggressive and strangle me and physically assault me and threaten to sell me to someone that was more violent than him, which he eventually did,” Alissa recalled. She said she was sold from one pimp to another several times, for roughly $10,000 each time.

...like going back to slave times.

Can we be sure these guys aren't just hipsters?

[ajaxfetish]

It seems pretty simple to me. Take the Murrow example. Advertisers effectively shutting down someone for raising a ruckus, according to the movie. Who cares that it isn't the government doing it, and that the advertisers have a legal right to do it? They weren't right to do it. Free speech is valuable for a reason, and that reason is often harmed by people trying to shout down someone for saying something they don't like.

Coming at this from the other side, it sounds like you're saying advertisers have a moral obligation, when buying ad space, to continue supporting the free speech of whoever they happen to be buying from even if it will result in a loss of money for them. Is the purpose of advertising to make money for the company, or to provide a megaphone for a few lucky citizens? It seems unreasonable to me to expect advertisers to be anything but self-interested in a situation like this. I think the onus is on demagogues like Rush to either be in tune with what their audience/advertisers want to hear, or else pay for their own privileged level of speech.

Ajax

[Lemur]

Truly, SK, you appear to be confusing free speech with paid speech. One is an inalienable right, the other is a privilege. Nobody is trying to prevent Rushbo from speaking, they're just trying to minimize his profitability. So using the term "censorship," no matter how loosely and post-modernly you choose to define it, is still problematic.

[Sasaki Kojiro]

Coming at this from the other side, it sounds like you're saying advertisers have a moral obligation, when buying ad space, to continue supporting the free speech of whoever they happen to be buying from even if it will result in a loss of money for them. Is the purpose of advertising to make money for the company, or to provide a megaphone for a few lucky citizens? It seems unreasonable to me to expect advertisers to be anything but self-interested in a situation like this. I think the onus is on demagogues like Rush to either be in tune with what their audience/advertisers want to hear, or else pay for their own privileged level of speech.

Ajax

You're being too abstract.

Advertisers should stop buying ad space for certain people even if it gives money to them. And they shouldn't stop for certain other people even if it does. It depends on who the person is and what they are doing. No one is saying they have to be super particular, but the idea that all we should expect of businesses is that they look after their profits and all we should expect of talk show people is that they tell people what their audience/advertisers want to hear...do you really believe that? Don't you have any problem with someone suppressing important political speech in our country just out of a selfish concern with their pocketbook? Imagine if it was something really important. Why would it be unreasonable to criticize them for doing that?

Truly, SK, you appear to be confusing free speech with paid speech. One is an inalienable right, the other is a privilege. Nobody is trying to prevent Rushbo from speaking, they're just trying to minimize his profitability. So using the term "censorship," no matter how loosely and post-modernly you choose to define it, is still problematic.

Here, I googled an example for you:

Johnson[3] states that "many pressures produce such censorship", some deliberate and some by default, but that "all have come, not from government, but from private corporations with something to sell". He notes an exchange in the letters page of the New York Times between Charles Tower, chairman of the National Association of Broadcasters Television Board and a reader, with Tower saying "There is a world of difference between the deletion of program material by Government command and the deletion by a private party [such as a broad-caster] [...] Deletion by Government command is censorship [...] Deletion of material by private parties [...] is not censorship." but his respondent rebutting this with "Mr. Tower's distinction [...] is spurious. The essence of censorship is the suppression of a particular point of view [...] over the channels of the mass media, and the question of who does the censoring is one of form only.". Johnson concurs with the latter view, stating that the outcome is the same.

Exact same argument, lol. Is Johsnon a post modernist?