Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Donohue alleges media cover-up of harmless Jon Stewart joke

By Joé McKen at 5:12 PM ET | 1 comment »
Jon Stewart
Jon Stewart

Watch out, Jon Stewart and The Daily Show: Bill Donohue is vewy angwy at you and wants you to know he’ll be whining petulantly mounting a full-scale counterattack if you don’t immediately prostrate yourself before him in apology. Because he’s the self-styled representative for all Catholics, don’t you know, and if he’s got his knickers in a twist, then Churchians everywhere are offended … I guess. (Which is weird, as the only other people making any noise about this are the dolts over at NewsBusters and similar Right-wing “watchdog” sites. Not a peep from any non-pearl-clutching Catholics anywhere.)

For those of you not in the know, here’s the segment that Donohue is so verklempt over, from Monday’s broadcast:

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Transcript (via NewsBusters – yes, I’m lazy): (click the [+/-] to open/close →) [+]

Can you tell which part in particular got Donohue & co.’s attention? Ready to feel the outrage? Here you go:

“Vagina manger”
Ooh la la!

… Wait. That’s it? No burning crosses? No calling Jesus a self-murdering zombie? No demonic crucifix sex toy [NSFW]? Just a silly little image involving some creatively censored privates? (Honestly, I can barely even tell what that thing is; I never would’ve known if Stewart hadn’t actually called it a “vagina manger”.)

Better yet, not satisfied with cranking up the contrived outrage machine to 11, Donohue is now wondering why no-one else seems to mention his new pet cause:

Reuters did a story on Monday’s edition of “The Daily Show” but never mentioned the vagina manger scene segment; it was picked up by the chicagotribune.com, msnbc.com, and Yahoo! Movies. Also reporting on this episode, but never citing the obscene segment were the following: the blog site of the latimes.com; gawker.com; huffingtonpost.com; theatlanticwire.com; talkingpointsmemo.com; thewrap.com; NBC-TV New York; and NBC-TV Chicago. Only mediaite.com and dailykos.com mentioned the offensive part.

The cover-up is revealing. This episode of “The Daily Show” was done to protest Fox’s alleged indifference to the “war on women,” and in doing so Stewart not only made a vulgar attack on Christians, he objectified women.

Really? Bill is whining that others aren’t also losing their minds over a silly and perfectly benign joke on a late-night comedy show? (And that’s not even mentioning the irony that Donohue is accusing Stewart of being demeaning to women, given the logic behind the idea that something is supposedly sullied by being associated with a woman’s tender parts, thus implying that female genitals – and by extension, women themselves – are filthy and sinful and whatnot. Which is standard Catholic doctrine, of course.)

I think I know why no-one other than Rightist cranks are complaining about this, Donohue. It’s not because of some “media cover-up” (by whom, I ask?). It’s because no-one else cares. You see, they, unlike you and your ilk, were fortunate to be born with this thing called a sense of humor. They can take a joke without construing every single little jab as blaspheming hate-speech. Maybe you ought to take a leaf out of their book?

Then again …

We are asking Stewart to apologize. If he does not, we will mobilize Protestants, Jews, Mormons and Muslims to join us in a boycott of his sponsors. Moreover, we will not stop with a boycott; there are other things that can be done to register our outrage. We are prepared to spend the money it takes to make this a nationwide issue, and we are prepared to stay the course. Tomorrow we will have something definitive to say, one way or the other.

… apparently you’d rather make an even bigger fool of yourself than you already have. Hint: Threatening to crush a TV comedian over a jape that virtually no-one else cares about is not going to end in your favor. That’s just mathematics.

But hey, by all means, Bill, fool away. I’m just hoping Stewart does address you and your phony trumped-up whining on his show – and laughs at you for the whole half hour, or at least until you finally recognize that the world doesn’t revolve around you and your Gingrich-size ego and that no-one else needs to kiss your ass whenever you decide to get offended by every little prod on television.

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