The Dish

Via Savage:

An incredible clip surging on YouTube.

In a poll with over 100,000 responses, Nick Clegg is deemed the winner of the second debate in Britain’s election by a crushing 48 percent, compared with Cameron’s 27 percent and Brown’s 25 percent. Of course, this is a self-selected group. But the online world was critical to Obama’s success, and if the youth vote actually materializes, this could be an omen for a seismic moment in British history.

PS. Paul Waugh imagines a Clegg-Cameron alliance here.

Joshua Alston's take on the whole affair:

What better way to solidify South Park's image as the ultimate counterculture cartoon than to give it an oppressive force to work against? When South Park debuted, there was nothing on the air like it. Now, thanks in part to the show's success, no-holds-barred satire has become the rule rather than the exception. It's not enough today to lob insults at barely fictionalized characters as in a roman à clef; the more-is-more satire of today demands the mauling of celebrities and even religious figures, specifically and by name. Now that South Park has raised the "outrageousness" bar, they have to top themselves again and again. Their willingness to show a depiction of Muhammad would be the apex of the show's chutzpah, but by censoring the images, Comedy Central gets to appear to be the socially responsible organization while allowing Parker and Stone to maintain their bad-boy image—an image that is burnished, not dulled, by the rap on the knuckles.

Michael C. Moynihan goes after Comedy Central:

[T]he issue here is not causing offense to those who believe the rest of us must abide by the rules of their religion, by not representing their "prophet" in cartoon form (demonstrating that the turban bomb was mere icing on the cake). The answer to this niggling problem is simple: screw 'em. No, the real problem is the pathetic, spineless cowards at Comedy Central, who mock one and all nightly on the Daily Show and Colbert Report, but submit to the outrageous demands of the violent and superstitious. Actually, being that this is a preemptive measure, could we not accuse Comedy Central of Islamophobia? Are they not fearful of Islam, despite receiving only one threat from a group of subliterate wackjobs in Queens?

Freddie Deboer's two cents:

[H]ow am I to know that Mark Levin's book is entertainment, if it isn't explicitly such? I have my doubts about whether Levin thinks Levin's book is entertainment. I understand that, to a degree, Douthat is arguing that Levin's attitude should be irrelevant to whether his book is taken seriously. But take my outsider's position for a second: as a leftist academic, if someone cited Levin's book, and I said, "Oh, that's only entertainment, it's not to be taken seriously"… wouldn't that be exactly the elitist, condescending attitude that creates such angina on the right? Wouldn't I be confirming the idea that people on the left are unfairly dismissive of conservative argument? One might say that it's only a sin to dismiss a book if it isn't worthy of dismissal, but come on– in the actual political conversation we have, that sort of thing wouldn't go over no matter what conservative book I was talking about. And I'm not sure that's not the way it should be.

""It's an absurdity to think that eating hormone-containing chicken can change the sexual orientation of a person. By following that reasoning, if we put male hormones in a chicken and we make a homosexual eat it, he will transform into a heterosexual," – Argentina Homosexual Community head, Cesar Cigliutti, on remarks by Bolivian president Evo Morales, posing a new form of conversion therapy. (Corrected).

A reader writes:

Another small update about South Park.  I missed the original airing of episode 201 on Wednesday night because I was watching a hockey game.  According to the programming guide, the episode was supposed to re-air at midnight, just like new episodes always do.  Instead, Comedy Central showed an older episode from this season.  Again today at 10:30, the guide on my TV said that the most recent episode was supposed to air.  And again, Comedy Central showed an older episode from this season.  Even in the edited form in which it appeared originality, Comedy Central/Viacom don’t have the guts to show the episode again.  I bet it will never appear online and never re-air.

Yep, the episode is being airbrushed from history. Another writes:

I’ve also noticed their forums are down. Is this an attempt to stop discussion, or a just a coincidence?

Here’s a suggestion for the free speech blogosphere. The Youtube above, showing the 2001 episode now also taken down from the South Park Studios site, may not last very long. Embed it in your blog this morning. We need to show real solidarity with Matt and Trey. God knows Comedy Central isn’t (with the grand exception of Jon Stewart, peace be upon him).

Anonymous Liberal, earlier this week:

The central dilemma for those us left in the empirical world is how to puncture the bubble. What can we do to make facts once again relevant? What can be done to dis-incentivize the kind of lying and reality denial that has become the hallmark of the modern conservative movement? I can't say that I have answers to these questions, but I'm pretty confident that these are THE questions that we should be asking. Policy debates are great, but only when they take place in the empirical world. If a majority of Americans aren't living in that world, then such debates risk becoming purely academic exercises.

The lesson Greenwald draws from the Hatfill case:

No matter how many Steven Hatfills there are — indeed, no matter how undeniable is the evidence that the Government repeatedly accused people of being Terrorists who were no such thing, even while knowing the accusations were false — the authoritarians among us continue to blindly recite unproven Government accusations (but he's a Terrorist!) to justify the most extreme detention, surveillance and even assassination policies, all without needing or wanting any due process or evidence.  No matter how many times it is shown how unreliable those kinds of untested government accusations are (either due to abuse or error), there is no shortage of people willing to place blind faith in such pronouncements and to vest political leaders with all sorts of unchecked powers to act on them.

"Revolution, in any field, means the old stuff people used to do starts failing, and most of the new stuff people try fails too,"- Clay Shirky.