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The mainstream media are trying to frame the argument as Russell Brand is a sex offender and that his mainstream media critiques are thus null and void as a res

by rcarr 3y ago

The mainstream media are trying to frame the argument as Russell Brand is a sex offender and that his mainstream media critiques are thus null and void as a result. Personally, I find it more likely that he is both a sex offender* and he is also right about it being a targeted mainstream media attack. It's absolutely laughable seeing the BBC, The Guardian and particularly Channel4 amongst others trying to wash their hands of this when they practically encouraged all of this behaviour and created the 00s indie hedonistic culture from scratch with shows like Skins as well as encouraging his antics on Big Brother's Big Mouth. It's weird reading all of this as someone who was a teenager from the era who idolised Brand and other indie scene figures like Pete Doherty. I remember reading about Brand dating Peaches Geldoff in the paper but didn't realise how young she was and how old he was in comparison. I think I assumed he was in his 20s and assumed she was in late teens or twenties based on the fact the tabloid press showed them stumbling out of nightclubs together and no-one seemed to be batting an eyelid. Though looking back I, and many others, were sneaking in to nightclubs all the time underage with fake IDs. It still goes on to this day and parents just seem to accept it as normal part of growing up and even a celebrated and encouraged rite of passage but maybe we should be having a more serious conversation about it. I don't go out anymore, but in my 20s bouncers definitely seemed to be taking checking IDs a lot more serious than they did when I was 17 so at least that's a start. It wasn't uncommon in the 00s for school girls to be dating older guys who were no longer at school, Arctic Monkeys even wrote a song about it (Bigger Boys And Stolen Sweethearts) but someone over 30 dating a 16 year old definitely would have been considered weird and the fact the mainstream media wasn't batting an eyelid at it is damning. Why the Brand stuff is headline news but I've not seen a single mainsteam media article calling for the legal age to have sex to be raised to 18 is ridiculous. Teenagers are going to fuck regardless, but no-one is going to prosecute a 17 year old and a 15 year old having a relationship, and the police are smart enough not to waste time on an 18 year old and a 17 year old having a relationship but at least you then have a mechanism to protect 16 year olds from getting groomed like this. It also made me sad to find out that another of my indie heroes, Noel Fielding, was also doing the same thing - dating a 16 year old Pixie Geldoff when he was 33. I'm not justifying any of Brand's actions, he has to take responsibility for what he's done especially if there was no consent, but he's quite obviously a people pleaser and he wouldn't have done half the stuff he did if it wasn't for the mainstream media and the culture they created around him. People are trying to use old videos of him flirting with celebrities on talkshows to damn him and disregarding the fact that the entire audience is laughing and clearly signalling that the culture at large was OK with what he was doing. Stuff like Google demonetising Brand's videos just make me believe even more that at least some element of this is a targeted MSM culture war attack to take him down, even if a justified one. The problem is that at some point it's also going to take down people who don't deserve it - in fact it's no doubt already happened. I've read several mainstream articles where Jordan Peterson's ideas are completely misrepresented and character assassinated in a way that is completely unjustified. I agree with some of the things he says and I also disagree with others but there seems to be absolute no nuance or tolerance in the mainstream media any more, it's all tribalism - either you're good or you're bad and if you even agree with part of what one of the "bad" people say then you must be one of the bad ones. I honestly can't even debate any of Jordan Peterson's ideas with some people I know, even the ideas I dislike, because mentioning his name is like saying Voldemort and he's "The One Who Should Not Be Named". Mainstream media outlets clearly have agendas and will go after people who speak out against them and will use anything at their disposal to do it. It's completely ridiculous. *Obviously I would prefer for this to actually be settled in a court of law with evidence rather than public opinion, but the text message exchange and the rape clinic visit do look quite damning which is why I'm currently inclined to believe that at least that allegation is looking more likely than not on the face of it, even if some of the others turn out to be false.

ChatGTP 3y ago
In other words, he pissed off the wrong people for long enough for them to do something about it, or at least, he doesn't have any friends left to protect him form the allegations. My opinion is, many of his followers will stick with him because he is a mesiah like figure to many and people will see this as some type of MSM, Establishment attack because he is revealing "the truth", top comment on YT: Honestly, dude, it's surprising it has taken them this long to try and shut you down. For me, and many people who follow your content, it is just a sign that you are on the right track Stay strong, brother.
Capricorn2481 3y ago
> Mainstream media outlets clearly have agendas and will go after people who speak out against them and will use anything at their disposal to do it. It's completely ridiculous. And the non mainstream ones will do this even harder
- rcarr 3y ago
  I’d argue both do it at the the same intensity, but one is using a false veneer of prestige and respectability as a cloak to try and give itself a legitimacy it no longer deserves.
BLKNSLVR 3y ago
Well reasoned, well written, and I think you're probably correct in that it exists in both column A and column B in roughly equal measure. I wish I hadn't read that about Noel Fielding. I love The Mighty Boosh. It's fundamentally "weird" for someone with 33 years of life experience to be able to connect, in a relationship-context, to a 16 year old. Having said that, celebrity-adjacent 16 year-olds (ie. Pixie Geldoff) probably have more life experience (for better or more likely worse) than your random 16 year-old. Still way up on the "weird" scale though.
- rcarr 3y ago
  I too loved the Boosh growing up, and I would still laugh at most of it today. So far it’s managed to avoid the retroactive judgement that other shows have. Why that is I don’t know - is it because it was cult and niche, is it because those who know about it love the comedians and want to keep quiet, is it because they haven’t fallen foul of the power figures in the MSM? Off the top of my head, there’s blackface and the transgender Old Gregg sex predator that I’m surprised haven’t been called out much yet. On some level there’s nothing wrong with the “I go by many names” bit - the blackface wasn’t really necessary other than the character was meant to be some kind of psychedelic guitarist and the most recognisable psychedelic guitarist was Hendrix. There wasn’t anything that was mocking black people, and there wasn’t really any stealing of a black person’s job because the whole humour of the Boosh was Noel, Julian and Rich playing all these different characters by themselves. It was like going to watch an improv group perform but on TV and with costumes. I think a line needs to be drawn and each sketch of these comedy shows interpreted through a lens of intent. Is the underlying minority the butt of the joke or is it the character that is being mocked? If it’s the first, by all means denigrate it but if not it should be allowed to be made. There was a lot of uproar over the South Park transgender episode where a lot of people missed the point that South Park wasn’t mocking transgender people, it was mocking self interested characters like Cartman who will manipulate anything for their own advantage, such as pretending to be transgender so they can use the female bathroom. Unfortunately, I think Old Gregg probably falls into the other camp, as unless I’m missing something (and it’s been a while since I’ve watched it so I might be wrong), the “joke” seems to be that Old Gregg is a lonely transgender outcast that is flashing her “mangina” and trying to coerce people into sex. All these culture war lines are both very ill defined and selectively enforced, which does nothing other than throw fuel on the fire that they are just tools that the MSM can use to retroactively cancel people that no longer serve them or are actively going against them. If there really isn’t this targeted agenda, the companies like YouTube either need to write clear guidelines and enforce them fully not just selectively, or alternatively drop the moral arbiter stance and instead take that of a museum or public library that exists solely as a container for artworks and lets the public be the judge. Anything else is hypocritical at best and malevolent public opinion manipulation at worst. Personally, I think they should take the public container route, because as soon as you start having an authority that is in charge of defining the culture, you’re on a very slippery slope that leads to authoritarianism. Taking down videos from platforms is the modern equivalent to book burning. The main stream media loves to pretend it’s the hero and that it created the MeToo movement but it didn’t - the MeToo movement was created organically bottom up by women on Twitter. All the mainstream media did was capitalise on it after the fact to get clicks and eyeballs.

by rcarr 3y ago

ChatGTP 3y ago

In other words, he pissed off the wrong people for long enough for them to do something about it, or at least, he doesn't have any friends left to protect him form the allegations. My opinion is, many of his followers will stick with him because he is a mesiah like figure to many and people will see this as some type of MSM, Establishment attack because he is revealing "the truth", top comment on YT: Honestly, dude, it's surprising it has taken them this long to try and shut you down. For me, and many people who follow your content, it is just a sign that you are on the right track Stay strong, brother.

Capricorn2481 3y ago

> Mainstream media outlets clearly have agendas and will go after people who speak out against them and will use anything at their disposal to do it. It's completely ridiculous. And the non mainstream ones will do this even harder

rcarr 3y ago
I’d argue both do it at the the same intensity, but one is using a false veneer of prestige and respectability as a cloak to try and give itself a legitimacy it no longer deserves.

BLKNSLVR 3y ago

Well reasoned, well written, and I think you're probably correct in that it exists in both column A and column B in roughly equal measure. I wish I hadn't read that about Noel Fielding. I love The Mighty Boosh. It's fundamentally "weird" for someone with 33 years of life experience to be able to connect, in a relationship-context, to a 16 year old. Having said that, celebrity-adjacent 16 year-olds (ie. Pixie Geldoff) probably have more life experience (for better or more likely worse) than your random 16 year-old. Still way up on the "weird" scale though.

rcarr 3y ago
I too loved the Boosh growing up, and I would still laugh at most of it today. So far it’s managed to avoid the retroactive judgement that other shows have. Why that is I don’t know - is it because it was cult and niche, is it because those who know about it love the comedians and want to keep quiet, is it because they haven’t fallen foul of the power figures in the MSM? Off the top of my head, there’s blackface and the transgender Old Gregg sex predator that I’m surprised haven’t been called out much yet. On some level there’s nothing wrong with the “I go by many names” bit - the blackface wasn’t really necessary other than the character was meant to be some kind of psychedelic guitarist and the most recognisable psychedelic guitarist was Hendrix. There wasn’t anything that was mocking black people, and there wasn’t really any stealing of a black person’s job because the whole humour of the Boosh was Noel, Julian and Rich playing all these different characters by themselves. It was like going to watch an improv group perform but on TV and with costumes. I think a line needs to be drawn and each sketch of these comedy shows interpreted through a lens of intent. Is the underlying minority the butt of the joke or is it the character that is being mocked? If it’s the first, by all means denigrate it but if not it should be allowed to be made. There was a lot of uproar over the South Park transgender episode where a lot of people missed the point that South Park wasn’t mocking transgender people, it was mocking self interested characters like Cartman who will manipulate anything for their own advantage, such as pretending to be transgender so they can use the female bathroom. Unfortunately, I think Old Gregg probably falls into the other camp, as unless I’m missing something (and it’s been a while since I’ve watched it so I might be wrong), the “joke” seems to be that Old Gregg is a lonely transgender outcast that is flashing her “mangina” and trying to coerce people into sex. All these culture war lines are both very ill defined and selectively enforced, which does nothing other than throw fuel on the fire that they are just tools that the MSM can use to retroactively cancel people that no longer serve them or are actively going against them. If there really isn’t this targeted agenda, the companies like YouTube either need to write clear guidelines and enforce them fully not just selectively, or alternatively drop the moral arbiter stance and instead take that of a museum or public library that exists solely as a container for artworks and lets the public be the judge. Anything else is hypocritical at best and malevolent public opinion manipulation at worst. Personally, I think they should take the public container route, because as soon as you start having an authority that is in charge of defining the culture, you’re on a very slippery slope that leads to authoritarianism. Taking down videos from platforms is the modern equivalent to book burning. The main stream media loves to pretend it’s the hero and that it created the MeToo movement but it didn’t - the MeToo movement was created organically bottom up by women on Twitter. All the mainstream media did was capitalise on it after the fact to get clicks and eyeballs.