Posted on 05/12/2014 6:39:13 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Another day, another witch hunt this time in duplicate. Twin brothers David and Jason Benham, CNN reports, have lost their opportunity to host their own HGTV show. On Tuesday, the pair was gearing up for their new role; by sundown the next day, the network had announced tersely that it had decided not to move forward with the Benham Brothers series. And that, as they say, was that.
HGTVs mind was allegedly changed by a post on the blog Right Wing Watch, where the duo was described as being anti-gay and anti-choice. That post, David Benham told Erin Burnett yesterday, was too much for them to bear they had to make a business decision. How sad. Certainly, the Benhams hold some heterodox views. They are not merely opposed to abortion and gay marriage, but critical of divorce, adultery, Islam, pornography, perversion, the demonic ideologies that have crept into the nations universities and . . . public school systems, and the general culture of activist homosexuality, which, David contends, is inextricably tied up with a wider agenda that is attacking the nation. But so bloody what? They were tapped to host a home-improvement show, not rewrite the Constitution.
Per Right Wing Watchs rather hysterical indictment, the brothers main crimes against humanity are to have led a prayer rally, talked a few times on the radio, written a few articles, and shock! been involved in protests outside of abortion clinics and at a 2009 LGBT event. In other words, to have taken to the public square and to have spoken an activity free societies have traditionally tended to cherish. Did they bring their views into their work environment, impose them upon their employees and their clients, or physically threaten anybody who disagrees with them? Of course not. Weve been running a successful real estate company for the last eleven years, and we help all people, Jason Benham told CNN. There is no discrimination.
Jasons brother, David, concurred, explaining that,
we love all people. I love homosexuals. I love Islam, Muslims, and my brother and I would never discriminate. Never have we never would we.
Fair enough. But, as the likes of Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Alec Baldwin, Paula Deen, Dick Metcalf, and Phil Robertson have recently learned, these days one doesnt need to actually do anything in order to become persona non grata. Before he was defenestrated for the high crime of having donated to Californias Proposition 8, Mozillas short-lived CEO, Brendan Eich, made it clear that he considered it his responsibility to ensure that his company remained a place that includes and supports everyone, regardless of sexual orientation, gender identity, age, race, ethnicity, economic status, or religion. It counted for nothing.
Predictably, the boycott-and-divest Left is thrilled by the scalp. You can be plenty offensive and stay on TV as long as your shows a hit, Salons Mary Elizabeth Williams lamented this week. Nevertheless, she continued, thanks to social media, it may be becoming a little harder to be offensive and actually get on TV in the first place. I guess, she concluded, well call that progress. Thats one word for it, certainly. Another one might be McCarthyism. Americans with unfashionable views do not have a right to have television shows. But, as Twitters David Burge likes to point out, nobody had a right to be a Hollywood screenwriter in 1948 either.
As a rule, the term McCarthyite is too lazily and too readily thrown around. Here, though, it is somewhat appropriate. At its root, McCarthys contention was that because free nations are vulnerable at their edges, they are on occasion justified in persecuting their radicals. Todays inquisitors take a similar approach, Erin Ching, a student at Swarthmore College, telling reporters in Februrary that what really bothered her was the whole idea that, at a liberal arts college, we need to be hearing a diversity of opinion. More specifically, Ching objected to tolerating conservative views. Why? Because that dominant culture embeds these deep inequalities in our society. And so, it must be repressed.
Future students of language will wonder at the period in our history in which it was said with a straight face that diversity required uniformity, tolerance necessitated intolerance, and liberalism called for dogma. Of late, we have been told that Brandeis University is simply too open-minded to hear from a critic of Islam, that Mozilla believes too vehemently in freedom of speech to refrain from punishing a man for his private views, and that a respect for the audience of a show about duck hunting demands that we suspend a man for expressing his religious views in an unrelated interview. Never, David Benham confirmed in an interview with CNN, have I spoken against homosexuals, as individuals, and gone against them. I speak about an agenda. Later, he added that thats really what the point of this is that there is an agenda that is seeking to silence the voices of men and women of faith. Say, now where might he have got hold of that idea?
Charles C. W. Cooke is a staff writer at National Review.
The Gaystapo flexing it’s muscle here. The kenyan has unleashed totalitarian forces on us. No dissent allowed.
FWIW most of Hitler’s inner circle were all a bunch of fudgepacking psychopaths.
I only wished there was something I watched on HGTV so I could stop watching it.
Well we get closer everyday don’t we?
Progressives = irony-challenged illiterates who fail to understand a word written by Orwell and the ultimate truths found there.
Mussolini would be proud of HGTV, folding like a cheap tent.
I finally learned how to program what channels are shown on my TV and what aren’t. I am having to sift through fewer and fewer channels these days. It looks like I have more programming to do.
It promises heaven but delivers Detroit.
I look forward to the court cases and outrage when conservative business owners start discriminating against liberals. There will be laws to prevent political persecution and discrimination. The hypocrisy will be totally lost on them. They will cry about free speech and such. They will demand that liberals get preferential hiring treatment at all institutions.
But it will still be ok to discriminate against people with conservative views, because those are offensive.
They got their nose bloodied with the Chik-fil-A and Duck Dynasty retreats—Now it’s a “No prisoners” game.
It doesn't matter much. They get your money anyway, because you are forced to pay for it if you want to watch some other channel.
I don't pay attention to the decorators because they are not in my face promoting their lifestyle. They are good at what they do and their job is what you see. The couples ARE in my face, so I choose to turn them off.
The channel is making another huge mistake turning off these guys for something they said elsewhere than their show.
I seem to remember Ellen de Generate speaking horrible things atsome of the homo protests and she is still "big" because it is okay if they do it--they are victims.
Hah! The leading homos are wealthy and feel, like the progressives, that they knw more rightly what we should think, speak, and live.
vaudine
As we replace aging appliances and electronics, we are trying to move towards the internet (pick your channels) technologies. We are just not there yet as the TV is a 2007 model.
Yeah, but they won't let you get there.
You can't watch ESPN on the net, unless you already pay for ESPN (and whatever other sludge they package with it) on cable. There is absolutely NO technical reason for that, but they do it.
I went thru the same thing with NBC at Olympics time. several letters to them, in fact. I wanted to watch Olympics, but since I don't subscribe to NBC (and MSNBC, et al), they wouldn't let me.
It seems that the only couples they show on HGTV are gays. I got tired of just watching gays buy homes in Argentina, Palm Springs etc. Turn them off. Watching muscle car shows on AMC.
What’s ironic is the numerous pastor homebuyers who have appeared on hgtv. I wonder if hgtv will start having homebuyers appearing on their show sign social litmus papers to ensure they have only approved liberal beliefs.
Made my opinion clear to HGTV. Now I will not watch that channel any more.
ABC’s homosexual based show “modern” family is pushing a fetish sex wedding as “normal”.
The deviants of California and ny are fully out of control.
you also have to notify the advertisers.
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