The Locking of the Avril Thread

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xpost - plus I just couldn't fathom a black man being named Elvis.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Americans either get very very angry about 'who is entitled to say what about whom', and we get into debates like the one this thread was started about: you can't say that. But it just so happens that the demographic Vice is interested in is comprised of people for whom 'you can't say that' is like a red rag to a bull.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:21 (twenty-one years ago)

Stupid people who think it's still 1985 (or 77 or 68)?

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Why is the rag always intrinsically worth waving?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:23 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, you're asking a songwriter. 'You can't say that' is just not an option.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Only incredibly naive, incredibly immature or incredibly stupid people think that upsetting and insulting people is automatically a good thing.

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

Which one are you?

― VengaDan Perry (Dan Perry), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:25 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost you can blahblah all the livelong day l'il Nickie but until you have something interesting to say why shouldn't we tell you how stupid you can be?

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:26 (twenty-one years ago)

'You can't say that' is just not an option.

Why?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:27 (twenty-one years ago)

"to a poet, everything is useful" (probably misquoted) isn't an invitation to insult, divide and degrade people, Momus (sorry, don't post that often - I really like Momus though, from what I've read). All of the "don't tell me what to call people" is very 'funny' and 'cool' till you're getting those words scrawled on your walls or yelled at you when they kick you in the face. And arguing for these words only makes more space for violent and ill-intentioned people to operate.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:28 (twenty-one years ago)

J0hn, I'm dutifully trawling through the Google 'jew' stuff. Just got to a reader comment:

'Hitler had a point i think. Viceland NYC jew trucker hat beard sandle white trash black cock loving ethnic fags.'

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:29 (twenty-one years ago)

Only incredibly naive, incredibly immature or incredibly stupid people think that upsetting and insulting people is automatically a good thing.

Can somebody come up with one instance of this from the magazine or something I've written, please?

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:31 (twenty-one years ago)

this fucking thread to thread.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

The amusing thing is that more hate gets flung around on this board every day than I've seen in Vice ever.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:32 (twenty-one years ago)

Can somebody come up with one instance of this from the magazine or something I've written, please?

Well you know, I hate to say it, but I felt pretty insulted upthread with some of your comments about me. I really did. Coming from C-Man, whatever. Coming from you, that's disappointing.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I like avril a lot.

― RJG (RJG), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

"The White Noise Supremacists" to thread.

― christhamrin (christhamrin), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:34 (twenty-one years ago)

"How can you tell if a thread is stupid or not"

Hmm.

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Ned, you were out of order locking the threads, that's all. You actually agreed with me that this is counter-productive.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:35 (twenty-one years ago)

Ever since coming here, in 2001, I have argued for non-censorship. That is a fundamental part of what I'm about. Sorry if it offends. It's why I make Momus records, and it's why I write for Vice. It all fits.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:36 (twenty-one years ago)

people for whom 'you can't say that' is like a red rag to a bull.

Here in America we have a term for such people: "teenagers"

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:37 (twenty-one years ago)

No one is saying Vice should be censored, they're just saying it's fucking juvenile.

― St. Nicholas Ridiculous (Nick A.), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:39 (twenty-one years ago)

"Well if it isn't Sinead O'Rebellion... shock me shock me shock me with that deviant behavior."

― miloauckerman (miloauckerman), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:39 (twenty-one years ago)

The Sarah Silverman article you linked to is illustrated by Brian Degraw, an artist I know from NY. He's in his 30s. Vice is written by and illustrated by artists and creative people like myself. They are my people and I think like them.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:39 (twenty-one years ago)

Believing in democracy doesn't mean you should vote BNP

― Kevin Gilchrist (Mr Fusion), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I think Mr. Degraw might have nicked my headphones.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:40 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, come on then, they're your people too!

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:42 (twenty-one years ago)

That is a fundamental part of what I'm about. Sorry if it offends.

It doesn't. Accusing me of doing things 'to make the ratings soar,' however obliquely phrased on your part? That offends.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

And for the last time, Momus, it isn't "can't" say, it's "oughtn't," and it's a whole different deal! If someone's mother dies, you may think it amusing to say "I fucked that old cunt," but you don't, and you know why? Human fucking decency! So don't argue that there's anybody saying "you can't say that." There is no such person, no such censor. There's just sensible people saying "you're an asshole if you say that," which is an entirely different propostion. That you routinely try to position yourself as being on the side of the marginalized is risible when you ally yourself with the "winners rule, losers drool" upper-crusties at Vice.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus, nobody who takes headphones (inadvertantly or not) from an unemployed guy (namely ME at the time) is "my people." Fuck that spoiled-ass shit.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:43 (twenty-one years ago)

As I said somewhere else about Vice, it has no point of view, it's one of the most banal and passionless magazines I've ever read, and therefore completely, utterly useless. It doesn't even piss me off, because it's far too fucking boring to do that. If it was good, I'd probably defend it. But the writing is, across the board, pretty dreadful. Read the blog of some cokehead asshole in Echo Park and you'll get the same thing without the American Apparel ads.

I mean we shouldn't be focusing on the offensive shit, because it's clearly just for effect. We should be focusing on the fact that these transparent shock tactics are trying to mask the fact that this magazine says nothing at all. Those who work for it clearly don't care about anything, they seem to exist in this helpless self-loathing vacuum. Within the swirling bullshit the "we don't really mean it, let's just hint at how we really are in this quick sentence" moments feel more forced than their button-pushing.

Vice is what you get when you hire a bunch of writers with no worldview, no hope for life, nothing to say except a way of saying it (and a one-note way at that).

Vice can exist all it wants, it can say what it wants, but it's really just ironic indie asshole humor and sleazy polaroids of tranny hookers brought together with shitty zine-level essays and useless music reviews. The word that keeps coming to mind is "banal" and I've probably said it a few times on this posting already, I'm not gonna check. I'll say it again: it's banal crap. But if you're gonna fight for something "offensive", might as well fight for Billy Milano, at least the guy gets worked up about things.

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost - ESP. when I donated use of my turntables and headphones for a FUCKING CHARITY EVENT.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:45 (twenty-one years ago)

Gear you're on point, that's what makes it so sad that Momus (who DOES have passion, who DOES care about things that DO matter) wants to hitch his wagon to Vice's pointless, been-there-done-that Answer Me!-ness.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:47 (twenty-one years ago)

It's pretty teenaged to compare Vice -- or me -- to someone telling a person whose mother has just died 'I fucked that old cunt'! Good grief! This is why quoting concrete examples (and I don't mean Gavin's interviews) might help. Tact is situational. I am a very polite person! And, for the record, I've been telling Vice that they will bomb in Japan. I even proposed an article 'Why Vice Japan will bomb' -- and they loved the idea! (Perhaps they misread it as 'Why Vice will bomb Japan'!)

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:49 (twenty-one years ago)

yeah I mean really that's all that pisses me off about Vice. If it was "offensive" and well-written I'd read it, get pissed off, but not really trouble myself on this thread because at least I could say it's got some genuine thinkers behind it.

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:51 (twenty-one years ago)

xpost Momus, get Brian or Vice to buy me a new pair of headphones and I'll consider being nice to you.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, you're asking a songwriter. 'You can't say that' is just not an option.

This makes no sense to me, and I'm a songwriter.

If for some reason, some commercial success is required to qualify as a songwriter in this context, I'd be really interested to hear what J0hn thinks of this comment.

I'm not flinging hate around here either. I am honestly confused by the statement, just as Ned appears to be a little upthread when he asks why "you can't say that" is not an option.

big big xpost and I think J0hn may have already replied where I said I'd be interested to hear his opinion.

― martin m. (mushrush), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:52 (twenty-one years ago)

He did you a service, Stence, headphones induce deafness.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Tact is situational. I am a very polite person!

I have no doubt of it! I've met you four times and you're incredibly polite. I like to think I am as well -- and guess what, sometimes I'm not. Sometimes I screw up spectacularly. Sometimes it takes others to point it out to me where I might want to rethink...

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus if you refuse to look at the examples in my link that don't support your thesis, then there's no discussion to be had. The #1 result that I get was "Shh - don't wake the sleeping Jew!" picture of some guy asleep on a park bench. Hi-larious.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:54 (twenty-one years ago)

i thought this was kind of funny, but then i own david spade movies so i shouldn't judge

http://www.viceland.com/issues/v11n4/htdocs/who.php

― christhamrin (christhamrin), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:55 (twenty-one years ago)

Momus. Regarding "tact is situational": yes! Using the word "nigger" in America, when you're a white guy who will never, ever understand the historical burden of the word here, this is an example of being situationally tactless. I suppose you'll want to argue that a whole country can't of itself be a "situation." History says different.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:57 (twenty-one years ago)

He did you a service, Stence, headphones induce deafness.
-- Momus (nic...), June 18th, 2004.

Fuck you, Mr. Situational Tact, my headphones cost $100 and were part of the only way I could make money at the time. Stealing from the unemployed = huge fucking dud.

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 18:58 (twenty-one years ago)

Well, J0hn, Dos and Don'ts is, as Dan noted upthread, comedy, and once you start trying to draw lines of taste, it's 'whole history of comedy to thread'. It's interesting that that page still got a bigoted reader calling the Vice staff 'jews'. It sort of bears out what Gavin was saying: we speak harshly because we are in the thick of things. The real prejudices, though, are aesthetic. The important thing is whether you're a Do or a Don't, not whether you're a Jew or a Canadian.

― Momus (Momus), Friday, 18 June 2004 19:00 (twenty-one years ago)

Nick, you could have responded to Stence's point about the headphones differently. You didn't, and he's more pissed. Why do this?

Why, in fact, do you not live up to your own wish, and de-escalate rather than escalate?

Why are the rules different for you?

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Friday, 18 June 2004 19:01 (twenty-one years ago)

Do: say whatever you want, no matter how stupid
Don't: steal headphones

― hstencil (hstencil), Friday, 18 June 2004 19:01 (twenty-one years ago)

..and I know you're polite, Momus: it's the quality in you I envy most, your ability to retain your composure when under attack! That you clearly value this quality in yourself makes it all the more disheartening that you'd continue to defend the racist assholes at Vice. And I don't need to copy and paste to support that charge. You know very well what they are.

xpost: Yes, white folks can say that "the important this is whether you're a do or a don't," because there's no-one to tell them "don't." But the people that we (and you're implied here whether you like it or not) have assaulted, enslaved, marginalized, and murdered for most of Western civ's history might argue, convincingly I'd like to add, that to them it seems rather more important whether you're black or white than how you fall on this or that philosophical parlor-distinction.

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Friday, 18 June 2004 19:02 (twenty-one years ago)

It makes me think of this black friend of mine back in school who was talking about Quentin Tarantino using the word "nigger" in his films, and how he said "I want to take away the negative power of the word and reclaim it". His attitude was "don't do me any favors, because you don't know what the word really means." He felt QT was taking away the negative meaning of it less for himself and more for sheltered white film geeks.

Sort of like the fans of the Washington Redskins to whom the team name means nothing, and why should they care that it makes a lot of Native Americans feel like shit to hear it on ESPN all the time?

― Gear! (Gear!), Friday, 18 June 2004 19:04 (twenty-one years ago)

I love describing threads like this to non-ILX indie fans.

― CeCe Peniston (Anthony Miccio), Friday, 18 June 2004 19:05 (twenty-one years ago)

shh Gear you'll get Momus started on how when Tarantino does it it's bad because violence, that's an ok "don't" but racist language, that's def. a "do"

― J0hn Darn1elle (J0hn Darn1elle), Friday, 18 June 2004 19:07 (twenty-one years ago)

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