For April Fools' Day, the Russian Foreign Ministry put out an “official joke” — a video of a proposed voice-mail message for its embassy answering machines. In the clip, recorded in Russian and English, an automated recording tells callers to press 1 for “a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent.” You can press 2 “to use the services of Russian hackers,” or 3 "to request election interference."But I'm reading this in WaPo today: "It’s now illegal in Russia to share an image of Putin as a gay clown."
[T]he picture was described last week on the Russian government's list of things that constitute “extremism.”So can I say Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't have a sense of humor? He may have a sense of humor but it may not include humor at his expense.
Item 4071: a picture of a Putin-like person “with eyes and lips made up,” captioned with an implicit anti-gay slur, implying “the supposed nonstandard sexual orientation of the president of the Russian Federation.”
The comments at that second article tend to go right for anti-Trumpism. For example:
If it ever becomes illegal in the USA to display an image of Trump as an Orange Buffoon, it will not be possible to display him at all.But the top-rated comment is excellent:
This is so confusing.
Is it still legal to depict Putin as a "straight/bi-curious" clown? What about a very tough but deeply closeted rodeo clown? Or a totalitarian puppet-master with a fashion forward sense for male cosmetics? Or a homicidal dictator who knows the value of a rigorous beauty routine?
So complicated.
Posts
36 comments:
Last comment sounds like Lazlo has been visiting WAPO.
Wa Po is the company newsletter for DC. Inga believes everything she reads there but there have to be a few sane DC residents.
Recall the rodeo clown with the Obama mask. What happened to that guy?
It's only complicated because a lot Dems haven't gotten over losing a winnable election. To repair the damage to their collective psyches, they need to blame somebody for the loss, which means, of course, undermining the legitimacy of Trump's win, which means, of course, blaming the "Russians" or Putin for colluding with Trump to "steal" the election.
Noam Chomsky believes the Russian-collusion fixation is a joke.
Rarely do I agree with Professor Chomsky, but in this case, he is correct.
BAG, read down three posts.
One of Putin's tricks is to arrest people and put them in jail with the general population. In prison they are attacked, and maimed or murdered by another inmate. Putin says it wasn't his fault, prison is rough. Once in prison, visitors -- friends and family -- are sometimes "found" to have been smuggling in contraband, and they are placed under arrest. Consequently the prisoner is not visited, or even sent mail.
Putin is a very bad man.
Bosses don't have a sense of humor. That's what makes them fun.
""Don't say Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't have a sense of humor.""
Putin kills reporters... meh.
Democrats need a scapegoat... "THATS NOT FUNY!!11!!11!1eleventy."
@Bob Loblaw,
Oops, late to the party. Thx!
I do not understand why the author keeps going back to WaPo? Typical passive-aggressive cant.
"Don't say Russian President Vladimir Putin doesn't have a sense of humor."
Or else them Rooskies might INFLUENCE you!
It's already de facto illegal to display an image of muhammed and that de facto transgression, punishable by death, is fully and completely accepted by the left.
So gay clown pic banishment doesn't bother me in the least as long as the islamists are launching gays off of roofs. But only in a nice, lefty-acceptable way, of course.
Lewis Wetzel said... [hush][hide comment]
One of Putin's tricks is to arrest people and put them in jail with the general population. In prison they are attacked, and maimed or murdered by another inmate. Putin says it wasn't his fault, prison is rough. Once in prison, visitors -- friends and family -- are sometimes "found" to have been smuggling in contraband, and they are placed under arrest. Consequently the prisoner is not visited, or even sent mail.
Putin is a very bad man.
Yeah, so we have been led to believe. Must be true, or MSM would not keep repeating it.
I suppose it would be mean to make humorous depictions of Michelle Obama as a hermaphrodite? Joan Rivers found out that joke is verboten, the hard way.
"Joan Rivers found out that joke is verboten, the hard way."
An obscure rodeo clown found out the hard way that joking about Obama was verboten. He lost his job.
Putin laughs at the ease with which the Deep State/CIA secret psyops cabal in DC makes up silly narratives about Russia. They are, as Noam Chomsky says, a terribly bad joke. Being an old KGB agent, Putin knows a joke when he sees one.
But the Schumer concern follies on TV this afternoon were an even bigger joke.
So gay clown pic banishment doesn't bother me in the least as long as the islamists are launching gays off of roofs. But only in a nice, lefty-acceptable way, of course.
Well said, Drago.
The Washington Post has nothing to say about the violations of free speech that is now commonplace in most universities. But it's not illegal, the myrmidons of PC whine. Putin is putting people in prison for expressing themselves!
Bullshit. University PC codes punish transgressors. They do as much harm to independent thinkers as they can get away with, including flunking students who refuse to knuckle under and/or expelling them. So they find themselves removed from further higher education, without a degree, but the debt lingers on, doesn't it? The fact that using the unapproved noun for a racial minority or failing to use the approved fake pronoun to address a demonstrably insane poseur is not illegal is merely a detail that will be amended by the next Democrat in the White House.
Inga believes everything she reads there but there have to be a few sane DC residents.
There is at least one.
In The New Yorker anyway, I've never seen Trump depicted as anything but a buffoon In their cartoons. Most newspaper photos capture him mid snarl.......I don't think it would be possible to depict Obama as a gay clown. It would be a thought crime to even think of doing so. Unflattering photos of Obama were rarer than photos of FDR in a wheelchair.
Gay clown is redundant. Reduce.
"Yeah, so we have been led to believe. Must be true, or MSM would not keep repeating it."
Putin's Kleptocracy
Who Owns Russia?
By Karen Dawisha
The raging question in the world today is who is the real Vladimir Putin and what are his intentions. Karen Dawisha’s brilliant Putin’s Kleptocracy provides an answer, describing how Putin got to power, the cabal he brought with him, the billions they have looted, and his plan to restore the Greater Russia.
Russian scholar Dawisha describes and exposes the origins of Putin’s kleptocratic regime. She presents extensive new evidence about the Putin circle’s use of public positions for personal gain even before Putin became president in 2000. She documents the establishment of Bank Rossiya, now sanctioned by the US; the rise of the Ozero cooperative, founded by Putin and others who are now subject to visa bans and asset freezes; the links between Putin, Petromed, and “Putin’s Palace” near Sochi; and the role of security officials from Putin’s KGB days in Leningrad and Dresden, many of whom have maintained their contacts with Russian organized crime.
Putin’s Kleptocracy is the result of years of research into the KGB and the various Russian crime syndicates. Dawisha’s sources include Stasi archives; Russian insiders; investigative journalists in the US, Britain, Germany, Finland, France, and Italy; and Western officials who served in Moscow. Russian journalists wrote part of this story when the Russian media was still free. “Many of them died for this story, and their work has largely been scrubbed from the Internet, and even from Russian libraries,” Dawisha says. “But some of that work remains.”
You can get from amazon here.
Is RT part of the MSM?
https://www.rt.com/news/166360-general-commits-suicide-corruption/
From 2012:
"Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has won a court case against a news agency which ran a report saying he dyed his hair, and simultaneously launched a new attack on a magazine that appears to depict him nearly naked on its cover.
A court in Hamburg upheld an injunction taken out by the chancellor against the DDP news agency ordering it not to repeat the hair-dye allegation, originally made by an image consultant. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1992700.stm
Other countries do not have the First Amendment
The Benghazi debacle in Libya was funny. The fake news-driven circus in Syria was... is hilarious. But the violent regime change in Kiev could have been worse if not for the fast Ukrainian/Russian response to the rise left-wing activists. Hopefully, Trump will not adopt Obama's sincere denial and will work to mitigate social justice adventurism, sequester narcissistic indulgence, and reduce resource claims (a la South Africa), and other first-order forcings of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform. The labor arbitrage and Democratic leverage is not worth the collateral damage caused by mass abortions and [class] diversification.
Maybe: "Other countries do not have the First Amendment"
Or a Second Amendment.
And the lefties here have been very busy constructing and deploying the fed govt to kill off the Fourth as well as the First and Second here.
All the others will be easy to kill off once those three are gone.
And then, finally, the left can establish "real" utopia! Just like Cuba and Venezuela!
Putin is a great big jokester. When Angela Merkel made her first visit to Moscow in 2007, he had heard that she was frightened of great big dogs. So, for a goof, he had his big black Lab brought into the room off leash. There are pictures, and it was written up in Foreign Policy. Last year, when Putin was asked about this, he said something like, "Really? I had no idea she was afraid of dogs!"
Just before this year's Super Bowl, Patriots owner Robert Kraft confirmed that, yes, Putin pocketed one of Kraft's Super Bowl rings some years ago after Kraft handed it to Putin for a close examination. I'm sure that wacky Vlad will be mailing the ring back any day now.
I wonder how college students would react if Putin showed up to give a speech at an American college. Would they appreciate his nuanced humor, or would they try to shut him down for jailing and killing dissidents in Russia, or for his sponsorship of Bashar "Chemical Weapons" Assad? Or would he refuse all invitations, as other funny men like Chris Rock and Jerry Seinfeld now do?
How about silent era clowns? Charlie Chaplin as "The Great ****taker".
Dear lefties: Please stick with "Orange Buffoon" right to the bitter end.
Putin is probably not laughing too much right now.
Blogger n.n said...
The Benghazi debacle in Libya was funny. The fake news-driven circus in Syria was... is hilarious. But the violent regime change in Kiev could have been worse if not for the fast Ukrainian/Russian response to the rise left-wing activists. Hopefully, Trump will not adopt Obama's sincere denial and will work to mitigate social justice adventurism, sequester narcissistic indulgence, and reduce resource claims (a la South Africa), and other first-order forcings of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Immigration Reform. The labor arbitrage and Democratic leverage is not worth the collateral damage caused by mass abortions and [class] diversification.
4/6/17, 7:27 PM
Dear n.n. -
I love many, many things about Russians and Russian culture. Even the things that I do not completely understand are interesting to me. I am impressed by how the state apparatus involves itself in monitoring foreign internet discussions, even on a relatively small (no offense, Anne!) blog forum such as this. But your language, particularly the last sentence, gives you away.
If you are advocating for Russia and Putin, this is one space in which you can do so quite openly, even if it is your day job! In fact, I believe most of our posters would find it very stimulating, and our hostess is famously open to well-reasoned, politely presented ideas.
It never occurred to me that n
n. was a foreigner let alone a Russian, but that would explain a number of things including his propagandistic Tendencies, his inability to communicate directly in a simple unclear fashion, and his apparent lack of a need to listen to others and process their information and analysis. N.n., are you a Russian? Good for you. Good job.
Bad Lieutenant - read the last n.n. post aloud with a Russian accent. It makes a lot more sense that way. I mean "first-order forcings"!!! Who the hell says something like that except a foreigner with a slightly off translation.
Only so many shirtless photos before people start to talk..
That first part is ... genuinely funny.
So true, Oso. N.n., we love you tovarishch, but I think we'll never see you the same way now.
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