Playboy “hatef**k” list fallout: AOL did what?

If this is true, it’s absolutely disgraceful. Via Stephen Gutowski at Newsbusters:
AOL News has been bending over backwards lately to make sure that the do not cover the controversy surrounding Playboy.com writer Guy Cimbalo’s vile attack on conservative women. AOL News has taken some drastic steps to censor any mention, let alone criticism, of Playboy’s screed. They have deleted posts about the article, banned contributors from mentioning it, and even fired one of their liberal writers over it.
… Another former Politics Daily writer I spoke with, Caleb Howe, confirmed that fact. And while Tommy Christopher released a statement to NewsBusters criticizing AOL’s decision to let him go Caleb Howe went further than Tommy in his opinion of AOL’s motives.
“His coverage of the Playboy “hate f***” list must have had a lot to do with Tommy being fired, if not everything to do with it” Howe told NewsBusters. “It would be absurd to think the timing is coincidental” referring to the fact that Christopher was fired three days after his original Playboy story and only hours after pitching a new story on the same topic. Further allegations of AOL censoring coverage of the Playboy controversy came to light when Christopher and Howe appeared on Media Lizzy’s show this afternoon…
…Has the fact that AOL’s parent company, Time Warner, has a business relationship with Playboy may have affected their editorial decisions? After all Time Warner is a major national distributor of Playboy TV through their cable company.
This rings true to me. Corporate partnerships have led companies to do stupid things before. YouTube, which is a “strategic partner” with Universal Music Group, bowed to the music giant’s request to censor Hot Air’s video report on Akon’s onstage molestation stunt in 2007 — until the Electronic Frontier Foundation helped us fight their Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) abuse and got YouTube to restore the clip.
I certainly don’t agree with the left-leaning Christopher’s politics. But he showed guts blogging about the Playboy “hatef**k” list when few others on his side paid attention or cared. I think U.S. News should trade in tired old Bonnie Erbe and hire Tommy Christopher.
***
Speaking of Erbe, she has clarified her Playboy “hatef**k” post about me to make sure that you know she doesn’t advocate that I be raped, but that she does advocate that people publish venom-filled articles wishing for me to be raped. Thanks for the clarification!
***
Tommy has been a friend for quite a while, and a semi-regular guest on my daily show. He and I do not agree on most topics, but Tommy is a good opinion journalist and one of AOL’s few that actually does traditional reporting. He goes into Washington DC on his own to attend White House press briefings, occasionally getting to ask a question and providing first-person reporting for AOL-PD. That seems to me to be a valuable commodity for any political website, a marker of relevance that one does not lightly toss aside.
Many people do not know that AOL has actually conducted a massive turnover in its staff under new editor Melinda Hennenberger. Our friends Caleb Howe and Mark Impomeni have also gotten their walking papers more than two weeks ago. Both are good, solid writers, and brought a conservative perspective to AOL-PD that now the terrific Matt Lewis has to provide all on his own. Tommy could have been part of that revamping, but he appeared to have survived it — and again, why get rid of someone who has a spot inside the White House?
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“Liberal sexist pigs”
June 9, 2009 12:45 PM by Michelle Malkin
224 CommentsThis is what feminism looks like
June 3, 2009 01:54 PM by Michelle Malkin
128 Comments
Categories: Playboy

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Ya think!?!?!?
The same standard used for the Saddam/WMD/supported 9/11 “intelligence”.
lgm said:
Are you saying the Billy Boy and crew were wrong in their WMD intelligence assessment?
Do you have to work at being that stoopid or does it come naturally?
Gee LGM can you say anything without trying to blame bush???
You know the classy thing to say would be something like yeah it is a bad idea to advocate the rape of women, or to fire anyone for saying, hey its a bad idea to advocate the rape of women??
You being jewish SHOULD be very aware of the roles of scapegoats and the excusing of violence against them to cover for others bad actions.
Here isMelinda.
Ooff, is that a piece of iron work or what?
sonofdy said:
But you have to understand, lgm being Jewish and his/her/its awareness of such only means he/she/it would have been a CAPO in some camp. This individual most likely teaches at some University, unfortunately, and is in his/her/its Socialist Paradise due to tenure.
Just my opinion, but I would think that Playboy is loving the attention they are getting from this. It’s not like this is Family Circle with some wholesome rep to protect. I don’t get what they would be gaining by trying to influence AOL News to suppress it. Who still uses AOL anyway? Dollars to donuts their mean age is about 70 and live primarily in Arizona and Florida, probably not Playboy’s demographic.
chapoutier said:
That made me laugh and your are likely spot on.
stillontheroad: LGM is a he. Unless it is now un-pc to meantion gender.
sonofdy said:
Oh!!! I was unsure of his category so I tried to cover all bases.
The advantage of a bad economy (thanks to Bill Clinton) means that a company can fire a worker they don’t like, and claim it’s downsizing.
No matter what evidence is produced, even if there are emails saying something like, “Fire the @$$hole,” AOL can still protect itself by saying downsizing.
Since The B.O. doesn’t want the economy to recover (being a socialist), the liberals that “believe” in free speech are free to fire their employees that disagree with The B.O. or the liberal beliefs of the bosses.
What kind of cocoon does Ms. Erbe live in that she can’t see how much of a monster she is? I don’t wish for her to be raped, and I don’t wish for people to advocate that she be raped. I wish for something that would terrify her much more: I wish for her to have to confront real people in the real world.
LGM has proven once again that he is a doo doo head.
LGM,
That was probably the most inane thing I’ve heard today. I bet your next post will be just as bad or worse..
I’m not into reading the articles, I just look at the pictures.
It would appear that AOL now stands for American Obama Liberals.
Does anybody read Playboy now days? I also try to stay away from anything Time Warner puts out. AOL has always been a major pain too. Take whatever they put out with a grain of salt and get a good nights sleep.
Actually, from what I am seeing elsewhere, this ‘little stunt’ by playboy is going to cost them many many millions. Just last week, playboy was trying to sell their brand for 500 million. After this, they will not find a buyer anywhere near that number.
As for the various ‘secondary players’, their dual role in supporting womens rights as long as the woman in question have their political values further weakens their status as ‘spokespeople’ for the cause.
For many, like NOW who still remains quiet, their days are over.
I don’t hear or see the femists groups being outraged. Again, they have no credibility.
The rest of those involved are less than human and what should happen to them is probably not permitted to be noted here.
They -AOL might be worried about a lawsuit the Playboy article was promoting a Crime. I don’t know why Bonnie Erbe’s employer hasn’t pulled her article. that names Michelle Specifically? They don’t have lawyers who can tell them they are leaving themselves open to litigation? Bonnie Erbe named Michelle Malkin specifically imagine if someone harmed Michelle who read Ms Erbe’s article? Although I think Michelle has a case already the threat of someone promoting a criminal act on her for public consumption could be described as a suggestion to her readers to commit the crime? I’m not a lawyer but it is against the law to encourage someone to commit a crime. Would that fall under conspiracy? After all she picked up where the Playboy article left off then add specific “Target” to her article. That isn’t covered by free speech is it?…unless the law has been re written?
If you fly with bags under your eyes like that, are you required to check them?
People still use AOL? And Time Warner’s relationship with Playboy is just like everybody else’s, they only read it for the articles.
LOL.Man, talk about apropos of nothing.
There comes a time when obsessive, neurotic posting crosses the line into psychosis.Whew.
AOL owns MapQuest. I’m switching to Yahoo Maps.
.
Just one more sign that AOL is in trouble. Just imagine the justified ‘Liberal’ outrage if say, ‘Hustler’ Magazine ran a disgusting parody where Rush, Hannity, Beck, Savage and Ann Coulter gang-raped and tickle-tortured Katie Couric, and then Nancy Pelosi.
Imagine. The outrage would last for months in the MSM. There would be calls for firings and boycotts. NOW would be apoplectic. Poor little outraged, hypocritical Libs.
absurd thought –
God of the Universe says
joke about raping women
if they are conservative
EVIL freedom lovers…
.
absurd thought -
God of the Universe says
always rape women…
who are conservative
they’re just gender traitors
.
You have ADD, don’t you? Makes perfect sense why you can never stay on topic.
lgm protects those that openly advocate raping women. Why am I not surprised?
Ha! Actually, we use AOL…so you are partially correct. Not yet 70, but getting there at an ever accelerating pace! We live in Minnesota, so you got that wrong. We are going to be dropping AOL this month. We have been thinking about it for a while now, but it seemed like a big pain to have to switch our e-mail to something unfamiliar. You know, at our age, change is hard!! After hearing about this outrage, we will definitely go ahead and make the change. Any suggestions?
Now, CiE, just imagine dangerous clowns like that poster you cite running our country.
Oh, wait! They are!
Ouch!
lgm is only following orders.
No lgm. The intelligence community throughout the world utilized analysis. If you knew anything about intelligence work, you’d know that analysis isn’t always right, but that doesn’t mean they were just asking themselves if their conclusions rang true. To imply otherwise is an insult to the intel community.
Besides, liberals love use the “ring true” standard.
It is a sad commentary that in Obama’s remade America, liberals are comfortable advocating the rape, or worse, of conservative women. To the liberals brave new America, it’s Mom, baseball, apple pie, and raping conservative women, that are the new American values.
i just wonder if the msm would bring up a story posted in the wsj where someone comprised a list of msm anchorbabes he’d like to rape? you know, maureen dowd types.
lgm isn’t very smart. However he did state that;
He also implies that conservatives can’t complain about this because we didn’t protest this joke McCain told.
lgm, I hope you see a difference between this tasteless joke (which called two women ugly) and the hatef**k article.
On June 5th, 2009 at 10:21 am, lgm said:
So you’re saying MM – a wife and mother – hasn’t the right to defend herself from the published fantasies of a liberal writer because she is a conservative and thus, fails to appreciate Leftist creative writing?
BTW – maybe you can tell us why Nancy Pelosi is still being briefed by the CIA when she claims they are known liars?
Corkie,
LGM and all the other libs don’t see a difference. This is the hallmark of their hypocricy.
There are two ways a corrupt/wicked mind is dealt with in these times:
1. “sunshine” on their activities.
2. The inevitable law of “what goes around comes around”.
That statement is not even coherent…
Playboy “hatef**k” list fallout: It is well known that liberals just want everybody to be fair, so, to be fair, shouldn’t some conservative writer put out a “hatef**k” list with Helen Thomas’s name on it?
RC,
It’s dinnertime over here. Just reading that ruined my appetite. Possibly for a long time.
Nasty
I have come to the technical conclusion that LGM’s posts is like a piece of binary code that creates a loop that forces a computer program to run continously without stopping.
GSP
“Dissent is Patriotic!-hrc”
Looks like AOL is working overtime to see that the Playboy “Hit List” on conservative women gets stuffed down the memory hole.
And if you’re an AOL employee who “didn’t get the memo” about that policy, then you go down the memory hole, too.
By the way, Erbe’s lame “clarification” was a hoot: “I’m just saying that if I don’t like you, then when somebody writes down his lurid rape fantasy about you, you deserve it. Or some damn thang. Hey, why do I have to justify myself to you Malkinites, anyway!?!”
She’s getting pasted in her comments. I’m surprised she hasn’t turned them off already. No, wait, it’s probably the most attention any of her writing has ever generated, riding on the coat-tails of Michelle and at Michelle’s expense.
I think it is against the Geneva Convention to force Jihadist prisoners at Guantanamo to have sex with Helen Thomas.
Stay away from Earthlink. And you can keep the AOL email address, if you do this: http://www.ehow.com/how_4524101_cancel-aol-still-keep-aol.html . Ask for the “Free AOL email” plan. There’s another discussion of it here: http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/aol/3636606-how-to-downgrade-dialup-to-free-email-only.html
Forget the sex with Helen Thomas, just run video tapes of her at GITMO.
Just think what they will do or say when they are nationalized or bought out by stimulus money!
lgm said:
.
Wicked, dicey, contingent, prayerfully speculative.
Errah,
just mentioning Helen Thomas and sex in the same sentence made me vomit up my own testicles!! Thank’s for that mental picture!
Errah, perhaps E! could have a spin off series staring Hef, Helen Thomas, Janet Reno and Madeline Halfbright Called “The Corpses Next Door”.
Errah, sorry, just vomitted a little again . . . . Switching to another thread.
What Is A Troll?
The term derives from “trolling”, a style of fishing which involves trailing bait through a likely spot hoping for a bite. The troll posts a message, often in response to an honest question, that is intended to upset, disrupt or simply insult the group.
Usually, it will fail, as the troll rarely bothers to match the tone or style of the group, and usually its ignorance shows.
Why do trolls do it?
I believe that most trolls are sad people, living their lonely lives vicariously through those they see as strong and successful.
Disrupting a stable newsgroup gives the illusion of power, just as for a few, stalking a strong person allows them to think they are strong, too.
For trolls, any response is ‘recognition’; they are unable to distinguish between irritation and admiration; their ego grows directly in proportion to the response, regardless of the form or content of that response.
Trolls, rather surprisingly, dispute this, claiming that it’s a game or joke; this merely confirms the diagnosis; how sad do you have to be to find such mind-numbingly trivial timewasting to be funny?
Remember that trolls are cowards; they’ll usually post just enough to get an argument going, then sit back and count the responses (Yes, that’s what they do!).
False Identity – Because they are cowards, trolls virtually never write over their own name, and often reveal their trolliness (and lack of imagination) in the chosen ID. As so many folk these days use false ID, this is not a strong indicator on its own!
(via flayme.com)
I guess I should have attached that to a post from lgm?
Errah, phewwww, thought that flamer was at me!!!!
DBNinKY (#35)
Defend is fine. Presume is less fine.
Hangfire said (#48):
Aren’t we huff-n-puffing today about rape talk on the internet.
Chap’s 70 year olds in Florida, because their AOL is too slow to download porn…
LGM – That was a streeeetch, even for you.
As for Erbe, hate speech from a hatemonger.
God bless Verizon FIOS.
Man. I hate to use this rather gamey inner-street joke, but maybe it’ll perk MM with a sense of lurid flattery in the face of insult. (Paint it racial as you wish for greater effect.)
It’s a NYC apartment complex (Co-Op City) and it’s late at night as an elderly woman hobbles into the lobby after visiting friends and nervously makes for a lone elevator. Just before its doors close this huge street punk type — no doubt he’s a BAD mother! — pushes inside and hits the up button and mutters to himself during the ride. He notices that the old woman is shaking and quaking in her shoes, whimpering and cringing like a cornered mouse expecting to get hit by a tiger any second. He snickers and snorts at her; “Hey, you’re safe, lady! Like who’d wanna rape an ugly old bat like you??” With a gasp, she sobs hysterically long after he steps out.
James Greenidge
Queens, NY
AOL has constantly and consistently proven to be a pathetically biased, shrill and useless source of information. Everything about AOL is nauseating
Weak, Erbe. Michelle may sound vicious to people who disagree with her, but I think it would be rather tough to find an instance of Michelle ever saying anyone deserved to be raped, hate-f***ed, whatever. Erbe provides no basis for comparison to debate the issue.
Also, N.O.W. gave a statement to Elizabeth Hasselbeck condemning the Playboy article, which Elizabeth read on The View the other day.
Best of luck to you, Tommy.
Where are the feminists screeching about the backlash against women?
Feminists talk about how they are all for women and find imaginary offenses in situations where there are none.
When another woman (Conservative) gets in their way, they stand in silent approval and/or do some serious oppression themselves. They are not for women, only for liberal Democratic women.
Flame me if you must: I am hard-wired “what’s good enough for the goose is good enough for the gander” advocate of gender equality. I have seen through their lies and really don’t see anything positive feminist accomplishmens. They claim much but have done nothing– actually they’re less than zero.
Bonnie Erbe sounds like she’s campaigning to be Obama’s next Supreme Court nominee. She can make snap judgements after she has “stopped paying attention” to the facts years ago. She has identity politics down to a tee. She knows who needs to be punished by the color of their politics. Blue deserves “empathy” and Red deserves “venom”. She can pass judgement without showing proof of a single example of hate or “venom-spewing” by the condemned.
Of course, the venom-spewing that Erbe freely engages in doesn’t count. You see, it’s always wrong to hate — unless you hate the haters. And it’s always wrong to be intolerant — unless you’re being intolerant of the intolerant. All you have to do is define “right-wing” as the embodiment of “hate and intolerance” and voila, it’s now ok to hate everyone on the right while at the same time condemning all hate and intolerance. See how it works?
Amerika Online rallies for the Obama cultists… covering Hugh’s spews… how pathetic.
I know I’m supposed to be outraged at this whole incident, but it’s really kind of cute. The upside down playboy bunny. You are mad about it, but what great publicity.
You could say it like its an award or something. Like you won another award from even liberal sites like Playboy for being fair and honest. Seriously, it has to be good pub to have your name next to playboys in the national news anyway – eh? It’s not like anyone actually touched you.
Do you really think that someone is going to read this and do something bad to you? The worst that could happen is some dudes who never heard of you saw you in Playboy and thought they should check you out – how is that bad.
But yeah, keep this in the media attention. I’d talk about it every day. In fact, I’d DEMAND that Heff himself come to the board and contribute as a guest blogger one day.
It’s marketing and Heff has the ‘sex sells’ thing cornered. Heff and Playboy don’t want to offend anyone. They want everyone happy. They took it down but I’d still use it for pub.
Yes, that’s the one: the same one used by every intelligence agency in the world at the time to reach the same conclusion as Bush.
Only you equate having sex with Thomas as rape. I would just find it physically (maybe more mentally) impossible…
I hate to tell mz. Erbe, but the only person that is twisting her words is herself.
Yes, she did say and use the word “venom”. She said that Michelle invited said venom to be used against her.
However, this was used when describing a certain type of “venomous” attack, i.e. the “Grudge F’ing” of Conservative women.
Therefore, no retraction by anyone but this hideous beast need be made. The message was indeed clear, and that is this jealous woman declared that venom is justifed against our dear host, especially when that venom can be describing ‘Grudge rape”.
Yea, my mother didn’t buy the “just reading the articles” either
But by 15 or 16 I would think most males would be over Playboy–obviously not.
Hopefully Time Warner/AOL will soon join the other dinosaur media and just fade away. Then those tired old fools can “hatef**k” each other and leave real people alone.
Yes lgm, Bush did it.
It’s entirely possible that Playboy felt at ease about posting this hateful article as a result of the media’s silence on similar statements made last year against Gov Palin.
I remember several female satirists and comediennes being especially vicious towards the governor, and w/ few in the MSM saying anything to rebuff it.
On June 5th, 2009 at 1:27 pm, Hangfire said:
I think it is against the Geneva Convention to force Jihadist prisoners at Guantanamo to have sex with Helen Thomas.
torture by Obama’s very definition…jes’ sayin’….
Seriously? 15 or 16 is the end date for appreciating hot naked women? Sex sells. . . men are never going to be ‘over Playboy’. It’s the simplest business model in history.