What are your favorite examples of Repubs attacking fictional characters?

[Kid_A]

With the uproar over F9/11, I've been thinking of other times when conservatives have taken brave stances against Popular Culture and Other People Who Aren't Real. Granted, F9/11 isn't nearly as trivial as most movies that get them pissed off, but it's still an example of their glaring hypocrisy about Free Speech. Here are the ones I can remember right now:

Bill O'Reilly and Ludacris/Pepsi
Lynne Cheney and Eminem
Country Music Radio and the Dixie Chicks
Charlton Heston and Ice-T
Barbara Bush and the Simpsons (hilariously documented on new DVD!)
Dan Quayle and Murphy Brown
Jerry Falwell and the Teletubbies
Joe Lieberman (face it, he's a conservative) and video games
Rudy Giuliani and the Poop Painting
The Entire Religious Right and Marilyn Manson

And those are just the ones from the past decade or so!

[Bombtrack]

1. last time I checked, Ludacris and eminem aren't fictional characters

neither is Marylin Manson. And videogames and poop paintings are neither characters nor fictional.

[Kid_A]

I'm talking about pop culture and art in general...

though one could argue that musicians who have an exaggerated onstage persona are fictional. I know Manson certainly doesn't walk down the street ripping apart Bibles...

[jobycom]

16. But considering pop culture icons get that way

by criticizing the establishment, it seems a little odd to complain when the establishment criticizes back.

[jobycom]

6. Wondered about that, too. The Dixie Chicks and Ice-T, too. nt

[UGABrother]

10. not literally

but you can see what the poster is getting at.

You might argue that pop culture icons, insofar as they're carefully crafted for public consumption, have a lot in common with fictional characters.

[trogdor]

2. How about the religious right and Harry Potter?

[UGABrother]

3. don't forget Harry Potter

He's turning our children on to satanic witchcraft!

[Spazito]

4. My all-time favorite was and still is Quayle taking on "Murphy Brown"

on single motherhood. Just typing this is making me laugh all over again!

[Maine-i-acs]

5. Ash*croft vs. the nekkid statue

Boy that was a close one. The AG who lost an election to a corpse almost saw nudity.

Imagine if it were a nude tri-colored cat, the place would have been razed.

[jobycom]

7. Rock and Roll and Dungeons and Dragons

Nothing is more corrupting to America's youth than music and games.

[MisterP]

19. Jack Van Impe saying that R&R was a tool of Satan,

& the Commies.

[jobycom]

20. I remember preachers around home calling it the music of the Pit.

Mississippi, you know.

[AP]

8. Bush v Hussein. It's like a historical fiction. He's not quite what they

pretended he was. Their versions of Hussein seems to be loosely based on reality.

[Mistress Quickly]

9. PMRC

Remember Frank Zappa and Twisted Sister's Dee Snyder testifying in Congress?

lol

[Kid_A]

12. I thought about that one...

but I didn't want to get flamed for listing Al and Tipper Gore alongside Jerry Falwell and Lynne Cheney.:)

[Mistress Quickly]

17. here's the tie to Pubbies:

But though he recorded more than 50 albums -- most are still available -- and retained a hard-core following in the States, Zappa was better appreciated overseas. Zappa albums were smuggled into Czechoslovakia before the fall of communism and Vaclav Havel, the playwright-turned-president, was so moved that he made Zappa a special ambassador to the West for culture. But the appointment was derailed by pressure from the State Department, then run by James Baker -- whose wife, Susan, was a co-founder of the PMRC.

http://www.hotshotdigital.com/WellAlwaysRemember.3/FrankZappaBio.html

[LTR]

21. Funniest Zappa controversy

When his "Jazz From Hell" album was released with a warning sticker for explicit content.

Only problem: It was an instrumental album.

[theboss]

28. That was Tipper's invention

That episode had a lot to do with my continued lack on trust in Al Gore.

[Sabriel]

11. Christian Coalition and children's literature

They seem to go after just about any book that has the gall to show a family that isn't Mom/Dad. Their latest is "King and King," in which a prince on the hunt for a princess falls for a princess's brother instead. What business is it of theirs what my kid reads?

[jobycom]

13. Then there is the reverse: GOP using fiction to support themselves

Reagan claiming Rambo showed him how to handle terrorists (which of course led to the delayed release of a hundred hostages he had just negotiated the release of)

John Wayne (the image) being used to fight everyone in the 60s.

Newt Gingrich relying on Boys Town to explain why the gov should cut foster home funding.

And of course, the Darwin Fish being eaten by the Truth Fish (ever notice how religious righters can't think of anything on their own, and just steal whatever someone else creates? "Got Jesus?" "Know Jesus, Know Peace," that little Piss Kid praying before the cross? I guess it's appropriate, considering they stole the whole darned religion, anyway.

[Tsiyu]

14. The Cultural Elite

I believe it was Quayle who decried the influence of the "Cultural Elite." Sort of the RW way of saying, we are ignorant, uneducated, unsophisticated thugs, so pay no attention to anyone with more than three brain cells who might criticize us...

[kerry-is-my-prez]

15. How about Falwell attacking Tinky-Winky from the Teletubbies?

Even the Repubs were ready to "certify" him as insane for that.

[Cat Atomic]

18. Pardon my straying from the topic, but

seeing Marilyn Manson in your list reminded of that moment in Bowling for Columbine when Moore asks Manson what he'd tell the shooters if they were present. Manson says something to the effect of, 'I wouldn't say anything, I'd listen to them. Which is something nobody else did".

It's such a surreal moment, and a very insightful observation. The only person with any perspective on the whole situation was being accused of causing it.

[Kid_A]

24. I remember that too

It's one of the more effective scenes in that movie, I think. It just shows how conservatives are so quick to attack the easiest target that they don't realize how smart and articulate that person might be in real life.

[LTR]

22. James Watt and the Beach Boys

Reagan's Sec. of the Interior, James Watt, thought they attracted "the wrong element".

Wanted Wayne Newton instead.

James Watt has given us all enough material for decades.

And what he did to the environment is the most obscene thing I could ever think of.

[zbdent]

23. Ronald Reagan vs the Welfare Queen

still waiting for them to find one.

Of course, now, RR would lose, being dead, but the Supreme Court would award the match to him on a technicality.

[aden_nak]

25. How about Repubs SUPPORTING fictional characters?

Quayle (Dubya Light) once sited the need to increase military spending based on the events described in a Tom Clancy novel. . . does that count?

[newyawker99]

26. Hi aden_nak!!

Welcome to DU!! :toast:

[theboss]

27. Um, most of those people are real.

Unless the definition of fictional has changed.

[donhakman]

29. blowjob and the fall of a nation.

Starr special report