Newspaper Page Text
The ADVANCE, September 27, 2023/Page 6A
Stye Aiiuancg
OPINIONS
“I honor the man who is willing to sink
Half his repute for the freedom to think,
And when he has thought, be his cause strong or weak,
Will risk t’other half for the freedom to speak.”
-James Russell Lowell
editorials
The YouTube Unpersoning
of Russell Brand
This week, The
Times of London and
Channel 4 issued a
scathing expose
about actor and co-
median-turned-pod-
caster Russell Brand.
Brand began his ca
reer as a comedian
and MTV host; in
2004, he joined “Big
Brother’s Big Mouth”
on Channel 4, and then transitioned into
acting and voice-overs. In 2013, he went
political; by 2020, he had launched a suc
cessful podcast, taking heterodox positions
on matters ranging from COVID-19 to the
Ukraine war.
Over the course of this time, Brand
also changed his personal behavior. He was
a drug abuser in the early 2000s; by 2003,
he was a self-declared sex addict; today, he
is married with two young children.
The Times and Channel 4 report con
cerns behavior during the period 2006-
2013. Those allegations come from five
women, four of them anonymous, who ac
cuse Brand of behavior ranging from emo
tional abuse to sexual assault and rape.
Metropolitan Police have urged any vic
tims to come forward. Brand denies all of
the allegations.
Full disclosure: I’ve interviewed Rus
sell and been interviewed by him at length.
I consider him a friend. You can never truly
know another person well enough to rule
out vile, despicable, criminal behavior in
their past; I didn’t know Russell during his
most debauched period, and I assume that
if I had, we wouldn’t have gotten along.
And the allegations, as Brand himself says,
are incredibly serious. Presumably we will
find out all the facts as time goes on.
There is a question worth asking here,
aside from the obvious question about
Brand’s alleged crimes: What prompted
the media to begin digging into Brand? It
was an open secret in Hollywood that
Brand was a sexual degenerate throughout
the 2000s; the media were utterly uncon
cerned about such matters. In fact, the
same media outlets now investigating
Brand were happy to make money off of
him as he engaged in overtly vile behavior
he himself would now be ashamed of.
So what changed? Brand did. He began
taking political positions that contradicted
many of the most cherished assumptions
of the media class. He spoke out on a vari
ety of issues that were considered taboo.
He abandoned his past embrace of de
bauchery and began promoting more hon
orable personal behavior.
This prompted an investigation that, if
the allegations are true, should have hap
pened more than a decade ago. That inves
tigation has now been utilized as a predi
cate to unperson Brand before he even re
sponds to the allegations in full. He has not
been arrested and charged, let alone con
victed of a crime. Yet YouTube announced
on Tuesday that it would cancel all moneti
zation of Brand’s videos on the site, pre
venting Brand from earning an income
from any content posted on YouTube.
“This decision applies to all channels that
may be owned or operated by Russell
Brand,” the social media service explained.
Allegations can now be utilized to erase
unpleasant people from social media —
presumably because of what they have
done in the past, but really, because of what
they say now. There are reams of allega
tions about a bevy ofYouTube creators. But
those who are demonetized seem to be of
one political type.
This is dangerous stuff, no matter what
emerges about Brand. If he’s guilty, he will
pay for his crimes. But the preemptive de
struction of his career makes for a truly
ugly incentive structure. And it is now just
one more reason for those who do have
heterodox opinions to avoid speaking up.
Ben Shapiro, 39, is a graduate of UCLA and
Harvard Law School, host of "The Ben Shapiro
Show," and co-founder of Daily Wire+. He is a
three-time New York Times bestselling author; his
latest book is "The Authoritarian Moment: How
The Left Weaponized America's Institutions
Against Dissent." To find out more about Ben
Shapiro and read features by other Creators
Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the
Creators Syndicate website at www.creators,
com.
COPYRIGHT 2023 CREATORS.COM.
By Ben Shapiro
What Happened to Doreen?
Part 3
Doreen became
“Maggie.”
She left the trap
pings of her hard
scrabble life in a
cold water three-
room house, leaving
behind a younger
sister, two frantic
parents, a bony milk cow she relieved each
morning and chickens that took to the
branches of chinaberry trees at dusk.
Maggie ran off to Buffalo, NY, with
one of the “boss” engineers of the Bell
Bomber plant in Marietta.
On his home turf and isolated from
family and friends, the new Mrs. Maggie
Boss felt isolated on a distant but com
fortable island.
He earned a great living and she was
accepted by his family and friends, but her
mind wandered back to her former life
and sometimes it raced there.
Life in Buffalo did not meet her ex
pectations, but she lived in a time when
women took whatever life they were of
fered and lived it in peace.
Years trickled by until they seemed to
flood. Her husband was a distant man
whose fortunes were tied to his job.
The couple moved to California,
where experimental airplanes were flown
at Edwards Air Force Base. He was on the
design team for the X-l and X-2.
One day in the 1960’s, a call came
from the plant. Her 56-year-old husband
had died with his slide-rule in his hands.
Maggie was 42.
Maggie stayed in Buffalo for a while
but finally gave in to the pull of home. She
didn’t know what she would find there,
but there were few ties to New York. She
had no children and her husband’s family
was gone.
She packed up, turned south.
The town of Stilesboro was dying on
the vine.
She hid behind an appearance none of
her old friends recognized and visited
family graves in the small Stilesboro cem
etery.
The old house was grown up in weeds,
and the highway had moved so that her
old home place now stood in an empty
field.
Maggie settled in Cartersville, just up
the road from Stilesboro. She never had
personal contact with any of her family
until one day she heard about a wedding
at the Raccoon Creek Baptist Church.
She watched her youngest nephew
marry in that small church on a summer
evening. Her sister, Marie, never recog
nized her.
Maggie volunteered for everything
that took a lot of time and became one of
those curious matrons with a murky past
that small towns protectively harbor.
My friend Max had done a commend
able job of connecting the dots of her life.
She and he had been friends, and I won
dered at what point she had confided her
story to him.
A few days later he called again to ask
my opinion on closing the gap between
the sisters.
The younger sister, Marie, is now in
her 80’s with four living children and
Please see Dear page 10A
By Joe Phillips
Dear Me
Talking Southern with the
Ryo Morning Coffee Club
I just had
to call Skeeter
Skates with the
news. As many
of you know,
Skeeter is the
owner and op
erator of Skee
ter Skates Tree
Stump Re
moval and
Plow Repair in
Ryo, Georgia. He is also the current
presiding chair of the Ryo Morning
Coffee Club, a collection of Great
Americans which includes Walleye,
who runs the bait shop over in Red
Bud; Booger Bledsoe, who operates a
local roadside vegetable stand on State
Route 136 near Sugar Valley; and Un
cle Coot, recently retired from the
port-a-potty transportation industry
and an olfactory challenge to the group
who are careful to seat him downwind
at coffee.
Usually, it is Skeeter and friends
calling me seeking my views on politi
cal matters, although they feign little
interest in the subject. Skeeter is also
quick to remind me that churning out
quality award-winning columns week
after week, as I do, pales in comparison
to repairing a built-in differential on a
dual-shaft transmission stump-grinder
or knowing which forktail soft min
now lures will attract crappies or the
high protein content in chickpeas or
the intricacies of the port-a-potty
transportation industry. These are reg
ular topics at the Ryo Morning Coffee
Club.
So, I was delighted to call Skeeter
for a change and share some informa
tion he and his colleagues didn’t know
but might find of interest. I had just
read a study saying our Southern ac
cents may be gone with the wind.
There was silence on the other end of
the line. Very unusual. Skeeter may be
a lot of things but silent he is not.
“Hoss,” he said, “just what are you
talking about? You had better have
your P’s dotted and your Qjs crossed”
- Yes, I know, but it isn’t wise to cor
rect Skeeter Skates - “because that
kind of talk don’t go well around here.”
I said a collaborative study be
tween the University of Georgia and
Georgia Tech showed that the current
generation doesn’t seem to have the
Southern accent of us older Georgians.
Skeeter said, “Is that all them folks
got to do? How come they ain’t teach
ing readin’ and writin’ like when we
was in school?”
I wanted to tell him that those at
tending the University of Georgia and
Georgia Tech as well as those teaching
them were already proficient in their
communicative skills, but I didn’t
think that would go over well with
Skeeter Skates. The intricacies of
higher education don’t seem to inter
est him.
Walleye wanted to know if the
QAnon crowd and Hilary Clinton
were responsible. He had heard they
were kidnapping and selling innocent
children at some pizza parlor in Wash
ington, and it would be just like them
to try and destroy our way of talking. I
told him I was pretty sure they weren’t
By Dick Yarbrough
involved.
Uncle Coot said he wished I
would write something about the chal
lenges of port-a-potty transportation.
That had nothing to do with the sub
ject at hand, but Uncle Coot, a pioneer
in port-a-potty transportation, never
misses an opportunity to promote the
industry.
Booger Bledsoe wanted to know
why Southerners weren’t talking
Southern. I said the study seemed to
show that it is the Generation X group,
born between 1965 and 1982, that is
dropping their accent. But the study
shows that it is true not just in Georgia
but is happening across the country in
places like Boston and California and
Detroit. We are all beginning to talk
alike.
“Hoss, hold on a minute,” Skeeter
interrupted, “them pointy-heads are
saying Southerners are going to start
sounding like them liberals out in Cal
ifornia and up north? Ain’t a one of
them would know a 3-point double
bottom turn plow from a sack of sweet
corn. All they do is sip wine and vote
for Democrats.” I could only tell him
what the study indicated.
I sure wasn’t going to tell the group
that one of those involved in the UGA-
Georgia Tech study claims that, by us
ing transcribed audio, a computer
could estimate where you put your
tongue in your mouth when you pro
nounce each vowel, which would give
them a quantitative metric of accent. I
have a feeling they would find that ob
scene.
The members of the Ryo Morning
Coffee Club assured me they would be
talking Southern now and forever, and
if the academics didn’t like it, to kiss
their grits. I can’t imagine anyone in
Boston or California or Detroit put
ting their tongue in their mouth and
coming up with such a quantitative
metric. I’m glad I called.
You can reach Dick Yarbrough at
dick@dickyarbrough.com or at P.O. Box
725373, Atlanta. Georgia 31139.
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