Redefining Torture: The Mancow/Keith-O Show

by Scott Creighton

I have deliberately stayed out of the Mancow/water-boarding fiasco because I just can’t stand obvious propaganda and PR moves. I don’t care what side of the pretend left/right divide it comes from, it’s just stagnate BS one way or the other.

But today, someone wrote something about this insipid little sideshow that absolutely reflected what I thought the day after it happened.  And my take on this whole thing isn’t going to be what you think it is going to be. They seemed to suggest it was all staged, a "put-on" for the publicity.

Of course it’s fake. All bullshit. But now the real question is “why?”.

Raw Story has an article about this ridiculous scheme; apparently it was all “staged” according to some website somewhere.

No shit.

Gawker gets the first annual, American Everyman “NoShitDipShit” Award for stating the obvious; that not only was the Mancow thing staged, but that it was probably contrived by Olbermann as well, or his “people”.

Olbermann of course denied everything live on the air with Mancow getting some more precious face-time (and the story and the “water-boarding” video getting more play) and he even used the “conspiracy theorist” ad hom attack on Gawker, which for me did nothing more than to further expose Olbermann as a corporatist brown-shirt bobble-head doll with a big paycheck and the sense to know what side his limo is buttered on.  (Go back to ESPN, asshole. And take your fake self-righteous indignation with you)

Keith-O (like Bill-O) is bullshit.

Keith-O brought Mancow on his show the other night so that he could testify that after his little “charity” (is he also giving up all the additional revenue this session has brought since that day?) water-boarding event, he can now “see the light”.  He was healed!

Mancow got up out of the chair and walked across the stage… and Preacher Olbermann was there ready and waiting to take the accolades.

Mancow now says “this IS torture!”… tah DUM!  (that’s an important part… don’t miss it) or “THIS is torture...” but we’ll get to that later.

Next day someone posts that video up link on Reddit (where I spend WAY too much time…) and they PRAISE the converted Mancow like a newbe in an AA meeting getting his white chip.

“until you do it, you have no idea, there is no question, it’s TORTURE.” That’s what the “progressive” Redditor put up as a heading and the following is what I wrote then (now mind you, my response here was written on Weds. long before all the news about staging the event even came out!)

You see, that is the stupidity and the dishonesty of these pro-war chicken-hawks.

“until you do it, you have no idea...” Mancow… Really? So until you light yourself on fire, you have no idea it’s gonna hurt like shit?

Of course he knew it was torture. What he means to say is that he thought he could put up with it for 16 seconds (as opposed to say… 7 fucking years...) and then emerge on the other side a “hero” of the war-mongering “moderates” from the right… and the left.

What happened was he turned out to be just another loud-mouth punk-ass chicken-hawk country-club cheerleader for the military industrial complex.

Now what is he doing? Looking to offset losses by turning “hero” for the anti-torture movement. He is turning a “loss” into opportunity… and Keith should never have given him the airtime to do it.

He is nothing but a self-promoting sleaze. He was a sleaze before water-boarding… and is still AFTER water-boarding… no, I don’t give him any credit for trying to stuff more money in his pockets with this cheap ass stunt.  willyloman

I saw through it as a cheap ass side-show stunt the day after. It was bullshit folks, no doubt about it.

But what is more important is what followed.

Someone there suggested I give the guy credit even though his intentions are not the purest thing in the world and at that point I hit probably the most important aspect of this whole scripted propaganda piece…

Water-boarding is torture. What he did was not water-boarding.

Tortured people don’t get little elephants to drop when things get a little scary. They don’t have someone rub their backs and reassure them after their 6 seconds of duress… They don’t get to jump back in their limos afterward.

(there are no cameras there to capture the event, no one there to make sure you don’t actually die… and the tortures don’t treat you like a STAR… instead they treat you like they would just as soon kill you so they can go play golf cus you ain’t nothin but a piece of shit to them. That’s torture)

(Torture victims)are dragged away to their cells exhausted, terrified, soaking wet, beaten, stripped naked, and hung up from the ceiling for the next 12 hours while screaming music blasts them and they end up pissing and shitting on themselves til the next 3 hour water-boarding session starts…That’s “water-boarding“.

(… and they do it over and over and over again for days and days and days...)

That dick Mancow wasn’t water-boarded, he was teased. And he is now milking it for all it’s worth.  willyloman

This whole Keith-O/Mancow freakshow carny attraction wasn’t about the education of Mancow, it was about your education.

You see, yes, this was a staged event, contrived to redefine torture.

You take a loud-mouthed conservative talk-show host who wants a ratings boost and you set up a “touchy-feely” torture session for him to undergo. He jumps up out of the chair like a guy at the traveling evangelist healing show and claims “Yes BY GOD!  THIS is torture.”.

Nothing changes. The laws all stay the same. The CIA is untouchable and who really cares when the lights go out on the economy whether or not “Off the Table” Pelosi, knew or didn’t know…

nothing changes…

Except…

The angry liberals now have an idea in their little pee heads; they now have a picture of “torture”.  And really, is it all that bad? 6 seconds? All that love afterward? Rubbing his back? Sir this and Sir that… that ain’t that bad. Isn’t as bad as we thought, now is it?

There you go. That’s all they did. That’s “torture”. See? We ain’t that bad… after all, that must be what happened right? I mean, look at what it did to Mancow, right?

You are being programed.

The people that run this country put on this little show for your benefit, not Mancows.

They want you to keep arguing about water-boarding cus it beats the hell out of us looking at pictures of soldiers ass-raping children or sodomizing them with broom handles.

So as the pressure over the release of the photos grows, along comes Keith-O (rhymes with Bill-O) to offer up a little more distraction with the willing aid of a right-wing talking head who could use the publicity.

And Team DLC Obama Brand just rolls right along.

It’s all a stage, people.  All just a show.

The “faces” and the “heels” battle it out under the big-top with us petty little puppets huddled together in the dark with our “Go Team!” signs of red and blue, chanting “U – S – A!   U – S – A!” til the lights go out and we all go home.

Show’s over folks.

We go home with our conservative or progressive ideas of what is “right and wrong” in the world neatly reaffirmed, once again.

And we are on the side of good. We are always on the side of good, no matter what side we are on.

And somewhere in Bagram a carpenter is screaming and we can’t hear him because even though we left the theatre, the show goes on.

The show must go on.