FreeSpeech and Censorship: Thread

grarpamp grarpamp at gmail.com
Mon Nov 1 00:04:17 PDT 2021


Taibbi: The "Let's Go, Brandon!" Freakout Goes Next-Level

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

FBI Special Agent-turned-CNN Political Analyst Asha Rangappa — gosh
that resume sounds unsurprising, doesn’t it? — tweeted this yesterday
night:

    As an experiment, I’d love for an @SouthwestAir pilot to say “Long
live ISIS” before taking off. My guess is that 1) the plane would be
immediately grounded; 2) the pilot fired; and 3) a statement issued by
the airline within a matter of hours
    — Asha Rangappa (@AshaRangappa_) October 31, 2021

Put on your irony helmet, this is going to be a long ride. Rangappa
was referencing a story involving a Southwest Air pilot who became a
headline news story by saying, “Let’s Go, Brandon!” during a flight
from Houston to Albuquerque. Sitting on that flight, incredibly, was
an AP reporter named Colleen Long who was writing a piece entitled,
“How ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ became code for insulting Joe Biden.”

How did it happen? On October 2nd, at a NASCAR race at the Talladega
Superspeedway in Alabama, a crowd broke into a chant of “Fuck Joe
Biden!” after 28-year-old Brandon Brown won a race. NBC reporter Kelli
Stavast was interviewing Brown during the chants, and quickly spoke
over them, saying, “You can hear the chants from the crowd. Let’s go
Brandon!”

The phrase has since become a war cry for people all over the country,
being at once a burn on Biden, the anxious, airbrushing press, and the
corporate conglomerates who are taking pre-emptive action to try to
prevent such outbursts from ever again darkening America’s door
(“NASCAR and NBC have since taken steps to limit ‘ambient crowd noise’
during interviews,” as the AP put it).

Now WFBI agent Rangappa has essentially declared “Let’s Go, Brandon!”
the equivalent of an ISIS war cry. Supportive hand-wringing from
press/natsec colleagues (is there a difference?) was instantaneous.
“Donald Trump tried to overthrow American democracy and at least one
Southwest Airlines pilot thinks that’s just fine,” cried HuffPo’s S.V.
Date. “Come fly the extremist skies,” chimed in official #Resistance
mascot Aaron Rupar. Then there was Rangappa’s fellow spook-to-CNN
pipeliner, former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem:

    If @SouthwestAir doesn’t do anything, every passenger on that
flight has standing to file a complaint with the @FAANews and they
should do so. Southwest will then be compelled to investigate or
defend him. Have fun with that. No messing around in the air. Bright
line rule. https://t.co/L7VlZWJ0SU
    — Juliette Kayyem (@juliettekayyem) October 30, 2021

Is it really possible that these people don’t get they’re being
trolled? Part of the joke of “Let’s Go Brandon,” of course, is that
you couldn’t go five minutes during the last administration without
hearing someone in pearls or a bowtie screaming “Fuck Trump!” I don’t
remember Rangappa pumping out “Osama de Niro” tweets after this
celebrated Tony Awards appearance:

The bigger part of the “Let’s Go Brandon!” gag is that such outbursts
during the Trump years were not only not condemned, they were
celebrated, as pundits and reporters for the first time told us
directly profane insults of presidents were okay. “Robert de Niro’s
Comments at the Tony Awards Go Viral,” was CNN’s bemused take, in a
story quoting artist Ferrari Shepard saying, “Robert de Niro is my
favorite rapper.”


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