An open letter to numerous media personalities, both left and right:
FREE SPEECH®™ means you can say pretty much what you like and not go to jail.
FREE SPEECH®™ does NOT mean you can say whatever you like and not catch hell for it from people you just pissed off when you said it.
People *do not *have the right to pelt you with rocks and garbage, yell at you in your house, poison your well or otherwise physically harm you, but they DO have the right to call you a panty waisted fruitwhip or a fascist douche monkey or a pretty much any other not nice term of their choosing and to do so publicly and with copious commentary should they so desire.
A very few rules might apply. The “no yelling fire in a crowded theater” thing is a famous one, and while I’m not sure exactly what statute it would violate I’m reasonably sure that if I put on my best Al Swearengen voice and said “One of you little cocksuckers needs to move your fucking ass or else devote time to the excavation of my foot from your fucking rectal regions, and by the by Santa Claus is dead, the Easter Bunny’s a lie and I have personally arbitrated your mother’s exchange of pussy for three tobacco and cum stained dollar bills on the last Tuesday night before the rent is due!” to a group of pre-school students hogging the “color it yourself” wall at a public art museum it would probably violate a statute somewhere, but most things that are less than these are fair game.
Now, on a similar note, when the government says “We don’t like what you’re saying so we forbid you to say it and if you try to say it we’ll do rude and terrible not nice things to you”, that IS censorship.
When a *media conglomerate *says “We don’t like what you’re saying so we’re not going to pay you a shitload of money to say it”, that **IS NOT **censorship, that is a business decision. It might or might not violate your contract with them but if it does there are ways to pursue remedy to that.
I mention this because there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding the subject. Dr. Laura Schlessinger (or, as I call her, Bitch, and you can either quote me or call me names for that- FREE SPEECH®™ ) refers to how she’s quitting her job to get her Civil Rights back after the flack she received for her *hey guys let’s do nigger… nigger nigger bo bigger banana fanna fo figger" [ahem] advice[/ahem] on her call in show. Don Imus and supporters cried ‘censorship’ when he was fired for napping on a hedgehog or whatever. However, the right wing has far from a monopoly on this: Bill Maher cried censorship when network cancelled Politically Correct and still bitches about it many years and millions of dollars later (yeah, first Galileo and then Anne Frank and now you, when will the persecution end?). More recently a local D.J. in Alabama was fired for bashing tea partiers (specifically calling them white trash) at a country station with lots of conservative, Tea partying, and or white trash listeners and he claimed it was a violation of his freedom of speech as well.
In my second best Al Swearengen, “fuckin’ no it fuckin’ isn’t, you narcifuckingsisstic fucktards!”, or a medium R. Lee Ermey* “Go back to Namby Pamby Land you jackwagon!”.
So to recap:
Right to say it, write it, wear it on a t-shirt or tattoo it on your cleavage: in the Constitution.
Right to get paid for saying it: NOT in the Constitution.
Right to not to have to deal with shit as a result of having said it: NOT in the Constitution.
An analogy:
I’m over 21 and not a felon, thus I have the right to wear a mullet and spandex biking shorts with my belly hanging out over them all while drinking a Coors and cutting my fingernails with a hunting knife. All of this is legal for m.
If I drink a Coors at work while cutting my fingernails with a hunting knife and putting the clippings into my navel which is exposed where it laps over my spandex biking shorts and occasionally shaking my mullet, my bosses have the right to say “we really don’t like you doing that”, and if I said to them “Fuck you bitches, George Washington charged up San Juan Hill and Ben Franklin wrote the Gettysburg Address and Rosa Parks killed all those busdrivers all so that I have the freedom to do what I want” they have the right to say “But please, we don’t want you to to, and gosh darn it we think you should consider alternative employment”, and I probably wouldn’t be able to sue them successfully for feeling up my inner child. Very similar situation except substitute words and repercussions and corporate policies for stuff for beer and spandex biking shorts and hunting knife and inner child molesting.
Or if I’m wrong perhaps a Constitutional scholar will correct me. (Barry? Barry O’Bama, you out there?)
Lame, but unnecessary and mostly blood free.
*Your lagniappe for this thread is my celebrity insider information: did you wonder if R. Lee Ermey has alapecia or cancer when you saw him in that commercial and he was bald? Lay rest your worries, he’s not. He was hired to speak to a corporate group in Mississippi the week before that was shot, used a local hair stylist to get a last minute haircut, and she did such a terrible job he just said ‘fuck it’ and shaved his head. Got it from somebody who was there and heard him tell the story.
You made me so happy, I actually went and found a cite for you to back up what I know about the “FIRE!” yelling thing.