The other thing that the Free Speech Idiots get wrong is this:
Free speech doesn’t guarantee you a platform. It doesn’t guarantee you access to someone else’s audience.
The Constitutional right to free speech doesn’t mean that CNN has to give you air time, or a newspaper has to publish your op-ed, or whatever, no matter what you say.
If you want to say whatever you want to say, start a blog! It’s easy, and nobody gets to edit you besides you. The flip side is that there’s no guaranteed audience: people can read you if they want, can ignore you if they want, and won’t come across you by accident while channel surfing, or watch you because they watched the preceding program and are too lazy to change the channel. Also, there are already about 150 million blogs out there, so you’ve got a tad more competition than you had when you were on CNN. But that’s life in the big city.
So when am I going to be able to buy a copy of The World According to Sampiro from the humor section at my local Barnes & Noble? Seriously man, you could collect all your great OPs and sell a shit-ton of copies.
A compassionate soul, you are applying too much credit and missing the other, more likely answer: that Sarah Palin does not think very carefully about what she says, and considers it far more important that her words contain the false bravado and thinly-coded buzzwords likely to appeal to her waterbrained devotees than that they make any kind of actual sense.
All this foofaraw over FREE SPEECH® is fine and dandy, but where does slander enter into it? Sure, I can yell at Dr. Laura to STFU, but what if I also yell that she’s entered into an affair with, say, Barney Frank, or Alan Greenspan or something? Surely, Barney or Alan can retaliate, claiming I have slandered their good names?
Free speech, free speech. Schlesinger should take a lesson from this Church on free speech (and, while we’re at it, Christian tolerance and love) which is going to burn Korans on 9/11 despite not having a City permit.
It doesn’t appear any mayonnaise, salad dressing or guys in a bear suits are involved though.
I guess she can always weasle her way out of this by explaining that Dr. Laura isn’t of the same stature as Rahm Emanuel (he’s got to be taller than her, right?).
Go on ahead, Sampiro, that was excellent, and bonus points for “narcifuckingsisstic”.
You’d think that a certified counselor with 30 years experience would have the basic advice of “being accountable for one’s actions” in the top drawer of their toolbox.
If a talk show personality has their show canceled and they cry “Censorship!,” couldn’t this actually be the case? Censorship != denial of free speech rights.
No! Free Speech is a fundamental right for everyone, not just the medial elite. And so I propose we all 6 billion of us gather in one place and each start talking. Perhaps someplace such as this would work best, although I admit that those of us near the top would have a better chance to be heard.
It’s only censorship if the government comes out and says “no, sorry, you can’t say that”. Getting canned by your network because they feel your show is hurting their consumer base isn’t censorship, it’s, uh, getting canned. Everyone’s got the right to speak, getting paid to speak is sort of a privilege though.
