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I'll leave the point alone, for now, about how conservatives are screaming about how people need to be less sensitive when it comes to Schlessinger's rant, but they are all sensitivity queens about the Ground Zero Mosque manufactured kerfuffle.
The First Amendment does not guarantee that anyone will listen. It does not guarantee that advertisers will support someone who is being offensive on a radio show. The First Amendment does not mean that a publisher must print or radio network is bound to air what insane drivel passes through the lips of some crackpot. If a columnist for a newspaper is told "you're too far out there, you're costing us readers and advertisers, so you're fired", that's a business decision of the publisher. It might arguably be cowardly, but it is not a constitutional violation.
Now if the publisher is forced by government to pull the columns or cease publishing, that is another thing. If a good rabble-rouses a mob to burn out the paper's offices, that's also another thing. Neither is going on here.
Schlessiner's First Amendment rights have not been violated because people are not happy with what she said, no more than Target's or Best Buy's First Amendment rights have been violated because people are unhappy that those companies have given money to a gay-bashing troll who is running for the governor of Minnesota. I suspect that some conservatives know this, including Schlessinger, and they are merely engaging in their routine practice of cynical manipulation.
Except, of course, for Sarah Palin, who likely is truly stupid enough or uninformed enough to understand what the First Amendment is about.
Frank Zappa called himself a conservative, and he wasn't an idiot. But he's not around anymore. Too bad too, because I would like to hear what he would say about this bullshit. Or anything else, for that matter- but that's just me.
ReplyDelete-Doug in Oakland
Very simple, laura did a stupid and everyone called bull$h!t and we hear
ReplyDeleteloud crying sounds of dumdum in pain.
After reading the initial cause, then the comment about 1a I figured super case of dumb. She's not smarter than a fifth grader.
Most of the language in the Constitution is pretty clear. But you do have to be able to read and not call conspiracy theory that the words were changed because you don't believe it really says that.
Eck!
Smooch.
ReplyDeleteI couldn't have said it better with thirty four cuss words.