Censorship from the Left and Right
Thanks to the campaign finance laws, political groups are now busy filling FCC complaints at any sign of “partisan” behavior by the media. According to them, speech is only “free” when it’s non-commercial, non-political, and anti-“hate.” Political stances are a “right” reserved for politicians, it seems. All thanks to John McCain, a corrupt has-been politician, who made a comeback peddling censorship and now has both parties in his lap for his “non-partisan” positions.
On top of that, arbitrarily selected categories of speech are banned for being sexually-explicit or violent – or the group in question is threatened until it begins “voluntary self-regulation.” Free speech in America is not dead yet, but there are very few left who understand what it means.
This reminds me of something that happened last week in one of my classes.
One of my classmates, a feminist was making the point that there are many literary journals out there that don’t publish any feminist writings. She called this censorship. The icing on the cake was that she had started her own little journal that featured ONLY feminist writings. When I pointed out to her that according to her own definition, what she was doing was also censorship, she looked puzzled for a second. Then she replied:
“Yeah, but my literary journal is not a BIG, established one”.
So I suppose this demonstrates how people view free speech. The bigger a media outlet becomes, the less they are entitled to say what they like.
Comment by Ranil — 10/31/2004 @ 7:20 pm
Well said, David - and good comment, Ranil. Just happened upon your blog. Good work…
Comment by john — 11/1/2004 @ 9:04 am