From Media Matters I learn that the last two major dailies in Louisiana who were carrying Annthrax's newspaper column have dropped her column, thus leaving only the tiny wingnut-run Bastrop Daily Enterprise, with a total circulation of 5800 (total Louisiana population is around 4,500,000), as the only newspaper in Louisiana carrying Annthrax's column. OUCH! That's gotta hurt!
Louisiana, I gotta say I'm proud of you. Now go check out Media Matter's list above, and see if you can get *your* state Annthrax-free!
-- Badtux the Louisiana Penguin
Here's a thing I said somewhere else and am too lazy to rewrite, so I'll just point out that the "em" I refer to is another commenter who calls Coulter a Democratic recruitment poster:
ReplyDeletePut me down for fuck censorship. I know, I know, this isn't technically censorship, but it never is, technically. I mean what, just because a law wasn't passed, that means speech isn't being surpressed?
And em's got the utilitarian argument covered. Seriously, why would anyone want to help the Repugs hide what they are, or at least what they tacitly support? It took six years of utter hell to turn just a few of these cats; our era's notable for the amount of defection from the right, but it's still not enough to make more than a dent. I'm not sure we can afford to shut people like Coulter up.
Fuck that shit. If Ann was wandering around babbling her nonsense in the town square, muttering "kill them, kill them all" as everybody avoided her because of the smell of sour wine and brimstone emitting from her raggedy ass, I'd be worried about her free speech rights. But frankly, I don't think people should be free to call for the death of other people without repercussions. It's ironic that while Ann has called for the deaths of the New York Times editorial staff, the democratically elected President of a South American country, liberals, the city of San Francisco, etc., nobody called her on her shit. But call a Presidential candidate a faggot? Feh. I'll take what I can get.
ReplyDeleteYou are perfectly free to hate me. But when you tell me to my face that you hate me, them's "fighting words", no different from throwing a fist at me, and if I throw my fist back and cram them up your nostrils, ain't no court in the United States that's going to convict me of assault and battery (disorderly conduct, yes, assault and battery, no). Point: There's a difference between free speech, and inciteful speech.
The courts recognize this difference, and have recognized this difference for more years than the United States has existed (the difference is based upon English common law). Annthrax is free to speak all she wants. But when she goes beyond informed (or uninformed) argumentation and starts vomiting hate, she deserves any repercussions that come her way, and getting those repercussions isn't suppression of free speech -- it's simply the same natural reaction to "fighting words" as happens if a man comes up to me and calls me a "cocksucker son of a bitch coonass mother fucker bastard feathered asshole shit for brains ..." and I cram the words back up his nostrils.
- Badtux the Disorderly Penguin
We're at a complete ideological impasse here, but thanks for the exhaustive response.
ReplyDeleteOne thing, though--having been on the receiving end of both, telling someone you hate them is in no way similar to physically striking them. We give words that much power at our peril, my flightless friend.
Anyway, since I'm one of those people who only pipes up in times of disagreement, please view my hearty opposition as an implied compliment on the last fifty posts or whatever it's been.