The issue of standards – or boundaries – is a perennial point of contention for all societies throughout history. All societies have them. The question has usually been what they should be, who should set them and what’s the punishment for abusing those standards.
The laws are full of standards; in fact, that is what laws are: they define the rules and specify the punishment for those who break the rules.
In the area of speech – what is permitted to be said – we have some very complicated rules about what can be said and who may say certain things. We have just learned that if an aging white man calls a team of women basketball players “nappy headed hos” he can lose his job and very lucrative income. Some people may object and others cheer this result, but there it is. A rule has been broken – even if the rule breaker may not have been aware of the rule – and punishment has been meted out.
Now we come to a team of younger radio personalities: “Opie and Anthony” who deliver their scatological commentary on the human condition via XM Satellite radio – after having been remove from the free broadcast airwaves after encouraging couples to have sex in a church.
Their latest adventure in humor was having a person identified as “Homeless Charlie” talk about his desire to rape Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush and the Queen of England, in graphic detail, all the while sniggering about this sick fantasy.
In comes radio talk show host Neil Boortz. He calls for Opie and Anthony to be fired. His reasons have less to do with the content of this particular piece of moral trash, but because he does not want to have it used as a hammer to destroy talk radio by Liberal politicians.
Here it gets interesting. His essay is posted on Townhall.com and is followed by over three hundred comments, mostly supporting O&A on free speech grounds. Some comments even try to defend O&A by claiming that this sick sexual fantasy, violent rape, is funny. I can hardly wait for O&A to begin the Tech Massacre jokes.
What is disturbing about this is that the invocation of “free speech” is for many a show stopper. The implication is that an objection to any speech is the equivalent of the Nazi book burning. But as we learned from Don Imus’ experience, your employer can fire you for speech it does not approve. You may have the right to say many things and not be arrested, but you do not have the right to a particular job.
One commenter had it right:
Oliver Wendell Holmes, while sitting on the Massachusetts Supreme Court, ruled against the use of certain inflammatory speech by a Boston policeman, for which he was fired. The policeman defended himself on the grounds of "free speech." In so ruling, Holmes said, appropriately, that while the cop had every right to say what he pleased, he had no right to be a policeman. End of case. Boortz is totally correct.
The defenders of O&A may lead you to believe that there are a large number of free speech absolutists out there. But you would be wrong. To understand how wrong, you need to be of a certain age … and I am. Because I remember the 1960s. And the “Free Speech” movement at the University of California. If you don’t remember that, or are too young, click HERE and you will be able to re-live those days. But the subsequent march of time contains some ultimate ironies. Today, the Mario Savios are the tenured faculty enforcing speech codes that are orders of magnitude more draconian that the limits imposed by universities in the 1950s and 60s.
And if you oppose the defenders of “free speech” be prepared to be shouted down, assaulted and thrown off the island.
The defenders of O&A’s “speech without consequences” have their own rules, and don’t you dare break those.
My position: fire Imus and O&A. Just as all of us finally admitted that our physical environment deserved cleaning up, our intellectual environment is getting dirtier and this time the defenders of pollution are not big business, but wealthy “entertainers.”
For another view try Black and Right.
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