Wednesday, August 18, 2010

For the Last *$!#^%*# Time, the First Amendment Does Not Say That

Dr. Laura Schlessinger said some very nasty things to a black caller, not the least of which was "Ni*ger, Ni*ger, Ni*ger, Ni*ger, Ni*ger, Ni*ger, Ni*ger." (No, context does not help that.)

Now Dr. Laura would like to whinge at us about what the First Amendment does not say.

“I want to regain my First Amendment rights,” she said. “I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I’m sort of done with that.”

You have a First Amendment right to say the n-word twenty-seven million times if you want to. What you do not have a First Amendment right to is to censor my reaction to your words. That's what Dr. Laura wants. She wants to be able to say any bigoted, nasty, horrible thing she can think of while none of us are allowed to react to it.

The First Amendment does not work that way and I don't know why I have to keep explaining this. And if the n-word seven times is what's "in [your] heart" and your definition of "helpful and useful", might I suggest a rousing game of Is This Flammable?

6 comments:

  1. "a rousing game of Is This Flammable?"

    That was the first time I laughed all day, so THANK you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, I love it when public speakers get all huffy about people reacting when they say something stultifying.

    ReplyDelete
  3. [People who live in glass houses should put some damn clothes on.]

    ReplyDelete
  4. We should get writing credit for the Colbert Report, because they basically recreated this thread.

    ReplyDelete
  5. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I would like to suggest that game to a lot of people I know.

    ReplyDelete

Comments are for you guys, not for me. Say what you will. Don't feel compelled to stay on topic, I enjoy it when comments enter Tangentville or veer off into Non Sequitur Town. Just keep it polite, okay?

I am attempting to use blogger's new comment spam feature. If you don't immediately see your comment, it is being held in spam, I will get it out next time I check the filter. Unless you are Dennis Markuze, in which case you're never seeing your comment.

Creative Commons License
Forever in Hell by Personal Failure is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
Based on a work at foreverinhell.blogspot.com.