Wow, how dramatically America has changed since Bush 43 "took" office. Check this out, on top of all of this stuff about Janet Jackson's naked boob on TV for a SPLIT second and Howard Stern getting fined out the wazoo, our freedom of speech is being assailed, and when it comes down to it, is being treated like it almost doesn't exist.
Now, to be perfectly honest, America and her government has had a strange attitude toward the freedom of speech, guaranteeing it generally, but making some forms of speech, in fact, illegal. Obscenity speech is one form that is illegal.
But what's the definition of obscenity? According to the Supreme Court (look it up yourself! Sorry, I don't have time!), obscenity is defined as offensive by the community in which the speech was made. In other words, if you live in a predominantly gay area of San Francisco and publically display a picture of two men kissing, you won't be breaking obscenity law. However, if you display the same picture in the heart of the Bible Belt, you'll be breaking the law.
Now, Oregon is a fairly open-minded state. I believe they are on the list of states that officially oppose the Patriot Act. However, when DJs at a Portland radio station played the audio from the Nick Berg decapitation video and made rude comments over it, they were fired. Obviously, what they did was crass, rude and disgusting. But how "wrong" was it? I don't know if the DJs offered a warning of what they were about to do, but in today's world when it's okay to run most of the video from this clip on the local news, using the excuse "what happens if a kid stumbles upon it by accident?" doesn't hold water.
These guys lost their jobs because they were doing their jobs. If the listeners were offended, they could have just changed the station or turned their radio off. Instead, they listened to the whole thing and then took the time to contact the station to let them know how offended they were. Of course, the DJs were fired so the station could avoid any FCC fines and one wonders just how effective a criminal trial would be against these two thanks to this obvious gray area regarding just what "offensive" is.
And if that obviously gray area of the law weren't enough, we are now faced with a world that needs to worry about other types of free speech, as well. Namely Threat-Speech.
At the time of this writing, the California Supreme Court has before a case of a 15 year-old boy who was put in juvenile hall for threatening to kill his fellow students in a poem. In an AP article posted at WFTV.com, the Deputy Attorney General, Jeffrey Laurence, is quoted as saying "The First Amendment doesn't protect against criminal conduct."
This statement should give every American hives. Essentially, what one of the head police officers for the state of California is saying is that the First Amendment doesn't protect free speech when you talk about committing a crime.
This is harcore Orwellian stuff here, you should realize.
"Wrongthinking is punishable..." I think that's how it goes from the book 1984, right? Well, it's happening. I don't care why he wrote it or what he really plans on doing.
You should not be able to arrest a person unless he or she has actually committed a crime. You can't arrest a person for talking about committing a crime. That's absurd.
What's next? Banning talk regarding crimes, period? Only law enforcement agencies shall be allowed to speak of crimes and criminal matters? Talk about a slippery slope if that happens!
But for now, we just have to be concerned that something we say might be misunderstood as a threat to lives and that we could end up being detained and interogated or worse, based on that misunderstanding.
This won't happen to people like Eminem or Marylin Manson because they're high profile. But it will happen, as it did with this 15 year-old kid, to normal folks like you and me. Here's a quote from that AP article:
In one of California's first attempts to prosecute a schoolchild under the criminal threats statute in 2002, a Sacramento-based appeals court overturned a boy's conviction for drawing a picture of a police officer being shot in the head. That boy was previously arrested by the officer on drug-related charges, and he submitted the work to his art class. An appeals court ultimately reversed that conviction, saying there was no immediate threat of harm.Damn... that sounds like something I'd write!!
Prosecutions of students under the statute are rare, but continue: on Wednesday, a 14-year-old boy was arrested at a middle school in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek after posting a cartoon on the Internet with a caption that referred to a teacher, reading: "Maybe I should kill him and urinate on his remains."
Oh yeah, and then there's good old Lisa Rein, over at OnLisaReinsRadar.com that points to former Monty Python funny man Eric Idle, who has composed a song that reminds us where freedom of speech is still safe, the Internet. Not that the song is about the Internet, it's just that the 'net is pretty much the only place he could make the song available to be heard. Why not download it right now?
Compliments of Rein's website, the lyrics to the song are reproduced below for your pleasure or offense (YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!!):
Here's a little number I wrote the other day while out duck hunting with a judge.
Fuck you very much the FCC
Fuck you very much for fining me
Five thousand bucks a fuck
So I'm really out of luck
That's more than Heidi Fleiss was charging me
So fuck you very much the FCC
for proving that free speech just isn't free
Clear Channel's a dear channel
So Howard Stern must go
Attorney General Ashcroft doesn't like strong words and so
He's charging twice as much as all the drugs for Rush Limbaugh
So fuck you all so very much
So fuck you very much, Dear Mr. Bush
For heroically sitting on your tush
For Halliburton, Enron, all the companies who fail
Let's send them a clear signal and stick Martha straight in jail
She's an uppity rich bitch
and at least she isn't male
So fuck you all so very much
So fuck you dickhead Mr. Cheney too
Fuck you and fuck everything you do
Your pacemaker must be a fake
You haven't got a heart
As far as I'm concerned you're just a pasty-faced old fart
And as for Condoleeza she's an intellectual tart
So fuck you all so very much
So fuck you very much, the EPA
For giving all Alaska's oil away
It really is a bummer
When I can't fill my hummer
The ozone's a nogozone now that Arnold's here to say:
"The nuclear winter games are going to take place in LA"
So fuck you all so very much
So what the planet fails
Let's save the great white males
And fuck you all so very much
Read more about the DJs that lost their jobs in Portland for making fun of the audio track from the Nick Berg decapitation video.
Read about the case of the 15 year-old boy who said in a poem " "For I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school." as well as, "For I am Dark, Destructive & Dangerous.".
Read Rein's full post on Idle's Fuck You Very Much song-- I mean, uh, the FCC song. :D
Check out Eric Idle's page.
Oh yeah and... fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!
MAN, that felt good!!
From NBC.com:
DJs Fired After Playing Beheading Tape For Laughs
Portland DJs Played Audio Tape Of Incident
POSTED: 3:46 pm EDT May 14, 2004
UPDATED: 6:14 pm EDT May 14, 2004
Two Portland disc jockeys were fired from a local radio station after playing an audiotape of the beheading of Pennsylvania native Nick Berg by Iraqi militants, and cracking jokes about the grisly death.
The DJs, known as Marconi and Tiny, were fired Thursday afternoon from their morning show perch at KNRK-FM, which is owned by Bala Cynwyd, Pa.-based Entercom Communications Corp.
On Wednesday morning on the popular "Marconi" morning show, listeners couldn't believe what they heard: the audio portion of American Nick Berg's execution by militants.
One listener says Marconi was laughing and joking about it.
"Then he played it again, and gave a play by play, and explained what each little part of it was, and I said, 'that's not right, that's just sick, you know,'" said Dwon Guvenir, a KNRK listener
Guvenir said the audio was repeated several times. Soon calls and e-mails pour into the station.
When the show ended, the men were suspended.
Marconi was very popular with the station's target audience and he made a living by pushing the limits of taste.
But station executives said this time he went too far.
"Our audience found and we found that this material was not a matter of pushing a boundary, this was living without boundaries and without conscience, and that's unacceptable," said Clark Ryan, of Entercom Radio.
Station employees would not release the legal names of the DJs.
The station's manager sent an apology out over the airwaves, saying: "The actions of the KNRK news morning show were insensitive, inappropriate and repulsive. On behalf of Entercom Portland and KNRK, I apologize to our listeners."
Marconi apologized on his Web site, posting a statement that read, "I say a lot of stupid things on the radio but this is the most inappropriate thing that I have ever done and I am very ashamed of myself for doing it."
Berg's headless body was found Saturday in western Baghdad.
Three days later, a videotape posted on an al-Qaida-related Web site showed him decapitated by hooded, armed men.
Copyright 2004 by NBC10.com
Calif. Court Considers Whether Violent Poetry Is Criminal
OSTED: 6:54 am EDT May 28, 2004
UPDATED: 10:57 am EDT May 28, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Supreme Court is deciding whether to throw out the conviction of a 15-year-old boy who served 100 days in juvenile hall for writing a poem that included a threat to kill his fellow students.
The case weighs free speech rights against the government's responsibility to provide safety in schools after campus shootings nationwide.
Attorneys for the San Jose boy, identified as George T. in court records, described the poem Thursday as youthful artistic expression. One passage says: "For I can be the next kid to bring guns to kill students at school." Another reads: "For I am Dark, Destructive & Dangerous."
"This is a classic case of a person expressing himself and trying to communicate his feelings through a poem," attorney Michael Kresser told the court, which gave no clear indication what it would do. A ruling is expected within 90 days.
Chief Justice Ronald George and other justices wondered aloud whether George T.'s statements were protected speech because they were presented as verses in a poem.
Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Laurence replied: "The First Amendment doesn't protect against criminal conduct."
The law in question, usually invoked in domestic violence cases, carries a maximum one-year term for criminal threats that convey an "immediate prospect of execution." The lower courts found that this threat met that definition, a decision the boy's attorney argued was unfounded.
Civil rights and free-speech groups were closely following the dispute.
"At the heart of this case is the First Amendment right of any young person to explore the whole range of his emotions and experiences, and write about disturbing subject matter without fear that he will be punished should his work be misinterpreted," said Ann Brick, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.
A student frightened by the poem notified a teacher, who called police. The boy, now 18, was arrested the next day and expelled from Santa Teresa High in San Jose.
Justice Marvin Baxter was unsure whether the justices could second-guess the lower courts. "How can we conclude that the threat was unequivocal?"
Justice Joyce Kennard suggested there was no immediacy to the threat and therefore no crime was committed. "The poem doesn't say 'I will be the next kid to bring guns to school.' It says, 'I can."'
Justice Janice Rogers Brown said the First Amendment doesn't shield works of art with unlawful intentions. She asked whether a bank robber could be immune from charges for giving a bank teller this note:
"Roses are red. Violets are blue. Give me the money or I'll shoot you."
Speaking for the state, Laurence said the boy's poem cannot be analyzed in a vacuum. The boy passed the poem to a girl in his English class 11 days after a student killed two classmates and wounded 13 others at Santana High School in Santee on March 5, 2001.
"You have to look at it all in context," Laurence said.
Kresser said after the hourlong hearing that the boy's prosecution was an exaggerated response to Santee as well as the 1999 Columbine High student shooting that left 15 dead, and other student attacks.
Outside of court, Laurence said the case might have been harder to prove if the poem was written in a poetry class, or the events at Santee had not just occurred.
In one of California's first attempts to prosecute a schoolchild under the criminal threats statute in 2002, a Sacramento-based appeals court overturned a boy's conviction for drawing a picture of a police officer being shot in the head. That boy was previously arrested by the officer on drug-related charges, and he submitted the work to his art class. An appeals court ultimately reversed that conviction, saying there was no immediate threat of harm.
Prosecutions of students under the statute are rare, but continue: on Wednesday, a 14-year-old boy was arrested at a middle school in the San Francisco suburb of Walnut Creek after posting a cartoon on the Internet with a caption that referred to a teacher, reading: "Maybe I should kill him and urinate on his remains."
Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press.
No comments:
Post a Comment