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By: Ian Essling
By now, most people have heard this story: radio personality makes disparaging comments, and free speech gets trampled on for about the fiftieth time in as many days.
Of course, that's not the version of the story that you'll hear about on the evening news, but that's the version you SHOULD be hearing.
You see, Imus made some inappropriate comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team on his morning radio show, and it didn't take very long for CBS to bow to political pressure and pull the plug on him, all for exercising his 1st Amendment rights.
My problem with this is that at the current rate of societal whitewashing, the not-too-distant future includes a culture that disallows anyone from making any sort of statement that may offend someone else. Essentially, everyone will be gagged from speaking his or her mind, all in the interests of not hurting someone's feelings.
If people didn't want to listen to Imus after what he said, they have the freedom to choose that, and they can tune him out. His show may have lost listeners, lost ratings and eventually lost funding.
Then, CBS could have cancelled it for those reasons, instead of canceling it because of the opinions stated by Imus. Of course, instead of letting that run its course, CBS chose the knee-jerk reaction of dropping the hammer on him.
Regardless of the content, I strongly believe in Imus' right to say it. Freedom of speech is about giving people the right to say whatever he or she wants, and the right to look like a racist idiot if that's the path they choose.
This freedom is (supposed to be) undeniable, unless the person in question is doing something illegal and abusing the free speech rights (i.e. making a call for violence).
You see, freedom is an essential and integral part of what makes this country great. Without it, we would never have risen from a colony of Britain to the only superpower in the world in 230 years.
When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution, they added the Bill of Rights when they realized that many fundamental rights were not expressly detailed in first document. One of those rights is freedom of speech, included in the 1st Amendment.
Now, my question is, if the Founders intended for us to have a society where no one ever speaks a word that offends anyone else, why the need for the 1st Amendment?
After all, if everyone agreed with what the other said, there would be no censorship, no stifling of people or the press, and certainly no one getting offended.
Why, then, did they make an amendment to protect speech if that's the kind of world they intended for us to live in?
The answer is that the Founders did not intend for us to be living in that world.
They did not intend for this country to become a country of fear: fear of saying the wrong thing, fear of offending the wrong person, and, perish the thought, fear of sharing your opinion. The First Amendment was made because the Founding Fathers wanted us to share our views without worrying that doing so would lead to us being persecuted, ostracized.or fired.
His firing was politically motivated, obviously; Al Sharpton, who one of my colleagues so eloquently referred to as the "D-student of the civil rights movement," and Jesse Jackson, who is quite possibly the biggest hypocrite in the world when it comes to discussing "racism," both saw an opportunity to get some hard-to-obtain camera time to push their own agendas, while simultaneously pushing CBS to take care of Imus, and voila, Imus is gone.
I daresay that if those two moonbats hadn't spoke up, Imus would probably have been reprimanded and suspended, but not canned.
My point is that if we go after Imus, then we need to go after everyone. If it's no longer acceptable to ever offend anyone, then that's it; there are no excuses, no conditions.
Everyone who makes an offensive comment, in any medium, should be fired under this new system.
Late night comedians, columnists, bloggers, commentators; they all have to go!
Can you see the problem with this? Once the floodgates are open, there's no stopping it.
It's very easy to stand up for freedom of speech when you support what is being said, but the test is when someone says something you don't agree with and you still stand up for his or her rights.
If we started policing the airwaves and taking down everyone who offends someone else, pretty soon we'd have one giant, non-stop PBS telethon, interspersed with Billy Mays and Tony Little infomercials. And I really don't think anyone wants to see THAT.
In all seriousness, this is one of those watershed events for the subject of free speech. Today, it's Don Imus.
Tomorrow, it's you and me. Where does it end?
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