Freedom's Challenges

I wrote the following back in 2017 when MAGA tripwire resulted in an explosion of rage at Kathy Griffin because of her efforts at a joke and commentary on Trump. In seeing that Griffin, and others, is now cancelled by Muskian Twitter because of her joke/disparagement of Sensitive Elon, it seems that the purpose of this brief note is more important now...and so, I repost it...

The still standing, but battered and misunderstood, First Amendment allows for the most awful choices for speech and art. Many of us here are involved one way or another in the production, marketing and distribution of content and information. It is a great business to be in and one with different challenges and responsibilities than others.

In a time when "reality TV" is really well produced and edited reality and the once weird concept of "fake news" is part of a fierce partisan debate on what news and journalism mean in a democratic society, the uproar over Kathy Griffin and her attempt at what kindly might be called political humor presents a case in point.

Griffin should be condemned as freely as she is allowed to try awful commentary and humor that fails horribly. Yet, for all the outrage coming her way, where was the same when, exercising the same rights, people went after President Obama and his family in the worst ways of hate and racism. Neither Left nor Right should be allowed hypocrisy. Claims of righteous rage should be free to flow when even the broadest line of decency and comment is crossed...Americans are allowed as few others to say whatever they damn please.

But how many raging at Griffin were silent when intentional vitriol and racism poured from some against Obama and his family. As Justice Brandeis once said, the free marketplace of ideas will allow for "bad" ideas" to be challenged by the "good", and from that clash a working democracy will hopefully make the better choices-- and that process continues as the ideas of "bad", "good', "better" remain as a shifting consensus. While that philosophy assumes a kind of cultural common ground we seem to have lost, our democracy will continue only if we have trust that the clash of ideas is central to what America believes itself to be and needs tolerance to find that common ground again.

Honor freedom of speech and cry out when you think lines are crossed. The honoring is in the consistency and learning to tolerate the worst, all while speaking out loudly for decency and fairness. That's how it works...its hard and tests us all but that's how it works.