When they censor your right to speak, Leftists are fond of telling you how sensitive they’re being in shutting up beastly people like you.
Suuuuuuuuure.
Case in point: the University of Wisconsin–Stout’s censoring a professor’s right to put up a poster quoting the television series Firefly.
In relieving professor James Miller of his rights to free speech, Lisa Walter, Chief of Police and the university’s head sourpuss in charge of enforcing political correctness claimed that it is “unacceptable to have postings that refer to killing.”
Why do I doubt this? Why is it that I would bet pretty much my entire life savings that if the professor had a poster graphically depicting George W. Bush being hanged, disemboweled, beheaded and/or otherwise fatally mistreated the sourpuss-in-chief of ideological conformity would have given him a pass?
In response to the University’s attempt to expurgate one of the main pillars of the first amendment, Professor Miller posted another flier. This one condemning the fascism of the university’s poster policy.
Not surprisingly, the fascists running the university didn’t like their ideology condemned. Again, I’m sure if the posted had different content, the results would have been correspondingly different. For instance, if the professor posted a flier depicting the violent crushing of capitalism, I’m sure the always glamorous and cheerful Lisa Walter would have realized that Professor Miller’s actions were protected speech.
When Professor Miller attempted to get the university to intervene against their out-of-control PC Jackboot brigade, the university explained that their act of censorship was not actually censorship.
Nope. Not at all.
It was an act of “sensitivity.”
Well, the heroic organization F.I.R.E. succeeded in getting Professor Miller his rights back. Let’s hope that the thousands of others being denied their rights by universities across the country will be similarly successful.
“Why is it that I would bet pretty much my entire life savings that if the professor had a poster graphically depicting George W. Bush being hanged, disemboweled, beheaded and/or otherwise fatally mistreated the sourpuss-in-chief of ideological conformity would have given him a pass?”
I don’t know — perhaps you because you live in a fantasy world?
Okay. Find me a counterexample.
Ah, yes, classic strategy — offer up an unsubstantiated assertion and when people question it, demand that they prove it’s not true.
How about this instead: Don’t build blog posts around statements you can’t back up?
Very nice. But please note that I’m not demanding anything of you. You are accusing me of living in a fantasy world. Now, if I live in a fantasy world, a counterexample would be easy to find. Seeing as how I have no contact with reality, I depend on people like you to be my guide. So, I’m still waiting for my counterexample. Just one would suffice.
Nice. With every comment you further establish that you just make stuff up in your posts without any evidence.
I make stuff up? I made nothing up. It’s an actual fact that, at the time of the writing, I would have made that bet. Now, whether I would have won or lost that bet is a separate question. But I would have made that bet.
Anyhow, you could go a long way to showing that I would have been a big fat loser in making that bet if you would just come up with a single counterexample.
That said, to make your job easier, I would be willing to include as a counterexample a university censoring a similar picture of Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Ronald Reagan or Richard Nixon.
The fact is that when I was in college, one of my professors (in a course I didn’t take with him) assigned a book that had on its cover a picture of the main defendants at the Nuremberg trials with Ronald Reagan among them. Something about AIDS or something. I find that offensive. But that’s free speech.
…….Ari, you do realize that the majority of those sites used to help spread this story (Huffpo, Gawker) are pretty liberal? This isn’t a left vs right issue. Painting it as such does you no favors. (In fact I first heard about this case from my super liberal, cross-dressing friend.) Fighting for free speech happens on both the right and the left. Fighting against free speech also happens on both the right and the left.
Also, I want Neil Gaimans dogs. They’re awesome.
I will gladly admit that there are some on the Left who support Free Speech. Not everybody on the Left is a ball-breaking PC killjoy. Many are. Not all.
But, that doesn’t really excuse painting this as “oh, those terrible lefities.” It seems to be mainly the actions of the police chief, who is probably less the second coming of chairman mao, and more play by the book tightass who never heard of Firefly.
And reading the e-mail exchange that FIRE has posted here: http://thefire.org/article/13592.html
It appears that the campus police were notified, most likely by a student or employee who didn’t know the show and thus the context, and found it concerning. Now, I still agree that the situation escalated into ridiculousness, the fascist poster should have never been removed. I don’t think political ideology of either leaning is the source of this though.
Also, in regards to no liberal posters would have been removed: http://thefire.org/case/761.html
and the offending materials here:
http://thefire.org/article/9141.html
I look forward to your life savings paying off my student loans.
What a joke. No reasonable person would think this friendly, lawn-mowing-neighbor-looking, mild mannered professor is violent in any way, or was threatening violence with that poster. I was wondering if this was just a case of an overzealous chief; but once I heard “sensitivity,” I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that it was political correctness.
I’m trying to figure out why the Firefly poster was so threatening to these liberals (we know that it wasn’t threatening in a literal sense). What part of their ideology did it touch? I’m thinking that since many liberals are anti-war and anti-second amendment, that the flyer might have struck one of those nerves. Maybe it reminded them too much of war, weapons, masculinity, etc.