Tuesday, October 14, 2008

Don't Ask, Don't Tell

The producers of The U.S. vs. John Lennon make the mistake of asking Gordon Liddy about the First Amendment. They are rewarded with false-equivalence, dissembling, and self-pity.

The First Amendment works both ways. You are perfectly entitled to, on this movie, say, you know, here is the dreadful rightwing bigot Gordon Liddy, and what he thinks about blah blah blah. And I have a perfect right to say that you're a leftwing bigot who's calling me a rightwing bigot. In the incidents that you were about, the Dixie Chicks and what have you, yeah, people were taking their cds out and the eighteen-wheeler ..uh, pilots were runnin over 'em to express their contempt for people who would say what they said. That also is protected speech according to the interpretation of the United States Supreme Court.


What fans did with Dixie Chicks cds and said about them was of course never the point; the point was the likes of Clear Channel blackballing them from playlists, and Gordon Liddy knows this perfectly well.