Legal Commentary

Freedom Of Speech

By Big Tent Democrat

Glenn Greenwald touches on Ross Douthat's typical selective outrage when it comes to censorship, but I want to touch on a different point -- on what censorship actually is. The South Park example Douthat focuses on is an especially poor choice in my view. The South Park program that Douthat champions is no longer run by Comedy Central, which is owned by Viacom, a publicly traded corporation. Whether Viacom should run the episode or not, is of course, a matter of opinion.

What is not an opinion is that it is utterly Viacom's RIGHT to decide whether it will run the episode or not. This is a much different issue than government censoring speech. The South Park duo, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, can express themselves in just about any manner they choose, but Viacom is not obliged to run it on their channels.

Indeed, Douthat himself proves the point when he seems to lament the lack of limits on expression in our culture:

In a less jaded era, [South Park's] creators would have been the rightful heirs of Oscar Wilde or Lenny Bruce — taking frequent risks to fillet the culture’s sacred cows.

In ours, though, even Parker’s and Stone’s wildest outrages often just blur into the scenery. In a country where the latest hit movie, “Kick-Ass,” features an 11-year-old girl spitting obscenities and gutting bad guys while dressed in pedophile-bait outfits, there isn’t much room for real transgression. Our culture has few taboos that can’t be violated, and our establishment has largely given up on setting standards in the first place.

It seems to me Douthat's laments are conflicting -- he wishes there were more limits, but if there aren't the ones he wants, then he wants to make sure images of Muhammad are not immune.

He's for all the speech that he approves of. Nothing wrong with that. I am for all the speech I approve of. But so long as the government is not the one deciding what speech is permitted, I think cries of "censorship" are overblown.

After all, Parker and Stone can make a film using Muhammad's image and post it on the Internet.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on April 26, 2010 (boomark / email).