There’s a meme I’ve seen circulating on social media that goes like this: When country singers Dixie Chicks expressed their disdain for George W. Bush and his policies, they were praised for exercising their 1st Amendment right, yet when the head of Chick-fil-A expressed his 1st Amendment right, he was vilified. Now, this was probably true among “liberal” media, but the meme is presenting the story as if it’s a universal truth. It’s a great story, if you completely ignore the fact that people boycotted Dixie Chicks concerts and didn’t buy their CD’s, and that the women also received at least one credible death threat for what they said.
I’m not being partisan here. Quite the opposite. Everyone is entitled to free speech. Everyone. You don’t have to agree with what they say, but you have to concede their right to say it. Free speech isn’t just for people you like and think the same way you do. The entire point of having free speech is to foster dialogue and allow dissenting opinions to be heard. It’s a right that extends to every conservative, liberal, moderate, socialist, fascist, banker, hippie, tea partier, occupier, Christian, Muslim, Jew, big-A Atheist, small-a atheist, and every member of every other partisan group in America.
Free speech is meant to protect unpopular speech. Popular speech, by definition, needs no protection. -Neal Boortz
That said, speech does not come without consequence. You open up your statements to scrutiny, fact checking, and rebuttal. That’s not a violation of your free speech; if anything it’s a validation of your free speech showing that yes, your opinion was heard, and someone else is now using their right to free speech to chime in with their opinion. Not everything is one-sided. If you speak out against the sitting President to people who just want to hear your music, some people are probably going to get upset and speak back, and you’re going to have to own what you said. If you use your business as a platform for a controversial issue by making financial contributions to certain groups, you have a right to do so, but some people won’t like it and will use their right to free speech to talk back.
Even the media has a right to free speech now. The goal of journalism used to be to present facts impartially, but it was Fox News that went to court to defend the right to present opinion as news, and to uphold the idea that news doesn’t have to be factual because it’s an expression of free speech. It’s possible that you only got half the story on the Dixie Chicks, based on the media you watch, listen to, or read; the same is true of the Chick-fil-A story. Yet if any member of the media presents an obvious bias one way or the other, or outright lies, we can thank Fox for leading us all down that road. Frankly, I’m tired of having separate “liberal” media and “conservative” media, the Republican agenda and the Democratic agenda, this propaganda and that propaganda. I miss having the facts and the truth laid out plainly before me, and being able to use my own common sense and critical thinking skills to sort out my own opinions on things.
Comment Request
While I welcome disagreements with what I’ve written, disagreeing with things I’ve never said or believe is a different matter. The latter is intellectually dishonest to say the least. So if you disagree, be sure that you’re disagreeing with what I’ve actually written in context.
News hasn’t been unbiased since Walter Cronkite retired.
News has never been unbiased, after, during, or beofre Cronkite. Prior to the “honest beat reporter” character of the 30s movies, there wasn’t even an attempt at impartiality; newspapers were specifically partisan. Even the famed muckrakers of the Progressive Era were reformers — hardly bastions of considered throught.
A quick look at newspaper cartoons throughout the last 300 years or so (Punch was an especially good source for this…) show that opinion and journalism go hand in hand. We read the stuff we wnat and believe it, we castigate the opinions we don’t buy into.
As for the tempest in a fry cooker, they have the right to express their opinion (something the CEO not only did not do direct, but was badgered by the interviewer for) so long as they don’t try to coerce policy on people. The protesters have the right to do so, but if I were eating there and they disturbed my meal, I’d feel the right to consider them tremendous tools.
The key difference is that in the past there was a clearer delineation between “news” and “editoral/opinion”. The was not universally true, of course, but more true than today. It was more “here is the news, and over here is what we think about it”. Certainly no one ever took Punch, a magazine of humor and satire, as hard news or held them to that same standard. That’s like calling Jon Stewart or Rush Limbaugh journalists when they clearly label themselves as entertainers first, pundits second. Today it’s all “here’s our version of what happened”. We’re not talking about Glenn Beck or Keith Olbermann, either. We’re talking about the talking heads who call themselves news anchors and label their programs as news.
Whether the bias comes from the left or the right is moot; bias is wrong, and we can and should do better in terms of presenting raw facts and teaching critical thinking, rather than allowing talking heads to do our thinking for us. That one side has done it longer, or does it more, does not justify the other side doing it. That’s playground rules. If one kid gets caught doing something naughty on the playground, and his defense is that another kid did something worse, that does not make his own behavior acceptable.
We have developed into a highly polarized culture, where right and wrong are more dependent upon the letter in parentheses behind the name of the person pitching the idea than on the relative merits and flaws of the idea itself. If our guy says it, it’s great; if their guy says it, it’s a bad idea not even worth hearing. The same goes to actions; if our guy does it it’s okay, and if the other side gets upset they’re overreacting, and vice-versa.
This, Berin.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fairness_Doctrine
I’m not doubting your experience, but I have yet to hear one person deny that the Dixie Chicks weren’t boycotted. In fact, it was the first “right-wing” boycott that the right actually followed through on, though now the right is finally jumping on the “boycott, ban, and threaten advertisers” bandwagon that the left built as a means to fight fire with fire. It’s a disturbing trend, but it’s only part of the larger issue that inspired me to respond here.
My blog (link provided in my signature) has been focused for the past year or so on the larger problem: The Free Speech Clause is nothing more than a legal provision; it’s not part of our cultural identity. Perhaps it never was. (Some of the men that signed the Declaration of Independence were members of Congress that passed the Alien and Sedition Act.) Regardless of when it started, it’s a shame. Most people seem to believe that the right to free speech should be the right to free speech with which they agree. The criticize a contrary statement of opinion as if the mere act of telling one’s side of the story is some informal form of censorship through bullying. If people cherished the right to free speech, they’d encourage others to speak regardless of the message, just like we all seem to encourage everyone to vote without concern for how those inspired might vote.
The problems as I see it are:
1) Too many are concerned about substance but not procedure, even though following proper procedure is what keeps us from being hypocrites;
2) Too many need to attach drama to sociopolitical issues in order make themselves feel too important;
3) Too many choose to remain ignorant because they selfishly want what they want without concern for whether it actually makes sense, legally or otherwise; and
4) For all of these reasons, too many reward politicians for lying and punish them for telling the truth.
The first step to a solution is simple to understand and almost impossible to implement:
1) Everyone should approach every debate or discussion as if you’re serving two roles simultaneously: a teacher and a student; and.
2) See #1.
Do that, and not only will things will get a lot nicer, but perhaps we’ll actually resolve a significant number of our disagreements.
Thanks, Rob. Well said.
In private conversation today I realized that the obvious equivalent to the Dixie Chicks is actually Ted Nugent. I know people that boycotted the Dixie Chicks and thought they were over the line, but thought that other peoples’ reactions to Nugent making threats against the President and the Secretary of State were overblown. I also know people who defended the Dixie Chicks but were appalled by Nugent. What it has come down to, I believe, is that when the person has the same letter in parentheses behind their name as we do, it’s okay, but when the person has a different letter behind their name it is automatically wrong. It’s partisan moral relativism, and we need to get over it soon so we can get back to just being Americans and working together for the common good.
But Berin, Nugent made thinly veiled threats against Obama and Hillary Clinton. The Dixie Chicks said they were embarrassed that Bush was from the same state as they were. It has less to do with political affiliation, and more to do with the fact that _one_ of those two people told the secretary of state to “suck on his machine gun.”
I understand what you’re saying. The point I am making is the way people decide who gets to express their opinions, what and who gets to express what sorts of opinions in what sorts of venue. The Dixie Chicks, Dan Cathy, Ted Nugent, me, you, we all have rights to zay what we want wherever we want, and we all get to deal with the consequences of what we say.
Oh, I absolutely agree. There shouldn’t be a limitation to people’s speech, and speakers should expect to deal with the consequences that come with that right.
That said, the events currently coming down on the CFA chain _are_ the consequences of that speech. No legislation has been enacted to limit the CEO’s freedom to speak. His rights are not being infringed. The boycott, and even the upswing of sales from supporters, are simply people declaring what the CEO’s speech means to them, personally.
If there were any legal action trying to punish CFA, rather than a consumer-based one, I would be amid the throng of people outraged at that infringement.
Exactly. Yet over the past few days I have had to repeatedly point out that the boycott is not a means of suppressing Dan Cathy’s speech, it is other people trying to use their speech to express a different opinion. This is not and has never been a 1st Amendment issue.
The chief difference that I can see is the nearly 2 million dollars that Chick-fil-A has donated to groups that attempt (among many other things) to enact legislation to ban same sex marriage.
Plenty of groups give money to enact legislation that infringes on actual enumerated rights: the Brady bunch go after guns, Universal and Viacon free speech, ACLU freedom to express your religion in a government-funded location (not a matter of state establishing a religion…you’re just wearing a cross.), 4th & 6th amendments have been assualted by Big Security.
That’s not getting into the guys trying to legislate other areas of our behavior that from marriage to what we eat to products we are now required to purchase.
Not saying don’t oppose them, but note the homosexual lobby is far larger and more powerful than a second rate chicken chain.
This is another partisan argument I hear from both sides: when our lobbyists, activists, and financial backers are stronger, that simply proves the rightness of our cause and represents the true voice of the people. When the other side’s lobbyists, activists, and financial backers are stronger, it’s unfair, they must be breaking some rules, they’re stomping all over the true voice of the people. Both sides do it. And again, if one side did it first or does it more, that doesn’t mean it’s okay for the other side to do it. Two wrongs don’t make a right. We need to get past that flawed logic.
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