Free Speech (Lisa…Please Don’t Read This Post)
Someone emailed me to ask me to post my thoughts on the whole Dixie Chicks situation. I decided to post this link to an explanation much better than anything I have the time to post.
Excerpt:
Now, I don’t want to belabor this point, but there is something remarkably obvious that needs to be said. In countries where actual free speech is threatened, where fascism or Orwellian thought control are the order of the day, the victims of the backlash don’t typically go on to pose naked on the cover of a magazine, mock their critics, and score exclusive primetime interviews on national TV as well as, literally, thousands of write-ups in magazines and newspapers across the country. It’s just not the way it works in … hmmm I dunno, let’s say, for example’s sake, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Over there people who criticized the president received different treatment. Over there, if I were to mention at the local bazaar, for instance, that Saddam Hussein dyes his mustache, I might expect a knock on the door later that evening from some men. One of them might grab my tongue with a pair of pliers and then, without anesthetic, slice my tongue off before I was carted off to jail for an unknown and unknowable period of time.
I completely agree with Jonah Goldberg’s analysis of what has gone on and what he has to say about the free speech issues passionately raised by the Dixie Chick’s defenders (read the link…it is excellent).
My personal opinion is that I don’t really care what the Dixie Chicks think of the president. I don’t care if they think he is the devil himself. If I liked their music I wouldn’t stop listening to it because I disagreed with their political views.
An example:
Bono from U2 is a grade A moron when it comes to politics. I don’t think there is a single political view that he holds that I don’t have absolute contempt for. When it comes to writing and performing music however, the man is a genius. I enjoy listening to his music enough that I have no problem handing his label the $12.99 it costs to purchase his cd. I do this even when his politics leak into his music (just about every song) because I like listening to U2 cds.
I am not a Dixie Chicks fan. I am trying to get tickets to their show here in DC for my wife’s birthday though so if there is anyone who has tickets who is sufficiently upset with their statements about the president that they want to give them away email me!!!
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Sorry, I can’t help with the tickets.
Comment by Michael — April 30, 2003 @ 9:55 am