Free Speech Repression or Simple Law Enforcement?

Checking out any non-mainstream media inevitably brings you to some stories about people who are being fined or intimidated for speaking their minds. I'd like to take a look at two stories that I came across, and talk about whether they are really free speech issues, or if they are just about people who broke the law and are falsely claiming that they were discriminated against for their views. The links are at the end of the article.

I'll start with the one that is a bit less controversial. A man had a sticker on his rear window that said, “No to Empire,” and was pulled over and ticketed for it. I suggest reading the article for the full story. But anyways, it was supposedly on the grounds that the sticker was obstructing his view. The Professor Ovetz, the man being fined, claims that there are tons of people with stickers from their college in the same place as his sticker, and that it did not obstruct his view. Now I know that my family has UConn stickers in the same exact place, and that it does not obstruct our view, and that we've never been fined for them. I've seen tons of people on the road with the same type of sticker. So, unless the laws in San Francisco are different than here in South Windsor (which they very well may be, I'm not being sarcastic), I think that the police officer was probably stretching the law in order to get Ovetz to take his sticker down.

The next one is more controversial, as it involves the flag. Dale Decker, of Wisconsin, flew a flag upside-down on his apartment patio. According to Decker, he talked to a police officer, who told him that he was breaking the law (without being able to say exactly which law) and should take down the flag or he would face fines or imprisonment. The police chief denies that he was threated with fines or imprisonment, and that he was merely asked to take it down due to a neighbor's complaint. Decker has also faced anger and death threats from other people in his community. The end of the story is that the apartment complex ordered all flags, even right-side up, to be taken down. Everyone, including Decker, complied with this. Now as I said, the flag is a lot touchier for people than a sticker. But it should be Decker's right to fly the flag upside-down if he so chooses. The apartment obviously wanted to get Decker's flag down to avoid conflict, but ordered all flags down in order to seem neutral. This was a good move, as it keeps them out of the ideological side of it. But they didn't order all flags down until Decker began to “disgrace” his, and the owners of the apartment complex said that they only had problems with “anyone showing disrespect.” Also, he was not breaking any law, merely a rule of the apartment. So if Decker's claim of what the police said is true, then we are looking at a case of the police using intimidation against nonviolent speech, which would be a much bigger deal. I just hope that the Decker was exaggerating, and that the police did not threaten him. This story has many more holes in it, and I'm much less sure about who was right than with Ovetz's case.

Now I'm not saying that I agree with Decker's flying the flag upside-down, or with Ovetz's sticker. I just think that they should both be allowed to express their ideas, without being singled out by police officers who twist the law to fit the situation. Also, the way that the community treated Decker was horrible. People should respond to his actions by flying their own flags right-side up, not by saying that, “If you keep up what you're doing, a vet is going to find you and put a bullet in your head.” Stifling free speech stifles independent thought, and that is what our country is supposed to protect. Feel free to comment with your own ideas about these articles, or if you find any articles addressing the same situations from different viewpoints. This country is about the free expression of ideas, I just expressed mine, now please express yours.

http://www.progressive.org/mag/mc070708.html

http://www.progressive.org/wx070408.html

Faux News Strikes Again- Trotta Style

This past Sunday, Fox News contributor Liz Trotta made some pretty shocking remarks regarding Barack Obama. While responding to Hillary’s now infamous RFK remarks, she made the following comment,

[...] and now we have what some are reading as a suggestion that somebody knock off Osama. Um, uh, Obama. Well both, if we could.

Trotta immediately followed this comment with laughter, as the host of the show mockingly asked her to “tell us how you really feel.” On Memorial Day, she made a half hearted apology, where she characterized it as a “lame attempt at humor,” and said she was “sorry to anyone I might have offended.”

Besides the fact that you know and I know she is not sorry for what she said, there is something bigger at risk here, much bigger. I have been noticing more and more that Fox News is beginning to bring people on air who regularly leave their position as objective news reporters to make their own personal commentaries on political issues.

The mainstream media is meant to provide information to the masses, pure, unbiased information that people can then take and interpret in their own highly personal ways. When big news sources like Fox continually put people like Liz Trotta on air, who seem to advocate the assassination of someone like Barack Obama, the media is failing as an institution. This is by no means the first time anyone from the media showed their own political colors, I’m just saying that as we near closer to November, this becomes a pretty big issue.

What I saw as I watched Liz Trotta on Sunday was not one lunatic political analyst making a monumental mistake, I saw a calculated attack on both Democratic Presidential candidates. I think that Fox may have tipped their cap at the violent hate filled tactics that we should expect as the election nears closer. They claim to be “fair and balanced,” but you and I both know that is a lie.

This is not an isolated event. You will see more of this, and of that I am sure. As it continues to happen, the other media sources will make a big deal for a few days, the talking head will be forced to make an apology, and then the media will find some other scandal to focus on, and the commentator will get off scot-free. Yet the message they implanted into millions of heads across the country will not fade so easily. The mainstream media still seems to find calling Obama “Osama” pretty damn funny, and until they stop, people across the nation will continue to believe he is Muslim, or even a threat to our country.
It needs to stop, and yet the only tool we have is our viewership. They control our information, and so we need them, and they know it. What can we do except turn off our television sets and deprive them of their demographic? Nothing, but in doing that, we become uninformed. It is a nasty little pickle we find ourselves in.

The only solace we can find is to only look towards sources we know that we can trust, such as The Washington Post, or The New York Times. If you are looking for political information, I suggest you look to one of those newspapers. If its on the TV, take it with a grain of salt.

That is my advice, do with it what you will. Or not, since I’m just some random guy writing on the internet.