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I don’t want to live in a country where no one ever says anything that offends anyone. That’s why we have Canada. That’s not us.
-- Bill Maher at The New York Times
A couple of weeks ago or so Rush Limbaugh finally got in big trouble - 'the sponsors and money leaving his show' kind of trouble - calling a female law student, standing up for the right to have contraceptives as part of one's healthcare coverage, a slut. Bill Maher, interestingly, stood up against the uproar in defense of free speech. Of course, Maher knows well what it is to suffer from this kind of backlash. He lost his network TV show, if I recall correctly, when he said that the 9/11 attackers were not cowards, whatever else they may be.
I have to say, I rather favor free speech myself. Which is not to say that any right is absolute. We probably should not countenance the advocacy of violence, nor perhaps strong hate speech. We will always have the problem of line-drawing, but we are arguably drawing the lines a little too constrictively when it comes to speech these days.
-- Bill Maher at The New York Times
A couple of weeks ago or so Rush Limbaugh finally got in big trouble - 'the sponsors and money leaving his show' kind of trouble - calling a female law student, standing up for the right to have contraceptives as part of one's healthcare coverage, a slut. Bill Maher, interestingly, stood up against the uproar in defense of free speech. Of course, Maher knows well what it is to suffer from this kind of backlash. He lost his network TV show, if I recall correctly, when he said that the 9/11 attackers were not cowards, whatever else they may be.
I have to say, I rather favor free speech myself. Which is not to say that any right is absolute. We probably should not countenance the advocacy of violence, nor perhaps strong hate speech. We will always have the problem of line-drawing, but we are arguably drawing the lines a little too constrictively when it comes to speech these days.
