Tag Archives: #FreedomOfThePress

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Irony is so ironic Wesleyan University professor uses First Amendment, and the internet, to argue that Second Amendment should be regulated by 1791 technology

Under what conditions did newspapers labor following the American Revolution? From Wikipedia:

Many of the papers, however, which were kept alive or brought to life during the war could not adapt themselves to the new conditions of peace. Perhaps only a dozen of the survivors held their own in the new time, notably the Boston Gazette, which declined rapidly in the following decade, The Connecticut Courant of Hartford, The Providence Gazette, and The Pennsylvania Packet of Philadelphia, to which may be added such representative papers as the Massachusetts Spy, Boston’s Independent Chronicle, the New York Journal and Packet, the Newport Mercury, the Maryland Gazette of Annapolis, the Pennsylvania Gazette and The Pennsylvania Journal, both of Philadelphia. Practically all were of four small pages, each of three or four columns, issued weekly. In 1783, the Pennsylvania Evening Post became the first American daily. The next year, the Pennsylvania Packet was published three times a week, and the New York Journal twice a week, as were several of the papers begun in that year. There was a notable extension to new fields. In Vermont, where the first paper, established in 1781, had soon died, another arose in 1783; in Maine, two were started in 1785. In 1786, the first one west of the Alleghenies appeared at Pittsburgh, and following the westward tide of immigration the Kentucky Gazette was begun at Lexington in 1787.

Conditions were hardly more favorable to newspapers than during the recent conflict. The sources of news were much the same; the means of communication and the postal system were little improved. Newspapers were not carried in the mails but by favor of the postmen, and the money of one state was of dubious value in another. Consequently, circulations were small, rarely reaching a thousand; subscribers were slow in paying; and advertisements were not plentiful. Newspapers remained subject to provincial laws of libel, in accordance with the old common law, and were, as in Massachusetts for a short time in 1785, subject to special state taxes on paper or on advertisements. But public sentiment was growing strongly against all legal restrictions, and in general the papers practiced freedom, not to say license, of utterance.

As we have previously noted, The Philadelphia Inquirer, established in 1829, is the third oldest continuously published newspaper in the United States, exceeded only by the New York Post, established 1801, and the Hartford Courant, first edition in 1764.

Newspapers and books were rare in the late 18th century, with the news often slanted, and a lot of inaccuracies published, especially as the sources of news were more distant.

The hand-written copy of the proposed articles of amendment passed by Congress in 1789, cropped to show just the text in the third article that would later be ratified as the First Amendment.

What became our First Amendment, which stated that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” was passed by the First Congress on September 25, 1789, and submitted to the states for ratification. It, along with the other nine amendments now referred to as the Bill of Rights, became part of the Constitution on December 15, 1791.

Now comes Jennifer Tucker, an associate professor of history at Wesleyan University, in an OpEd published by CNN:

Now that guns can kill hundreds in minutes, Supreme Court should rethink the rights question

Opinion by Jennifer Tucker | Updated 7:31 AM ET | Wednesday, October 20, 2021

This fall, the US Supreme Court will decide New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Kevin Bruen, a case that may result in vastly expanded rights to carry firearms in public. In doing so, the Court will need to grapple with a key question that, until now, has been left unanswered in the Second Amendment debate: Are there any limits to the type of firearm that can be carried outside of the home?

Dr Tucker has erred from the first paragraph: that is not the question before the Supreme Court. Rather, under the Sullivan Act of 1911, New York state has required permits to carry firearms outside of the home, and has given localities discretion on the issuance of such permits, and New York does not issue permits for self-defense unless the applicant can demonstrate a non-speculative need for such; a neighborhood simply being unsafe is not sufficient. The case before the bar is one which holds that such discretion is not constitutional.

In the pivotal 2008 case District of Columbia v. Heller — which recognized the Second Amendment as an individual right to own a gun at home for self-defense — the Court admitted the existence of different categories of weapons, while conceding that “dangerous or unusual weapons” could be regulated. But it did not define what constitutes a “dangerous or unusual” weapon, nor recognize that there are different degrees of danger within the category of firearms.

Dr Tucker continues to document the increased lethality of firearms since the flintlocks of 1791, holding that the Court must take that into account and limit our Second Amendment rights accordingly. You can follow the link to read her arguments yourself.

But, to me, there’s an obvious irony. Dr Tucker is using the virtually instantaneous world-wide transmission of her views in an effort to persuade people, while the ‘press’ the First Amendment protects was only that of poorly printed and locally sold and distributed newspapers. If she believes that the Supreme Court should recognize and take into account changes in firearms technology and thus limit our right to keep and bear arms, would not her arguments also apply to the freedom of speech and of the press? There were no microphones and amplifiers for public speech in 1791, nor photography, nor the ability to publish the photos which did not then exist. There was neither radio nor telegraph to transmit information over long distances, no television, no CNN, and no internet. Using her own arguments, the government ought to be able to regulate and restrict all media save the four-page newspapers available in 1791.

One could argue that there’s a qualitative difference, that freedom of speech and of the press cannot kill anyone, while firearms can. That, frankly, is nonsense: al Qaeda, Da’ish, and all sorts of other groups which bear us only ill will have used the internet, have used social media, have used modern communications to set in motion acts which have directly killed people. Modern communication has served to radicalize people into Islamist ideas, to turn people who may have been leading vaguely unsatisfying lives into monsters who only wish to kill others.

It isn’t even just the Islamists. People have been using the internet and modern communications to vilify Israel, to persuade (purportedly) intelligent Americans to anti-Semitism through constant attempts to turn Americans against Israel. People have been using the internet and modern communications to inspire racial hatred, to try to frustrate law enforcement, to make martyred saints out of thugs and convicted felons — and I refer not only to George Floyd, but Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin and others — and to encourage anti-social and risky behavior, including the ‘hook up’ culture and the spreading of sexually transmitted diseases.

Sure, I’m conservative, and have my biases in that direction, but the left make the same complaints, about the internet being used to promote conspiracy theories about the 2020 elections and COVID-19 and vaccine mandates . . . and they have actively been trying to censor such things. The left have been trying to ‘cancel’ people like comedian Dave Chappelle and Harry Potter author J K Rowling for not being fully on board with ‘transgenderism.’ Virtually every credentialed media source in American, in referring to Richard Levine, the assistant secretary for health at the US Department of Health and Human Services who claims to be female and goes by the name ‘Rachel’, and his recent promotion to Admiral in the United States Public Health Service, and anyone who challenged the cockamamie notion that he is female, or used the masculine pronouns to refer to him, would be subject to whatever scorn and ‘cancelations’ the left could muster.

Using Dr Tucker’s logic, the United States could regulate such communication, by the left and the right, virtually out of existence, and she is using that First Amendment protected media of broadcast and internet transmission to spread her ideas. The good and highly educated professor doesn’t even seem to have recognized the irony of her position.
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Anna Orso does not like being questioned! The Philadelphia Inquirer sure isn't happy with its journalism being examined

I can be on the critical side when it comes to the professional journalists, but I believe it only proper to let those journalists know when they have been mentioned, and thus I included Philadelphia Inquirer reporter Anna Orso in a tweet when I examined her article in yesterday’s Inquirer. A screen capture of the tweet is to the right. While I can embed tweets in my articles, screen captures work better, because people can delete tweets.

Miss Orso did not particularly like my tweet, and responded, via Twitter, “get a life”. I responded:

    Oh, I have one. I examined your story, and the flaws were obvious. These were things that should have been asked and examined.

    You are a professional journalist; do some actual journalism.

I don’t know Miss Orso, never having met her, and no longer living in the Keystone State, the chances would seem to be vanishingly small that I ever will; there is no reason for me to have anything personal against her. All that I can see is her written words, and what I saw was a story with some real flaws in it.

The First Amendment to the Constitution protects our freedom of Speech and of the Press. Those freedom include, to be blunt about it, the freedom to lie, and the freedom to shade the truth. Most journalists do not actually lie, but when it comes to The Philadelphia Inquirer, “the third oldest surviving daily newspaper in the United States in its own right,” publisher Elizabeth Hughes has already told us that the Inquirer was taking many steps to become that “anti-racist news organization” she wanted it to be, including:

  • Producing an antiracism workflow guide for the newsroom that provides specific questions that reporters and editors should ask themselves at various stages of producing our journalism.
  • Establishing a Community News Desk to address long-standing shortcomings in how our journalism portrays Philadelphia communities, which have often been stigmatized by coverage that over-emphasizes crime.
  • Creating an internal forum for journalists to seek guidance on potentially sensitive content and to ensure that antiracism is central to the journalism.
  • Commissioning an independent audit of our journalism that resulted in a critical assessment. Many of the recommendations are being addressed, and a process for tracking progress is being developed.
  • Training our staff and managers on how to recognize and avoid cultural bias.
  • Examining our crime and criminal justice coverage with Free Press, a nonprofit focused on racial justice in media.

Translation: Mrs Hughes wants the Inquirer to shade the truth if the unvarnished truth might ‘stigmatize’ certain ‘Philadelphia communities.’

In her story on the impact that the murder of Marcus Stokes had on E Washington Rhodes School, Miss Orso wrote, very specifically, that young Mr Stokes “was fatally shot in North Philadelphia on his way to school“, but the evidence, as printed in the Inquirer, indicates that he was not actually on his way to school. He was sitting, with five other young people, in a parked, and possibly disabled, car, many blocks away, fifteen minutes after he was supposed to be in his homeroom at school.

Miss Orso knew those facts; she is listed as either the sole or one of two authors in each of the articles I have cited. Did no one, including she, ever ask themselves any questions about why these young people, “including other Rhodes students“, were sitting in that car, ask themselves what they were doing there?

Miss Orso isn’t a stupid woman. She was graduated from Pennsylvania State University, a highly selective college, that doesn’t accept dummies. She isn’t inexperienced, having worked in journalism for seven years now, including four with the Inquirer.

Normally, an experienced editor would review a reporter’s story before the story was published. With all of the cutbacks through which the Inquirer has gone, perhaps that wasn’t the case in this instance, but with three major stories[1]At least three that I have seen; it is always possible that I have missed one, though I have been diligent about looking. published now on the killing of young Mr Stokes, it seems very unlikely that no supervising editor at all has read those stories. Yet all of them have made it through the process and been published, and no one there has raised serious enough questions to change things.

How does that happen?

One way it could happen is if no one at the Inquirer was paying anything more than glancing attention, and just wrote and passed on a story without any sense of inquisitiveness. That’s kind of difficult to believe, given that this writer, a 68-year-old retired fellow living three states away, whose last journalistic experience was with his collegiate newspaper, was able to spot the discrepancies from the very first story on the killing.

But another way it could happen is if the Inquirer was trying to engage not in reporting but propaganda. Miss Orso’s story has the effect of making young Mr Stokes out to be a wholly innocent victim, and perhaps that’s exactly what he was. But if he was a completely innocent victim, someone at the Inquirer should have been asking the questions and getting the answers as to why he was sitting in a car which was targeted in a deliberate assassination attempt; no one fires at least twelve rounds — “officers found 12 shell casings at the scene” — by accident. While it is possible that the shooter targeted the wrong vehicle completely, the Inquirer has not reported that, nor would such be consistent with the story that at least ten shots were fired at a vigil for the young victim. Mr Stokes might not have been the individual who was targeted, but the obvious conclusion is that at least some bad guy was involved.

The Inquirer has expended enough bandwidth on the story that someone there needs to start digging more deeply, someone needs to ferret out the whole story. That story might not be one that the Inquirer’s reporters and editors would like, but that is the difference between propaganda and news, between journolism[2]The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their … Continue reading and journalism.

References

References
↑1 At least three that I have seen; it is always possible that I have missed one, though I have been diligent about looking.
↑2 The spelling ‘journolist’ or ‘journolism’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
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#Transgender activism and #FreedomOfSpeech

I start to worry when I agree with both Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan, both in the same week! Heck, I’ve even been listening to Glenn Greenwald.

Dave Chappelle Is Right, Isn’t He?

The comedian defends reality. Which is currently under siege.

by Andrew Sullivan | 2:21 PM EDT

There’s an understandable tendency to view the debate about transgender ideology today as a marginal issue, affecting a minuscule number of people, and at most, a trivial matter in the larger culture wars. And I can see why. It does seem on the surface to be about maybe 0.2 percent of humanity. And if you venture an opinion on it, the consequences are intense — so why bother?

And, overwhelmingly, the elite media in the United States prevents readers from knowing that a debate is even happening, let alone what it is really about. If the argument about gender theory is mentioned at all, it is dismissed as a bunch of “anti-trans” bigots — aka “TERFs” — hurting a beleaguered and tiny minority, for some inconceivable, but surely awful, reason.

And so when the greatest living comedian, Dave Chappelle, bases almost an entire Netflix special on the subject — alternately hilarious and humane, brutal and true — and wades into the debate with wellies on, the exact same piece about the special will be written in much of elite media.

You could write it yourself, couldn’t you? 1. He’s a bigot. “The phobic jokes keep coming — and Chappelle’s efforts to ironise them, to dance around rather than wallow in the boorishness, are derisory,” says the Guardian review. 2. He’s out of date: “All that’s left is the same tired observations delivered behind a bizarre form of commiseration, this time with an added dash of JK Rowling solidarity and using someone else’s death to validate his half-decade of public stubbornness,” according to IndieWire. NPR adds a “multi-racial whiteness” edge: “Too often in The Closer, it just sounds like Chappelle is using white privilege to excuse his own homophobia and transphobia.”

Both the “stubbornness” and the “bigot” theme are reiterated in Vulture: Chappelle is full of “outdated excuses masking a refusal to update a worldview … his head is up his ass. He needs new ideas.” And, with respect to the marginalized: “He’s just asking for you to take up less space, to usher in progress by giving other people time to come around to you.”

There’s much more at the original, but it has to be asked: why would a conservative Catholic like me be agreeing with three famously liberal homosexuals?[1]Miss Weiss is actually bisexual, though she eschews that label. Shockingly enough, all three of these famous commentators believe in some very, very radical things like freedom of speech and individual liberty.

In his recent column on substack, Mr Sullivan notes the rather objective truth: despite what today’s left and the ‘transgender’ activists want you to believe, only females can carry a child through gestation and give birth. We noted, last Monday, The Washington Post’s stylebook change to reference “pregnant individuals” rather than “pregnant women”, due to the left’s cockamamie notion that men can be pregnant.

A transwoman cannot give birth as a woman gives birth. She does not ovulate. Her vagina, if it exists, is a simulacrum of one, created by a multiple array of surgeries. Sex in humans is binary, with those few exceptions at the margins — mixtures of the two — proving rather than disproving the rule. Until five minutes ago, this was too obvious to be stated. Now, this objective fact is actually deemed a form of “hate.” Hate.

This means that the debate is no longer about 0.2 percent of humanity. It’s about imposing an anti-scientific falsehood on 99.8 percent of humanity. It means that we have to strip all women of their unique biological experience, to deny any physical differences between men and women in sports, to tell all boys and girls that they can choose their sex, to erase any places reserved exclusively for biological women, like shelters for those who have been abused by men, and to come up with terms like “pregnant people” to describe mothers. Yes — mothers. The misogyny buried in this is gob-smacking. Is Mothers’ Day next for the trans chopping block?

The struggle is one of language, because language is the formative basis for thought. If the term “woman” can encompass both females and biological males who claim to be female, it has become meaningless. That the terms “cisgender” and “sex assigned at birth“[2]Wikipedia defines “sex assigned at birth” as: Sex assignment (sometimes known as gender assignment) is the discernment of an infant’s sex at birth. Assignment may be done prior to … Continue reading ever came into existence demonstrates the idiocy of modern life.

Mr Sullivan has no problems with homosexual or transgendered persons, but he is mocking the idea that current political correctness requires not only acceptance of transgenderism as something real and normal, rather than a mental illness, but that everyone must publicly conform to the demands of the transgendered for recognition of their claims.

Chappelle’s final Netflix special, “The Closer,” is a classic. Far from being outdated, it’s slightly ahead of its time, as the pushback against wokeness gains traction. It is extremely funny, a bit meta, monumentally mischievous, and I sat with another homo through the whole thing, stoned, laughing our asses off — especially when he made fun of us. The way the elite media portrays us, you’d think every member of the BLT community is so fragile we cannot laugh at ourselves. It doesn’t occur to them that, for many of us, Chappelle is a breath of honest air, doing what every comic should do: take aim at every suffocating piety of the powers that be — including the increasingly weird 2SLGBTQQIA+ mafia — and detonating them all.

I will admit it: I had to follow the link in the New York Post’s mocking article about Justin Trudeau to find out that 2SLGBTQQIA+ stands for “Two Spirit, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning, intersex and asexual”. As people keep adding letters to “LGBT” it kept getting sillier and sillier, to the point at which mockery is the natural response.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is being mocked on social media after he published two posts that mention the latest woke iteration of an acronym for people with different sexual identities — 2SLGBTQQIA+ — which some likened to an encrypted password or “headbutting the keyboard.”

“People across the country are lighting candles to honour Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA+ people who are missing or have been murdered. We must continue to work together, raise awareness, and advocate to end this ongoing national tragedy. #SistersinSpirit,” the prime minister posted to Facebook and Twitter on Monday, referencing the Sisters in Spirit vigil, which honors women of specific racial or sexual identities who are missing or have been murdered.

The number and letter ‘2S’ in 2SLGBTQQIA+ includes people who identify as “Two-spirit,” ​referring to someone who identifies as having both a masculine and a feminine spirit. It is used by some Indigenous North Americans to describe their sexual identity.

The acronym, which used to be most commonly known as “LGBTQ,” sparked confusion among social media users.

I guess that some people just aren’t #woke[3]From Wikipedia: Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from … Continue reading enough to keep up with the silly acronyms.

I suspect that Messrs Greenwald and Sullivan, and Miss Weiss, despite the fact that they would not approve of my stance on transgenderism and homosexuality, would very strongly support my right to say and publish my beliefs. Fortunately, I’m retired, so I can’t be ‘cancelled’ from my job, but it’s pretty sad that I have to depend upon that protection.

Mr Sullivan’s subtitle claims that reality “is currently under siege,” which is certainly true, because reality and transgenderism are diametrically opposed. No one really thinks that Bruce Jenner[4]Mr Jenner has legally changed his name to “Caitlyn”, and I suppose that is what has to be used on legal documents now, but my website is not a legal document, and it is The First Street … Continue reading is actually a woman, but political correctness and the #woke left and the credentialed media all pretend that he is, because it’s practically required now.

At some point, the left, who were the champions of unrestricted freedom of speech not all that long ago, will have to recognize people’s freedom of speech. Miss Weiss and Messrs Sullivan and Greenwald have done so, but they are too far and in between these days.

References

References
↑1 Miss Weiss is actually bisexual, though she eschews that label.
↑2 Wikipedia defines “sex assigned at birth” as:

Sex assignment (sometimes known as gender assignment) is the discernment of an infant’s sex at birth. Assignment may be done prior to birth through prenatal sex discernment. In the majority of births, a relative, midwife, nurse or physician inspects the genitalia when the baby is delivered and sex is assigned without ambiguity.

But look at the interchanged terms: discernment is defined as assignment, but assign means, among other things, “to appoint to a post, duty or task,” something which is designated by the authority in question, as though it is that authority’s decision.

↑3 From Wikipedia:

Woke (/ˈwoʊk/) as a political term of African-American origin refers to a perceived awareness of issues concerning social justice and racial justice. It is derived from the African-American Vernacular English expression “stay woke“, whose grammatical aspect refers to a continuing awareness of these issues.
By the late 2010s, woke had been adopted as a more generic slang term broadly associated with left-wing politics and cultural issues (with the terms woke culture and woke politics also being used). It has been the subject of memes and ironic usage. Its widespread use since 2014 is a result of the Black Lives Matter movement.

I shall confess to sometimes “ironic usage” of the term. To put it bluntly, I think that the ‘woke’ are just boneheadedly stupid.

↑4 Mr Jenner has legally changed his name to “Caitlyn”, and I suppose that is what has to be used on legal documents now, but my website is not a legal document, and it is The First Street Journal’s editorial policy to refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their given names and biological sex.
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Laurie Penny and Americans “weird” about our First Amendment

I first heard of Laurie Penny through my good friend Robert Stacy McCain, who pretty much has no use for her:

    Laurie Penny (@PennyRed) was the subject of an item here yesterday because of her quarrel with lesbian feminist Cathy Brennan, an argument that highlights the profound schism between radicals like Brennan (who are and always have been the core of the feminist movement) and trendy opportunists like Ms. Penny. The American reader may ask, “Who the hell is Laurie Penny, and why the hell are you writing about her?”

    Briefly, then: An ambitious young British journalist who attended exclusive private schools (which are for peculiar reasons called “public schools” in England), Ms. Penny graduated from Oxford and then went to New York. There, she was rescued from death by actor Ryan Gosling, an incident that became the subject of an embarrassingly narcissistic article at Gawker. Ms. Penny is a certain type — a “posh bird,” as the Brits would say, whose ostentatious leftism is a fashionable pose among many upper-class youth — and as such is well on her way to becoming the Most Despised Woman in England. She came to my attention here in the States only because, in researching my “Sex Trouble” series on radical feminism, I was browsing Amazon for recent feminist books and came across Ms. Penny’s new volume, Unspeakable Things: Sex, Lies and Revolution. Ranked #6 by Amazon in the “Gender Studies” category, and #11 in “Feminist Theory,” this seemed relevant to my project.

    With our American reader’s questions asked and answered, then, we proceed to explain what no English reader needs to be told, namely that Laurie Penny is an impudent young fool with a penchant for making an utter spectacle of herself. As soon as I blogged about her yesterday, comments on the blog and feedback on Twitter began to fill up with notices of Ms. Penny’s previous self-inflicted embarrassments, including this public implosion in June 2012:

The rest is available on Mr McCain’s website, which I shan’t quote further here.

Now, I wouldn’t be particularly interested in this British posh bird, but I found myself particularly amused that Miss Penny was exercising her freedom of speech and of the press to criticize freedom of speech and of the press.

Where We’re going, We Don’t Need Platforms….

When does free speech absolutism become moral cowardice?

by Laurie Penny | September 10, 2021

Imagine you’re throwing a party and somebody kicks off. It was going so well. You spent ages deciding on drinks and making a playlist, and now some blowhard is off on a homophobic rant. He’s not holding back, either. He’s getting loud and mouthing off with the vilest bigotry you can imagine, and people are getting uncomfortable. It’s your party. What do you do?

What you do depends on lots of things. What sort of party is this? Is it your birthday, or a rave, or Christmas dinner, or a fundraiser for sick kids? Who is this guy? Did you invite him? Is he an old friend who’s going through something and is very drunk and likely to be very embarrassed in the morning? Is he the father of a gay son? Is he your father-in-law? Your most important client? Your boss? Your husband’s boss? Your husband? What are the consequences of calling him out? Who gets hurt if you don’t? Are there any gay people in the room?

Are you sure?

There’s no good choice here. The mood is already ruined. Doing nothing would be a statement in itself. It’s up to you, and you’ve got minutes to decide, and your decision matters.

So does context.  Are you throwing this party in a fascist, homophobic dictatorship where gay people are persecuted every day? Is this guy surrounded by people who are secretly waiting for permission for a bit of rhetorical queer-bashing? If you confront him, will other people be in danger? Character matters, including your own. How brave are you? How much are you prepared to sacrifice, or ask others to sacrifice, for a quiet life and the pretence of civility? How important is it that this party goes well, and is that still even an option? Lastly – this one’s important, so be honest, if only with yourself.

In one regard, she is right: context matters. While Miss Penny is firmly stuck in the #woke mentality of the early 21st century, for the vast, vast majority of the time about which we have any knowledge of human societies, said “blowhard” would be thought of as informed and sage, and homosexual activity thought of is immoral, sinful, wrong and mentally deranged. And you don’t have to venture far from Western societies to find the same opinions this very day.

This is my first post on Substack, and it’s partly about why I’m on this platform, given that Substack continues to host and profit from the propaganda of, among others, transphobic hatemonger Graham Linehan. The best and most comprehensive breakdown of Linehan’s behavior and why it’s so abhorrent comes from Grace Lavery, also on this platform. I share her conviction that Substack ought to throw this deranged bigot out of their party right now, before anyone else gets hurt.

I said so, in fact, in my initial conversations with Substack. I also spoke with some queer creators and allies who have decided to leave or boycott the platform. I respect that choice. I made a different one, for lots of reasons, but mostly because I think I can do a lot of good work here, with the tools and structure Substack offers, and that that work outweighs what I’d achieve with a public boycott. Before I made that choice, I told my contacts at Substack that they ought to ban Linehan, along with anyone else doing deliberate, wilful, hateful harm to any oppressed minority.

I didn’t actually expect them to change their policy based on my objection. They’re libertarians. They really are libertarians, and I believe that because they know I’m writing this post and told me I had every right to do so, and I’m holding back on details purely out of respect for privacy.

I do not know how much money Miss Penny makes from Substack; given that this was her first article there, probably not much so far. But it is interesting that she exercised her freedom of speech, over Substack’s ‘press,’ if we can call an internet platform that — and I do — to advocate that Graham Linehan not be allowed to use Substack’s press, in an attempt to keep his exercise of freedom of speech as unheard by others as possible. Miss Penny even admitted that Substack knew of the subject on which she was going to right, and stressed that she “had every right to do so.”

I also told them that at some point soon, whether they like the idea or not, they’ll find themselves having to make an active moral choice about whose ideas are worthy. I said that the time is coming when all platforms and publishers will need to take a stand somewhere, and I advised them to start thinking now about how to do so with dignity.

That paragraph of Miss Penny’s is one I take two ways. First, I take it as a not-so-veiled threat, that unless the ‘publishers’ of Substack start refusing to publish ideas she doesn’t like, bad things will happen to them. But secondly, and more importantly, is Miss Penny’s belief that some ideas are not worthy, at least not worthy of debate.

One wonders: if Miss Penny believes that Substack should judge “whose ideas are worthy,” does she not realize that, a hundred years ago, even sixty years ago, her ideas would be rejected as not “worthy” of publication.

What does it mean, then, when a company like Substack chooses to host this sort of malicious hate speech- and to do so in the name of free speech?

This is a post about platforming, and censorship, and moral choices, and why they matter. The question of who does and does not deserve a ‘platform’ is a massive, active issue. So much of our political speech and action is now effectively also publishing– and publishing using platforms that function as public space but are owned by private companies. Every platform is now having to make decisions about what it will and will not tolerate, and those decisions set the political agenda and shape our social world.

It’s significant that most of those platforms are run by precisely the sort of people most likely, for all sorts of reasons, to be free speech fundamentalists. That includes white, straight, cisgender men who are far less likely to be personally harmed by targeted hate speech than they are to be disadvantaged by speech restriction; tech libertarians soaked in a specific vintage of California ideology which considers the freedom of the individual utterly sacrosanct; and Americans. Who are weird about their First Amendment. Sorry, but they really are.

Sadly, Miss Penny is not quite right about that, as Google, Twitter and Facebook have most certainly censored or flagged speech they don’t like, and have done it in a one-sided direction: the mad mullahs of Iran and, now, Afghanistan are allowed Twitter accounts, but the immediate former President of the United States is banned. I have already noted how Twitter allowed a Tweet from Rachel Maddow, one which spread absolutely false and quickly debunked information, claiming that “patients overdosing on ivermectin” were clogging up hospitals in Oklahoma, while putting warning flags on those which stated that masks “don’t work” to reduce the spread of COVID-19.

We have previously noted how Twitter has banned “deadnaming” and “misgendering,”[1]‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring … Continue reading and The New York Times, with its logo “All the News That’s Fit to Print, gave OpEd space to Andrew Marantz to claim that Free Speech is Killing Us, and Chad Malloy[2]Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names … Continue reading to claim that Twitter’s restrictions on ‘deadnaming’ and ‘misgendering’ actually promote the freedom of speech.

For some people, the principle that all ideas have equal value, and that measured debate will always lead to reasonable compromise, is a shield against the realization that the world is worse than you imagined. Insisting that the liberal exchange of ideas still works protects you from having to face a world where the liberal exchange of ideas doesn’t work.

Not at all. I most certainly do not believe that Miss Penny’s ideas have “equal value” with mine, or even much value at all. Others may think differently, and put their money where their ideas are by subscribing to her Substack. But I am one of those Americans who are “weird about (our) First Amendment,” and strongly believe that the censorship of speech, and the punishment of ideas some people don’t like, is a far, far greater threat to liberty than censoring or ‘deplatforming’ Miss Penny.

Back to that dinner party, with the homophobe who is, by now, getting up in your other guests’ faces and making himself everyone’s problem and yours in particular. It’s not just about free speech. It’s about social context, and harm done. If you ignore him, if you brush him off by saying it’s his right to express himself, you’ve made a statement about whose comfort and safety matters in your space. This wingnut is still shouting about how gay men are perverts who can’t be trusted around children, and your best friend’s kid who just came out is sitting right there. You’re going to have to do something.

“(A)nd harm done.” Miss Penny is telling us that a person who does not approve of homosexuality is actively doing harm to other by expressing his opinions, without ever considering the harm done to individuals and to society in general by censoring those with whom the ‘governors’ disagree. Miss Penny’s example is about disagreeing with homosexuality, but somehow, some way, she has forgotten that without active societal discussion about homosexuality, the change in public attitudes about the subject in many people would never have occurred.

There is one thing about Americans, who are so “weird” about our First Amendment, that Miss Penny, and, sadly enough, far too many of the Special Snowflakes™ in the United States, really don’t understand. Freedom of speech and of the press require a thick skin for those who are willing to speak in public or publish what they think. More, it requires a thick skin of those who would listen or read, because it is always possible that someone will say, or write, something their listeners or readers just don’t like. Miss Penny would subscribe to cowardice, to the shutting down of all ideas which do not fit neatly into her own worldview.

In a world without white supremacy or transphobia or misogyny, we wouldn’t have to put a price on absolute free speech, or consider who might end up paying it. But we don’t live in that world, and if we don’t have the courage to make moral judgements when it matters, we never will.

And in the concluding paragraph of her 2,754 words,[3]No, of course I haven’t quoted all of her article, though I have quoted more of it, using ‘fair Use” standards, than is my wont. Miss Penny expresses the same ideas as The New York Times, once a great defender of freedom of the press, when it was their freedom of the press in question, that certain ideas are simply so beyond the pale that they ought not to be allowed.

When I read such things, I keep thinking that George Orwell was right about everything but the date.

References

References
↑1 ‘Deadnaming’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by his given name at birth, rather than the name he has taken to match the sex he claims to be; ‘misgendering’ means referring to a ‘transgender’ person by sex-specific terms referring to his biological sex rather than the sex he claims to be.
↑2 Chad Malloy is a male who claims to be female, using the name Parker Marie Malloy. The First Street Journal’s Stylebook notes that we always refer to the ‘transgendered’ by their birth names and biological sex.
↑3 No, of course I haven’t quoted all of her article, though I have quoted more of it, using ‘fair Use” standards, than is my wont.
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Censorship on Twitter 'Regular' user Red Walrus gets flagged, 'Blue Check' Rachel Maddow does not

Nice and early in the morning, I noticed this tweet from Glenn Greenwald. The image itself is actually a screen capture, and you can click on the image to enlarge it. Here is the link to Rachel Maddow’s original tweet, which as of 8:50 AM EDT on Monday, September 6th, is still up. Miss Maddow was on Twitter two days later tweeting this, and on the 5th, tweeting this, as well as retweeting this, so it’s not as though she was just taking a Labor Day weekend off the medium.

Then, a little bit further down, I encountered a retweet of this. Again, this is a screen capture, which you may enlarge by clicking in it. Note the Twitter warning that “This Tweet may be misleading. Get the latest on preventative measures and COVID-19.”

Then, attempting to see how far Twitter’s censorship goes, I clicked on the retweet button, and got this, a message from Twitter warning me, “This Tweet may be misleading. Get the latest on preventative measures and COVID-19. Help keep Twitter a place for reliable info. Find out more before sharing this Tweet.”

Well, I clicked on the blue “Find out more” button, and got an article which claims that experts all agree that masking helps prevent the spread of COVID-19. But I have to ask: if Twitter is so very concerned about tweets they consider misleading, why haven’t they flagged Miss Maddow’s tweet, the one promoting a thoroughly debunked story, and which had been retweet 7.3K times?

The truth is simple: Twitter is concerned about “misleading” information only when it misleads in one political direction. We have previously noted how Twitter has banned “misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals“, thus attempting to shut off all debate as to whether those who claim to be transgender have actually been able to change their sex. The New York Times gave OpEd space to Chad Malloy, a male who claims to be a female and now calls himself ‘Parker’ Malloy, to claim that Twitter’s policy censoring freedom of speech actually promotes freedom of speech. To refer to Bruce Jenner or Bradley Manning on Twitter, one must use their fake names of ‘Caitlyn’ Jenner or ‘Chelsea’ Manning, which is a surrender to their claims that they have actually changed sex.

The only thing George Orwell got wrong was the year.

Twitter and Facebook and the credentialed media understand this well: control of language and control of information means control over the debate, and forces the debate into the directions they want to see it go.

Don’t surrender, don’t give in, don’t allow the credentialed media to push you into saying something false, something you know to be false, just to push through the barriers!

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Today’s left really do hate them some #FreedomOfSpeech

We have previously noted the hostility of the credentialed media to what everyone would have thought they supported, freedom of speech and freedom of the press, at least for other people.

Now comes Aaron Rupar, who claims to be a journalist for Vox. Mr Rupar us upset, highly upset, that Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade claims that he read Mein Kampf in school:

Continue reading →

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Once again, the Lexington Herald-Leader hides mugshots of two accused murderers who are still on the loose Police say they are armed and dangerous, but apparently not dangerous enough for the Herald-Leader to tell readers how they look

I’ve run enough stories about the journolism[1]The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term … Continue reading of the Lexington Herald-Leader that I sometimes think I should include a subscription box for them!

The Herald-Leader is bound by the McClatchy Mugshot Policy, which prohibits the publication of police mugshots, unless approved by an editor, for serious reasons. One of those reasons is “is there an urgent threat to the community?”

1 man charged, 2 others wanted by Lexington police in separate murder cases

By Jeremy Chisenhall | June 25, 2021 | 3:33 PM | Updated: 4:33 PM EDT[2]Mr Chisenhall’s article was published at 3:33 PM. I have been refreshing the article during the writing of this article, to see if he has updated it with those mugshots. As of 5:00 PM EDT, he … Continue reading

Lexington police identified Friday suspects in two homicide cases and charged a suspect in another slaying, officials said Friday.The three homicide victims were found outside earlier this month.

Police first announced they were searching for Brandon Dockery, 31, who is accused of killing Raymar Alvester Webb. Webb was suffering from a gunshot wound when police found him in a parking lot near North Mill and West Short streets at about 1:40 a.m. on June 19, according to Lt. Dan Truex.Webb was taken to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital where he later died, police said.

Dockery is considered armed and dangerous, police said.

Armed and dangerous, huh? Certainly seems as though he would qualify under the exception of an urgent threat to the community! And yes, the Lexington Police Department has his mugshot available, on their Homicide Investigation page. If it was available to me, it was available to Jeremy Chisenhall, the Herald-Leader reporter, who is certainly computer-savvy enough to have looked it up.

Kamond D Taylor, from his Michigan arrest record.

Lexington police also charged a man with murder after a fatal shooting outside The Office, which is a gentleman’s club in the 900 block of Winchester Road.Kamond Taylor, 30, was charged with the murder of 43-year-old Ali Robinson, police said. Robinson was shot June 9 outside the club. He was found by police and died at the scene, Lt. Ronald Keaton said.Taylor had already been detained in Detroit on local charges, police said.

Of course, under the McClatchy policy, the Herald-Leader would never publish Mr Taylor’s mugshot, because, already being in custody, he doesn’t constitute an urgent threat to the community. I am not bound by the McClatchy policy, and I do publish mugshots.

But Danzell Cruze certainly does!

Danzell Cruze, from the Kentucky Offender Online Lookup.

Also on Friday, police said a murder warrant had been issued for Danzell Cruse in the death of 38-year-old Jocko Green who was found about 3:50 p.m. June 17 in a parking lot outside an apartment complex in the 600 block of Winnie Street near the University Kentucky Chandler Hospital.He died about 7 p.m. at UK Hospital of gunshot wounds.

Cruse, who is considered armed and dangerous, also faces a charge of possessing a handgun as a convicted felon.

According to the Kentucky Offender Online Lookup, Mr Cruze was convicted on Jaunary 7, 2019, and sentenced to five years in the pokey, plus another year for a second offense. Yet he was released on December 30, 2020, after just two years, or 40%, in the slammer; I guess that the sentences ran concurrently. He is still supposed to be on probation.

If Mr Cruze had been kept locked up for his full five years, he would have been behind bars, and if really is the person who murdered Jocko Green, Mr Green would be alive today. This is precisely the kind of bad guy for whom the McClatchy policy has the listed exception. Did the Lexington Police Department not provide his mugshot to the Herald-Leader? Nope! It is on the Lexington Homicide Investigation page.

It’s simple: in their efforts not to “disproportionately harm people of color,”[3]Quote is actually from the Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, and the first (as far as I know) to implement the no mugshot policy. the Herald-Leader is sacrificing the public’s right to know.

The paper, of course, has its First Amendment freedom of the press, and can choose not to publish anything the editors so choose. But my freedom of the press allows me to criticize their decisions.

References

References
↑1 The spelling ‘journolist’ comes from JournoList, an email list of 400 influential and politically liberal journalists, the exposure of which called into question their objectivity. I use the term ‘journolism’ frequently when writing about media bias.
↑2 Mr Chisenhall’s article was published at 3:33 PM. I have been refreshing the article during the writing of this article, to see if he has updated it with those mugshots. As of 5:00 PM EDT, he had not.
↑3 Quote is actually from the Sacramento Bee, the lead McClatchy newspaper, and the first (as far as I know) to implement the no mugshot policy.
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Credit where credit is due The Lexington Herald-Leader does the right thing

I have been critical enough of the Lexington Herald-Leader for not publishing mugshots of black criminal suspects, due to McClatchy’s mugshot policy. I specifically noted the failure to publish the mugshot of Juanyah J Clay, even though Mr Clay, an accused murderer, was on the loose, and publishing his mugshot might have helped the Lexington Police Department to apprehend him. He was apprehended the following day.

McClatchy policy is that mugshots will not be published, save for special circumstances, and an editor must decide whether to make an exception to the policy.

Any exception to this policy must be approved by an editor. Editors considering an exception should ask: Is there an urgent threat to the community?

Well, there is an urgent threat to the community, and someone at the paper took the correct decision:

Updated: FBI seeking man in Lexington after exchange of gunfire with law enforcement

By Jeremy Chisenhall and Morgan Eads | June 24, 2021 | 2:37 PM | Updated: 5:59 PM EDT

The FBI is seeking a fugitive after exchanging gunfire with him in Lexington, the agency announced Thursday afternoon.

FBI agents were in the process of trying to apprehend Antonio “Tony” Cotton on a fugitive warrant in Lexington when the officials exchanged gunfire with Cotton near the intersection of New Circle Road and Eastland Parkway, according to the FBI. Cotton fled the scene.

Cotton was wanted on a charge of interference with commerce by robbery, according to Katie Anderson, an FBI spokesperson.

There’s more at the original.

The image to the right is from the Herald-Leader’s story. Since I have been so critical, I should give credit where credit is due.

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Amanda Marcotte doesn’t want you to exercise a right she chooses not to use Today's left support freedom of choice on exactly one thing

Salon senior politics writer Amanda Marcotte moved to South Philadelphia sometime in early 2019, but unless she never listens to the local news — always a possibility, given that she never writes on it — she has to have noticed the tremendous homicide rate in the City of Brotherly Love.[1]One wonders: does the uber-feminist in Miss Marcotte object to the appellation “City of Brotherly Love” as leaving out sisterly love? As of the end of Wednesday, June 23rd, the Philadelphia Police Department reported 262 homicides. 262 murders in 174 days so far is 1.506 homicides per day in Philly, which works out to, if that average is maintained, 550 for the year.[2]With only one homicide each day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the rate has come down slightly this week, but the weekend’s coming. Philadelphia’s record is 500, during the crack cocaine drug gang wars of 1990, with last year coming in in second place with 499.

At the end of June 23rd last year, there had been ‘only’ 190 homicides in the city, so this year’s number is 37.37% higher than 2020.

How Democratic is Philadelphia? Joe Biden carried Philadelphia County 603,790 (81.44%) to 132,740 (17.90%)

Unless something changes pretty drastically, 2021 isn’t just going to set the record, but blow it out of the water. And remember: the long, hot summer has just begun.

So, what is leading to all of this mayhem? According to Miss Marcotte, it ain’t the bad guys, but those inanimate guns!

oe Biden is right about the rise in crime: Blame guns — not police or protesters — for the violence

Conservatives are using crime as cover for ugly race-baiting, but their own lax gun policies are the real culprit

By Amanda Marcotte | June 23, 2021 | 1:11PM (EDT)

Violent crime is on the rise and it’s making Republicans happier than a fire sale on wraparound sunglasses.

Conservatives will find any excuse to indulge in their favorite sport: racist fear-mongering. The current uptick in violent crime fulfills their desire to use police to terrorize and stigmatize people of color while spinning it as merely in the interest of “public safety.” (Which is especially rich coming from the same people who left hundreds of thousands of Americans to die of COVID-19 rather than accept emergency pandemic measures.) And boy, they’re throwing themselves into the scare tactics with a relish usually reserved for sharing grammatically confusing memes on Facebook.

As the AP reported earlier this month, Republican politicians across the country are using rising crime rates as an excuse to pass laws aimed at suppressing Black Lives Matter protests and at protecting police budgets from re-evaluation. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on June 11 blaming crime on “radical and reckless decisions by some jurisdictions to defund their police forces,” which is, at best, a wild exaggeration of what have largely been efforts to redirect funds to crime prevention. Rep. Tom Emmer of Minnesota, the head of the National Republican Congressional Committee, falsely accused Democrats of supporting “the dangerous idea of defunding the police.”

Now, we noted, just yesterday morning, that very white, very liberal Portland, Oregon, had cut its police budget enough that the department was 150 officers under strength, and according to Portland Police Department numbers, the city is on pace for 92 murders this year, shattering 1987’s record of 70. With a city population of 662,549, that would give the city a murder rate of 13.89 per 100,000 population. How liberal is Portland? Joe Biden carried Multnomah County 367,249 (79.21%) to 82,995 (17.90%).

Just two days prior to that, we noted that Austin, Texas, where Miss Marcotte lived before her boyfriend and she moved to Brooklyn, had slashed its police budget by 1/3. Austin is the most liberal city in Texas; Joe Biden carried Travis County, where Austin is located, 435,860 (71.62%) to 161,337 (26.51%).

Our deadliest city, St Louis? As of June 22nd, there had been 88 murders in the Gateway City, and 82 of the victims, 93.18%, were black. Of the 36 known killers of those 88 dead black people, all were black. Joe Biden carried the city by 110,089 (80.85%) to 21,474 (15.77%).

So, unless those inanimate guns are just leaping into the air by themselves and shooting people, those guns are seemingly leaping into the hands of Democrats.

Miss Marcotte claims that, since the rise in the homicide rate is seemingly everywhere, with no distinct differences between places like Austin, where the police have lost a third of their funding, and other big cities, where the funding drops have been significantly less, the increase in the homicide rate cannot be attributed to defunding. But then she goes on:

The sociological reasons for the rise are still ambiguous, though there is little doubt that the pandemic contributed by adding economic and social stress, while also depriving young people of jobs and school opportunities that keep them out of trouble. Pfaff also suggests there may be a reason to believe that rising tensions between police and communities contribute, if only because people are unwilling to cooperate with law enforcement they see, for good reason, as oppressive. If that relationship “deteriorates significantly,” Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist at the University of St. Louis-Missouri, told Salon’s Igor Derysh in February, “that simply widens the space for street justice to take hold.”

Well, yes, that’s true enough, but it undermines her other points. She claimed that crime, overall, had dropped, and the violent crime rate had spiked only modestly. As I have previously noted, there are two kinds of crimes: crimes of evidence and crimes of reporting. If a man rapes a woman on the streets of Philadelphia, as far as the police are concerned, if it wasn’t reported, it didn’t happen. It is commonly assumed that most rapes go unreported, with some guesstimates being as high as 90% not reported. Crimes like robbery might go unreported if the victims do not trust the police or think it will do any good, or are fearful of revenge by the criminals.

But murder is different: it is a crime of evidence. It isn’t easy to dispose of a dead body in a way that it won’t be found, especially if you haven’t carefully planned things. You’re looking at 100 to 300 pounds of dead meat, bone and fat, and something which will put off a strong and nasty odor after very little time. The vast majority of dead bodies get found.

So when I read that other crime has decreased, I just don’t believe it. Murder is not normally an entry-level crime; it’s a crime committed primarily by people who have committed other crimes. When you read about a murder who was caught — and the police actually catching killers is getting progressively worse — you almost always read that the killer was legally barred from owning a firearm, or that he was carrying it illegally. Noting Miss Marcotte’s own statement that people are less willing to cooperate with the police, it stands to reason that crimes of reporting would be reported less.

After a few paragraphs in which the author ties the existence of illegally purchased or possessed guns to the existence of legally owned firearms, she gives us her solution:

The surest way to reduce murder rates is to get guns out of people’s hands.

Miss Marcotte’s biggest issue has always been abortion, but it’s certainly not the only right she cherishes. She frequently and loudly exercises the rights she believes she should have. She exercises her freedom of speech and of the press in her tweets, her articles in Salon, and other places. She exercises her right to use contraception. She has exercised her right of peaceable assembly to join the #BlackLivesMatter protests in Philadelphia. An avowed atheist, she exercises her right not to go to church. She will defend those rights to, well, to the death is the common phrase, but I can’t say that she’d go that far.

But the right she has and chooses not to exercise — and, to me, it is actually choosing to exercise the right in the negative[3]Just as choosing not to speak or publish something is still an exercise in your freedom of speech and of the press. — is her right to keep and bear arms. Because it is a right she chooses not to keep and bear arms, she doesn’t think that anyone else should have that right. Her solution to the illegal use of firearms is to take guns away from people who have not used their weapons illegally.

Miss Marcotte is but a small, if vocal, part of the left in America. Very much proclaiming her own views, she, like The New York Times and The Philadelphia Inquirer and The Washington Post, doesn’t like hearing other people expressing their own. The left just plain don’t like anyone exercising their constitutional rights in a way of which they don’t approve.

Me? I support Miss Marcotte’s right to choose to buy, or not buy, a firearm. I support her right to write, or not write, whatever she chooses. I support her right not to go to church, and I even support her right not to read what I happen to write. Our freedoms are both positive and negative; we may choose to do or not do something as we please.

The left used to support that, but that was a long, long time ago.

 

References

References
↑1 One wonders: does the uber-feminist in Miss Marcotte object to the appellation “City of Brotherly Love” as leaving out sisterly love?
↑2 With only one homicide each day on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, the rate has come down slightly this week, but the weekend’s coming.
↑3 Just as choosing not to speak or publish something is still an exercise in your freedom of speech and of the press.