{"id":9745,"date":"2015-02-04T16:40:19","date_gmt":"2015-02-04T21:40:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=9745"},"modified":"2015-02-19T07:52:44","modified_gmt":"2015-02-19T12:52:44","slug":"politics-as-usual-limits-thereto","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/politics-as-usual-limits-thereto\/","title":{"rendered":"POLITICS AS USUAL: Limits Thereto"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Is free speech something we all truly believe in and accept, or do we all have little caveats attached to that belief?
\nCaveats that are unsaid but yet somehow understood? Do we say to ourselves \u201cI believe in free speech\u201d but then turn around and say, \u201c\u2026 but you can\u2019t say that,\u201d or \u201cI believe in free speech but there are limits.\u201d
\nIf we are honest with ourselves, I think we all make statements like that, either in our heads or even out loud, an implicit acceptance that some things simply should not be said.
\nThere is tacit agreement amongst the general public about what is acceptable and what is not, but there is no universally accepted list of topics that are verboten. It is just accepted that some things \u201ccross the line\u201d, so to speak.
\nBut who decides what that line is, and when someone has crossed it? Who decides who gets to offend and who gets to be offended? I think that conflict, between freedom to say what we want and the realization that not everything we say should be said, is what we as a community and as a country are struggling with right now.
\nThe reaction to the horror of the Charlie Hebdo murders has been to clamp down on certain kinds of speech; to muzzle individuals for spouting their views. It seems reasonable given the circumstances, but I wonder about where it will lead us.
\nI thought about this the other day as I endured the truly horrendous movie, \u201cThe Interview\u201d. Aside from the fact that it was absolutely awful, the movie was offensive, and not just to any semblance of the notion of art. It was offensive. Period.
\nThe Interview was subject to much threats, hysteria or what have you from the good folks in the Politburo of North Korea. They were furious. Threats were made of a nuclear kind. A hacking scandal ensued. Actors were embarrassed (shock!) and Sony backed down \u2013 albeit briefly \u2013 and did not run the movie in the theatres.
\nCue the outrage about foreign powers dictating to us about what we can say or not say, and how Sony Pictures were \u201cweak\u201d or whatever for not running the movie. Personally, I think it was all a big bit of nonsense to get people talking about a movie that otherwise no one would have seen.
\nLeaving aside the absurdity of that situation, let\u2019s look at the movie objectively. It was about murdering the President of North Korea (and that that was a good thing). Humiliating him. Then murdering him. As a comedy.
\nWe just decided that because it was about Kim Jong-Un it was funny. But think about it this way – would we think it was funny if it was Obama? Or Harper? Would a movie like that even be made? Perhaps, but probably not. The larger question would be \u2013 why not?
\nAnd I think that\u2019s my point. We say that we believe in free speech but often our actions belie those beliefs.
\nRight or wrong, it\u2019s fairly clear that we believe some free speech is more worthy of protection than others, that our right to poke the bear is limited to certain kinds of bears.
\nBut before we trot off merrily into an Orwellian future of laws for thought-crimes, we need to understand that it is oxymoronic to say that there are limits to free speech. It is free. Or it is not.
\nWe need to reconcile that fact.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Alison Collins-Mrakas Is free speech something we all truly believe in and accept, or do we all have little caveats attached to that belief? Caveats that are unsaid but yet somehow understood? Do we say to ourselves \u201cI believe in free speech\u201d but then turn around and say, \u201c\u2026 but you can\u2019t say that,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-archive"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-2xb","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-06 05:02:08","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9745"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9745\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}