UWS theater professor Dr. James Miller is relatively new to the short-lived, now cult hit TV series “Firefly.”  Some of his students are loyal fans and asked Dr. Miller to check it out for himself. He liked it enough to hang a Firefly poster on his office door. Given its remote location in the theater wing, where mostly only theater students would see it, who would have expected the poster to cause such a firestorm?

Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE) reports:

On September 12, 2011, Professor Miller posted on his office door an image of Nathan Fillion in Joss Whedon’s sci-fi series Firefly and a line from an episode: “You don’t know me, son, so let me explain this to you once: If I ever kill you, you’ll be awake. You’ll be facing me. And you’ll be armed.” On September 16, UWS Chief of Police Lisa A. Walter notified Miller that she had removed the poster because it “refer[s] to killing.” After Miller replied, “respect my first amendment rights,” Walter wrote that “the poster can be interpreted as a threat.” Walter also threatened Miller with criminal charges: “If you choose to repost the article or something similar to it, it will be removed and you could face charges of disorderly conduct.”

In response to Walter’s censorship, Miller placed a new poster on his office door on the 16th. The poster read “Warning: Fascism” and mocked, “Fascism can cause blunt head trauma and/or violent death. Keep fascism away from children and pets.”

Walter escalated the absurdity. On September 20, she wrote that this poster, too, had been censored because it “depicts violence and mentions violence and death” and was expected to “be constituted as a threat.” She added that UWS’s “threat assessment team,” in consultation with the university general counsel’s office, had made the decision. College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences Interim Dean Raymond Hayes then scheduled a meeting with Miller about “the concerns raised by the campus threat assessment team.”

The university has since canceled the meeting as of last Friday, but it hasn’t backed off its position.

Sorensen, however, dug a deeper hole. Together with Provost Julie Furst-Bowe and Vice Chancellor Ed Nieskes, Sorensen defended UWS’s censorship in an email to all faculty and staff on September 27. The three administrators wrote that “the posters in question constituted an implied threat of violence. That is why they were removed.”

To understand the importance of this as a First Amendment issue, one needs to closely examine what happened.  A university’s Chief of Police/Parking Enforcement Officer, ignorant of the context of the quote, took it upon herself to remove not one but two posters without ever asking their context or purpose.  The professor honestly expected his First Amendment rights would not be infringed, but the school’s Chancellor cowered behind bureaucratic zero tolerance policies and did just that.

Whether or not you agree with how the professor responded, the police chief clearly overreacted to something she misinterpreted.  You can read the full exchange of those emails at FIRE.  Nothing about the poster of a fictional TV Space Captain is intended to “cause others to fear for their safety”; in fact, it is the opposite of a threat.

Dr. Miller sent the administration the relevant clip from Firefly’s pilot episode Serenity.  The context of the quote is an homage to fair play and a code of honor that obviously prefers non-violence.

This is precisely the issue with freedom of speech; words are subjective and can be interpreted differently by separate individuals.  Sometimes this is done unintentionally, sometimes with malice, which is why the act of deciding what’s NOT free speech is ripe for abuse.  The UWS administration’s stated desire to “promote a campus environment that is free from threats of any kind—both direct and implied” may be well-meaning, but its meaning amounts to nothing.  How does one set a universal standard to determine what is an implied threat or in what context speech may “refer to violence and/or harm”?  As Dr. Miller pointed out in his email response to police chief Lisa Walter, would this also apply to “a poster from Hamlet? Or a news clipping about Hockey players that commit violent murder?”

When asked if he knew of any other examples of such posters or signs on campus, Dr. Miller replied that while he wasn’t aware of any prior attempts at censorship, a “Kill Bill” poster from the popular Quentin Tarantino film was prevalent on campus earlier in the year.  Some quick research finds the poster was actually a parody of the Kill Bill movie, as part of a campus-wide protest held in February against Governor Scott Walker’s budget bill.

Oddly enough, police chief Walter was not at all concerned with the reference to killing or to the weapon of violence depicted in those posters.  In fact, she was quoted in this article at the time as being rather complimentary of the activities.

“The neat part of working in a university is that folks get to have their voices heard, and we try to make sure that it’s done in a manner that’s orderly and doesn’t disrupt the rest of the operations too much,” she said.

Walter also pointed out that the university’s union officers are not included in the exemption Walker provided to other law enforcement officers, firefighters and the State Patrol.

“He did not exempt UW police, Capitol police and, I believe, DNR wardens,” she said. “They will lose their ability to negotiate and have a union negotiate other work-related — other than salary. If the bill goes through, they will be without a contract — and without a union — on March 15.”

Is this because the police chief was not only overseeing security at the protest but also voicing her vested political interest in the highly controversial issue at hand? It seems clear that she was immersed in the context of that poster.

Words are subjective, indeed.

American Universities and colleges today are now, by design, overwhelmingly leftist in their belief systems and political activities.  Students and faculty alike frequently glorify monstrous leftists like Mao Tse-tung and Che Guevara.  To some, they are socialist revolutionary heroes, while to others their image alone is testimony of mass murder and oppression.

When Ward Churchill was fired from his job as Professor of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2007 for engaging in research misconduct, scholars insisted that Churchill was singled out for his political views, most notably his statements about 9/11 in which he “referred to the ‘technocrats’ working at the World Trade Center as ‘little Eichmanns.‘” There continues to be an outpouring of support for Churchill from the academic community, many of whom have stressed that Academic Freedom must be staunchly defended.

Whither tolerance and intellectual diversity?

The University of Wisconsin-Madison was recently ordered by the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to pay nearly $500,000 in legal costs to a student group that claimed its First Amendment rights were violated when the student government rejected a portion of its funds because they were earmarked for religious worship. Badger Catholic, a student Catholic group that conducts various religious and spiritual activities on and off campus, sued the university, which claimed that funding some of the group’s activities would “amount to an illegal endorsement of religion.” The Appeals Court disagreed with the University and the Supreme Court recently declined to hear the case. It’s been hailed as a victory for freedom of speech and religious expression on college campuses.  $500K was lost because, rather than protecting the fundamental rights of its students, the school chose to discriminate against their activities purely because of the group’s religious beliefs.

While the flap over the Firefly poster may seem trivial, it is anything but.  This incident and UWS’s ego-driven, bureaucratic response provides a teachable moment.  It should make us pause and think about how easily our freedoms can erode, in the arbitrary name of protecting others’ feelings.

It’s one thing to ensure that students and faculty are physically safe, but when we surrender to the Wordsmiths what may or may not offend someone or make them uncomfortable, we are helping to pave our own Road to Hell.

“Sure as I know anything, I know this – they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, ten? They’ll swing back to the belief that they can make people… better. And I do not hold to that. So no more runnin’. I aim to misbehave.” – Mal Reynolds, Captain: Space Boat Serenity

I understand where it comes from. Musicians usually become Rockstars by appealing to the common man. When they become rich and famous, they have to find ways to appeal to the demographic they abandoned. So they take up causes. Sheryl Crow feigns concern about the environment, for example, even though the energy required for just one tour could satisfy the energy needs of a small American city.

When Bruce Springsteen started singing about blue-collar teenage angst, he was an angry blue-collar guy, barely out of his teens. His jeans would fade from hauling amps, just like any other working stiff. A billion dollars later, he has to work hard to remember the old days; and like most Grammy winning musicians, has a Guatemalan sweatshop put holes in his jeans.

Unlike the other European Rockstars of the eighties (who are forgotten, but for their haircuts), U2 frontman Bono has been able to keep himself relevant for a generation with his Saint Bono routine. He is not just a champion of the working class, he is the superhero for the impoverished and oppressed peoples of the world. He has met with presidents and dictators, leaders of every political and religious stripe, and set up programs where you can still be a commercialist with a conscience by buying a Red™ iPod. He successfully petitioned 23 nations to forgive Third World debt; debt that will eventually have to be picked up by the taxpayers of those 23 nations.

But the truth is, he is, deep down still a Rockstar. Like any human, he wants to keep as much of what he earned to himself. So when we learn that Bono is moving his publishing facilities to a friendlier tax haven, the only question should be: why didn’t he leave years ago? (Actually that one is pretty easy to answer: Artists were granted full tax exemptions on royalties in Ireland; until the financial crisis made them reform their tax policies, and they capped the exemption at €250,000 in 2006.)

But for thousands of true believers, who think we can tax our way to social paradise, Saint Bono’s defection has been a rude awakening. Protesters plan to stage demonstrations during an upcoming U2 show Jun 24. Which shouldn’t be a surprise. The only question should be: why didn’t fans protest five years ago? This major Bono disappointment actually predates “Spiderman: Turn Off The Dark” by four years. (Actually that one is pretty easy to answer too: Pot.)

What these protestors do not understand is despite their ragged appearances, U2 is a billion dollar industry. He isn’t the first Rockstar to display such hypocrisy: John Lennon, who once asked the world to “Imagine no possessions,” moved to NYC in 1975 so he could keep a little more of his own; the nation of Lennon’s birth was more than happy to relieve him of excess possessions.  Mick and the boys took Rolling Stones Inc. to France about the same time, to avoid England’s 83% marginal rate. The Rolling Stones now keep their songboooks in the Netherlands, where royalties compound virtually tax free, and will be handed down to their long impatient heirs without a death tax.

Which is where Bono went. I really don’t begrudge them that. The Netherlands favorable royalties tax has been attracting musicians for years. (Oh yeah, they also have legal pot.) Burdensome tax policy does more to hurt a nation than to help it. Divided equally among the citizenry, U2s entire net worth would only buy a couple dozen pints per Irishman. Certainly having U2 stay in Ireland is better for the economy. They invest capital into the nation which create jobs rather than welfare programs, refurbishing the rundown Clarence Hotel, among other things.

It is disappointing that Bono did not move his publishing empire to America. We are a nation founded on the rights of property, so it would be a natural fit. Something is drastically wrong that our nation no longer serves as a tax haven for wealthy artistic refugees from Europe and Canada. There is something unfavorable about America, and I really don’t think you can blame George Bush for that.

To sum up: The father of a fallen Marine had sued the church, saying their protests were intentionally meant to inflict distress. The Court disagreed, saying these creeps had a right to promote their “message.”

We skipped the story because we felt any mention of Westboro is a win for Westboro.

Which is still true, today.

But I’m bringing them up anyway, because, the ruling sucks.

Look – If you can’t yell “fire” in a crowded theater – which is an act meant to cause harm – how are the actions of the Phelps any different?

Their whole schtick, after all, is using language and props to incite grieving folks to violence.

That ain’t freedom of speech, it’s a pack of ghouls looking for trouble.

And it makes me wonder if the Supreme Court – and the media – would feel different if the Phelps were to crash a black church carrying signs with the “n-word” all over them. Of course, the Phelps would never do that: the cowards wouldn’t make it out alive.

Mourners are easier pickings.

Which is why they should be protected.

So what’s the solution? Passing laws keeping these weirdos a safe distance away would help. But for the media, it’s time to bring back that old fashioned time-tested practice: shame.

We, the media, must agree to turn our backs on Westboro. Because, if no one reports on a protest, then – like that proverbial tree falling in the forest – it never happened.

And, you know, for the Phelps – being ignored is a punishment worse than hell.

And if you disagree with me, then you sir are worse than Westboro.

Tonight:

Kevin Sorbo!

Brooke Goldstein!

KABC’s John Phillips

To paraphrase Martin Niemöller’s famous admonition about complacency with totalitarian fascists:  “First they came for Rush Limbaugh and called his satire racist, and I didn’t speak out because Rush Limbaugh is a conservative.  Then they came for Dr. Laura and called her commentary racist, and I didn’t speak out because Dr. Laura is a conservative…”

Well, this time they came after a high school drama program in far-from conservative Westbury, CT.  The Arts Magnet School in that city planned a production of August Wilson’s 20th century classic “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone” until the district’s Superintendent, David Snead, tried to pull the plug because the play’s characters use the word “nigger”.

First, a little bit about the play and the playwright.  August Wilson was arguably the finest American Playwright of the past thirty years.  His monumental “Pittsburgh Cycle” of plays (of which “Joe Turner” is a part) represents a canon of literary and historic significance that will be studied and performed for centuries.  The group of plays include the Pulitzer Prize winning “Fences” (1987) and “The Piano Lesson” (1990) – yes, two Pulitzers three years apart .  All but one of the ten plays are set in the same neighborhood in Pittsburgh and focus on the African-American experience throughout the 20th century.  Each of the plays take place in a different decade, “Joe Turner” representing the 1910’s and primarily focusing on the experience of Southern Blacks’ migration to urban Northern cities looking for economic opportunities and promises of a more tolerant environment.

It’s obvious at this point, to any reader with a basic high school education, that it would be impossible to truthfully tell the stories that Wilson does in these plays without the word “nigger” escaping the lips of his brilliantly drawn characters.  Of course, if the reader happens to have more than a high school education, or worse, an advanced degree in education and school administration as I’m sure Mr. Snead possesses, you’re probably tossed into a vicious conundrum, torn between the virtues of artistic freedom and politically correct “sensitivity” to “hate speech” language codes.

So, Mr. Snead did what educated, tolerant, quasi-fascists always do:  He tried to use his power to silence what he personally found objectionable.  Even better, he used race-hustling activists as his shield against criticism.  “The use of the N-word is something all civil rights leaders around the country want us to stop using,” Snead said. “I don’t think we should be doing anything to encourage our students to use it.”

Thankfully, the school board that hired Mr. Snead (and now should fire him) saw fit to take up the issue in a public hearing this week and over-ruled the over-zealous Mussolini-wannabe.  The show will go on. And, to the great credit of the vastly left-wing theatre community, much support and advocacy was provided by producers, directors and writers who saw this move for what it was, a repudiation of the basic tenants of free artistic expression, and a not-so-veiled suggestion that future plays should be careful not to use language that “civil rights leaders” might find objectionable.

But, this story should not end here.  This can be a “teachable moment” for Americans who still find it challenging to remember the latest politically correct way to refer to their neighbor who happens to be a  2nd generation son of a Chinese mother and Guatemalan father (hint: you call him an American).

Left-wing activist groups like Media Matters and Al Sharpton’s National Action Network seek to silence voices like Dr. Laura and Rush Limbaugh under the guise of politically correct language codes that they invent and enforce to fit their needs.  It’s the classic “Al Capone” approach to political activism.  They can’t defeat Rush on intellectual grounds.  They tried and failed miserably to defeat him with competing left-wing radio programming.  So now, they lie about Rush’s supposed racism in an attempt to have the FCC remove him from the air.

Soros-funded Media Matters openly brags about forcing Dr. Laura off the air (although she’s now thriving on Sirius/XM radio) because she dared to use the same word found in Mr. Wilson’s play.  And one can argue that the political and artistic goal of Mr. Wilson’s use of “nigger” is in perfect harmony with Dr. Laura’s use.

So, what’s a lefty to do?  The same left-wing groups who fought to allow high school productions of “Rent” to go forward despite reasonable protestations from parents over its glorification of drug-use and sexual behaviors not suitable for many fourteen-year-olds are now forced to choose between those same free-speech standards and the argument they continue to use to justify silencing conservative commentators on radio, television and the internet.

It’s very instructive for all Americans to witness these events and to bear in mind one inescapable truth:  Whether it’s re-writing Mark Twain or passing laws against the use of cross-hairs on a map or banning a classic play by one of our country’s greatest writers, the knee-jerk instinct to silence speech is consistently and insidiously coming from the political left.

I pray that soon, artists in our community will start re-examining why they continue to align themselves with these speech-squelching totalitarians instead of the freedom-loving center-right Tea Party that they often find so abhorrent.  They better wake-up soon.  Remember, Niemöller’s famous statement ends with: “Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak out for me.”

———-

Enjoy this excerpt from August Wilson’s “The Piano Lesson” as your Sunday Matinee from Big Hollywood:

Sure, the rally was successful, but the irony of someone standing in the heart of our democracy to demand we stop speaking a certain way… Who does stuff like that? Of all people wanting to regulate speech … a political comedian.

The rally also proved that Stewart is nothing more than a hard-left partisan. Think about the environment in which The Rally To Tell Others How To Speak took place. The same Jon Stewart who claims to be concerned with our nation’s political tone chose to ridicule a rally hosted by Glenn Beck that was non-partisan and apolitical. Beck’s rally was a quiet, dignified, respectful gathering where people of all political stripes spoke of issues bigger than partisan politics and about what we have in common and how we must come together. By choosing this event of all events to savage in such a high-profile way, Stewart proved that he not only can’t take yes for answer when it comes to political discourse, but that his weird crusade to change the tone is utterly disingenuous and completely partisan.

Watch the video embedded above from yesterday’s “Daily Show,” where Stewart goes on and on and on and on and on and on about the way Republicans speak for TWENTY FREAKIN’ MINUTES. Here he has almost a full half hour with a rising star in the Republican party, a likely presidential contender, and all Stewart can do is obsess like Captain Queeg over missing strawberries about the age-old practice of political rhetoric. 

It is truly 20 of the strangest minutes of television you’ll ever see.

Pawlenty, God bless him, keeps his cool and manages to more than hold his own as Stewart fingers his ball-bearings and mumbles about “tyranny-Obama-unprecedented-Gingrich-Obama-unprecedented.” But if there’s any part of Pawlenty’s brain that resembles mine, it was silently screaming:

“It’s called politics, you totalitarian ass! It’s called rhetoric! Read a book, moron, it’s been going on since man learned to speak!”

I get the politics behind what Obama’s favorite Palace Guard is doing here, that’s laughably obvious, but there’s a slow-motion train wreck quality to it all that’s much more amusing than any smirk.

This March, the Federal Elections Commission under President Obama began channeling Jackson.  We had hints that this would happen after the Supreme Court decided in Citizens United v. FEC that restrictions on corporate funding of independent political broadcasts were prohibited by the First Amendment; that ruling also held that nonprofit groups like Citizens United could freely produce and distribute their documentaries. 

Obama quickly responded by targeting the Supreme Court itself, boldly (and wrongly) proclaiming in his State of the Union Address, “Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections.”  Members of the Supreme Court were sitting directly in front of him at the time (one, Justice Samuel Alito, had the unmitigated temerity to shake his head softly when Obama lied about the ruling). 

Obama’s FEC is following in his footsteps.  Citizens United itself is a 501(c)4 nonprofit advocacy group that produces political films.  It was the government’s attempt to treat their documentary, Hillary: The Movie as a political campaign expenditure that led to the ruling in Citizens United.  

In March, Citizens United asked the FEC for an advisory opinion on whether the production, distribution and marketing of its future films would be regulated by the FEC in violation of the Citizens United decision.  The FEC wrote back with two proposed opinions.  The first was fine.  It suggested that “the costs of producing and distributing Citizens United’s films, along with related marketing activities, are covered by the press exemption from the Act’s definitions of ‘expenditure’ and ‘electioneering communication.’”  They based their logic on a two-step process.  First, they determined that Citizens United was a “press entity” because “Since 2004, Citizens United has produced and distributed fourteen films, with four additional films currently in production.”  Second, they determined that Citizens Untied was not owned or controlled by a political party, political committee, or candidate, and that it was distributing its work to the general public in accordance with prior procedures.  Fair enough. 

The second draft opinion and its alternative argument was far more troubling.  In it, the FEC suggested that while Citizens United’s production, distribution and marketing costs would be exempt from regulation under the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971 (as amended) if they were related to movies broadcast on television, they would “not be covered by the press exemption to the extent the films are distributed by theatrical release and as DVDs.”  The logic here is peculiar.  The FEC said that “under the Act and the Commission’s regulations, unless a press entity’s facilities are owned or controlled by a political party [etc.] … the costs of distributing any news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through the enumerated media are neither expenditures nor electioneering communications.”  Here’s where the FEC gets dicey, though: they wrote, “Conversely, a news story, commentary, or editorial distributed through facilities other than the enumerated media is generally not covered by the press exemption.”  

In other words, if you are a press entity but you don’t use approved press “facilities” to distribute your product, you can be regulated.  What are approved press “facilities”?  Means of distribution that have been used previously the Citizens United for its documentaries.  This leads to the odd result that while the “distribution of documentary films through the facilities of a broadcast, cable, or satellite television station is the legitimate press function of an entity,” the same does not hold true for DVD and theatrical distribution. 

Tomorrow, the FEC will vote on whether to adopt the first or second version of their advisory opinion. 

The second opinion is a clear slap in the face to the Supreme Court.  While the Supreme Court did not touch on this issue specifically, the main thrust of Citizens United obviously cuts against this type of regulation.  Citizens United was designed to avoid creating false distinctions between press and other corporations, because such distinctions would inevitably end in violation of freedom of the press itself.  Now the FEC is attempting to paint such distinctions once again through the “facilities” language of the Act.  This is just part of a broader attempt to end-run the Citizens United decision.  It will likely end up at the Supreme Court level again, and again the Supreme Court will strike down such administrative fiat.  And the cycle will continue, until we get a Congress that repeals the Act wholesale.

But not today.

Then Jon Stewart performs a spectacular pivot reminiscent of Wes Unseld in his prime and focuses his rage exactly where it should be: on the animals who used their unhinged interpretation of Islam to threaten the lives of Stewart’s colleagues, Trey Parker and Matt Stone. He goes on to show highlights of how The Daily Show has targeted all religions from the Amish to the Jews, from Methodists to Wiccans.

Backed by a gospel choir, he sums up this celebration of free speech and true tolerance with a musical message “to anyone threatening death in the name of religion or politics” with the pithy and resonant lyrics: “Go F*ck Yourself!”

Today, Jon Stewart is my hero. He should be a hero to every weak-kneed, lily-livered, cowardly member of the American media, from the reporters who meekly submit to arbitrary authority to the jellyfish executives who cower in their Sixth Avenue towers over threats from guys living in some cave or Brooklyn basement.

And he should be yours too.

You’ve no doubt heard about Ann Coulters’ escapades in the Great White North. College leftists (who’d had no qualms with terrorist sympathizers speaking at their school in the past) were so offended with the idea of what Madam Coulter might say ,that they attempted to ban her from the premises. When that didn’t happen, the young Green-Day liberals decided to stage a protest. Of course (as is often the case with liberal protests) things got out of hand, with protesters becoming so unruly that the situation had become not only a safety hazard to Ann herself, but for the myriad people who were there to hear her speak. Woodstockers would be proud! So students thirsty for knowledge and debate have to deal with all of this hooplah because many Canadians forecasted that Ann Coulter might engage in –cue dramatic chipmunk– hate speech!

See, leftists will read that and deem the censorship completely appropriate. Liberals and censorship go together like Batman and Robin, milk and cookies or hockey and beaver pelts. Unlike canucks however, Americans are apprehensive towards the idea of censorship because of the “rugged individualism” that rests at the center of our cultural landscape. We gained our freedom by flipping the bird to the monarchy… Canada gained it by bending down, kissing the ring and making concessions. American leftists love to hold Canada in high esteem however, and often use it as a blueprint for what the United States should become (the silly accent notwithstanding).

Enter “hate crime” laws. For those of you who don’t know — those who buy into the idea of “hate crimes” believe that if you kill someone, a harsher sentence is merited if the victim happens to be a minority or gay. The laws are designed to place emphasis on intent, ergo criminalize thoughts in the process. See, I don’t think that murder needs a footnote. As a matter of fact, if leftists believed in harsher sentencing of convicted felons these policies wouldn’t be an issue in the first place. If only one of the four people that Tookie Williams brutally murdered had been gay, Clooney might have left his protesting shoes in the closet.

See how clever this little backdoor is? When you criminalize thought through hate crime legislation, you can ultimately criminalize speech based on the premise that the words are reflective of hateful thoughts. Combine that with leftists basing their arguments on the premise that conservatives are all bigoted, homophobes (mostly because we’re all secretly gay) and you’ve got one hell of a powerful tool in your hands.

You needn’t ask Ann Coulter. Just ask Stephen Boisson, a Canadian pastor who now faces fines and possible jail time due to his speaking out against homosexuality. No he didn’t beat any gay people up, no he didn’t use words that would incite violence, and no, he wasn’t even caught rejecting advances from Boy George in a Los Angeles porta-potty. He simply stood by the doctrine of his church and actively expressed himself. Canadian human rights tribunals were not happy.

Whether you agree with Boisson or not, one has to ask themselves if we want that kind of a cultural shift in America. Do you want the government to have the right to tell you what you can and cannot say? Should the folks in Washington be the ones to determine whether your dissent crosses the line into the territory of “hateful?” Should the “rugged individualism” of America be made a relic of the past, pushed aside to make way for more legislation that fosters “tolerance?”

But most of all… Does this mean that I can go to jail for calling Sean Penn a wiener?

If your mailbox is like mine you receive an overwhelming amount of political stuff and reading it all can be a time-suck of enormous proportions. Let’s face it, if you don’t derive your living from this stuff, no matter how much of a concerned citizen you may be, there comes a point where you have to say, “Ah, is this paying my mortgage?” That’s reality biting you in the ass and so the knee-jerk reaction is to press delete and move on to something that may add a few more dollars to your already crumbling retirement fund. But, and I stress BUT, like the” pusher man” (remember that song, G** D**** the Pusher Man?) who you cannot seem to get away from, the sheer volume of political noise coming at you can’t be ignored and after just one peek … aaahhh your fix takes hold.  

There’s a great scene in Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America” where a young hoodlum waits to have his way with a local girl who “gives it up” for the price of a big cream-puff pastry. As this little guy with the cutest most innocent 10 year-old face sits on the steps outside her tenement door, he looks at his nicely wrapped pastry and smiles in the knowledge of what’s coming in just a few short moments. But this kid is so innocent-looking you know he doesn’t quite understand what he’s waiting for. In fact, there’s more trepidation than anything else in his countenance. Anyway, not being able to help himself, he opens the paper wrapper the pastry’s wrapped in, looks at the whipped cream on top, looks at the girls’ door, thinks for a bit and then wraps it back up. Well, this goes on a few moments until the boy succumbs to the allure of the pastry, takes his finger, and tastes the cream on the edges of the wrapping paper. He repeats this until he can no longer help himself and then gobbles the whole thing up with the most satisfied, beautifully innocent look just as the girl opens her door and beckons him to her, The boy, no longer hungry having had a far greater pleasure then she can provide, runs off.  

At this point you’re all wondering what the significance of this is. There is none. Only kidding. Actually there is meaning and if you can figure it out I’ll treat you to a slice of pizza at Via Alloro in Beverly Hills.  

Getting back to my emails… 

I opened a few of them and one caught my eye that read: “Pelosi Wants To Ban Fox News from The Floor — she tells Keith Olbermann.” Now this woke me better than 5 liters of Red Bull given intravenously — the hypocrisy, the absolute absurd accusation by her regarding a news outlet that is fairer and more balanced than the others… And I watch them all. Not looking to see who agrees with my point of view but for who is trying to fairly present differing points of view.  

I don’t agree with Olbermann, or most of the MSNBC line-up, but I watch them, want to hear their opinions and while I may vehemently disagree with how unbalanced I feel they are … to NOT let them report is DANGEROUS. Pelosi is not protecting the Constitution and should be impeached over this. President Obama, who has also attacked Fox, should tell her to stand down with this kind of rhetoric; the same rhetoric we’ve heard before concerning talk radio and the Fairness Doctrine.  

While Presidents in the past may have canceled newspaper subscriptions over a disagreement with a certain publication, that is our prerogative as consumers. I see no harm in that. But when our elected officials even float the idea of having a major news outlet banned from Congress, something is rotten.

With all these thoughts boiling in my brain, I called a good friend of mine to rant and…. We find out the Pelosi quote is a hoax.

She never said it.

Orson Welles would have had a field day with the Internet.

Yeah, I got suckered … but for good reason. Sometime between the 2008 election and this morning the idea of a high-ranking Democrat threatening to ban a legitimate news organization from the floor of the House has quickly moved from inconceivable to entirely believable. After all, last week the White House — our White House – attempted to block Fox News from a pool report interview. Thankfully, the other news outlets refused to allow this to happen, but that doesn’t change what our White House attempted to do. It also doesn’t change the fact that two of President Obama’s top guys – Rahm Emanuel and David Axelrod – were sent out to the Sunday shows last week to tell other networks that Fox News wasn’t legitimate – to tell other networks what is and is not legitimate news.

We need differing points of view. If Fox is silenced who will MSNBC hosts argue with night after night? Some respected pundits write this off as a minor issue saying the President should not tangle with Fox and keep his eye on pushing health care. But, my dear fellow Americans, we need to keep our eye on THIS. Because if we do not the Obama Administration has made clear their goals -– if we do not, the administration has every intention of seeing to it we are spoon fed what to think, say and feel. And regardless of politics, that is an insidious and frightening thing.

I call on all of my colleagues — actors and actresses, singers, musicians, writers, directors… if we in the artistic community stand idly by out of fear we will slip further from our beloved democracy. We must unite together over an issue that has nothing to do with party affiliation. This is about freedom of speech and those in power are trying to put that freedom in jail, not only in America but around the world – as we saw when Michael Savage was banned from Cambridge.

Contact me. Join the free–speech campaign: info@free–speech.com    

It is time to put the flag in the sand for the First Amendment.

But please act quickly…  

God Bless you all and God Bless America,
Robert Davi