Tag Archives: free speech

The NLMSM’s Hurt Feelings

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The Trump administration had a press gaggle Friday.  A gaggle is a press pool that is a subset of the press who then participate in a press conference, and the members of the pool are responsible for getting the content of the conference to the rest of the press.  The Friday gaggle was an expanded one in that, in addition to the pool itself, additional members of the press were explicitly invited to participate—which of course means yet other members, the vast majority of the press, were not explicitly invited to attend.

The additional invitees included reporters from CNN, ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox Business, and Fox News. Not invited were Buzzfeed, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New York Daily News, the Hill, and Politico.

Therein lies the problem, at least in the minds of the Precious Ones (keep in mind that there would have been no outcry had the gaggle not been expanded).  Buzzfeed, NYT, LAT, et al., have their panties in a wedgie over not having been included when the other outlets were.  They’re so special: how dare the White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, the man who made the decision to expand the gaggle for the occasion and who decided who would be the expanded invitees, not exclude (the Precious Ones’ term—”not invited in as extras” not being the same as “kept out”) those others and include themselves instead?

Indeed, they’ve spent the last several days publishing stories about how they were excluded (again, their term), while not reporting on substantive matters (and while not saying who was included in their stead).  They’ve chosen, instead, to create their special selves as the news instead of being reporters of and opiners on the news.

And they’re confused over why they’re not taken seriously by mainstream America.

Free Speech for Me; You Shut Up

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University of Chicago pupils (I can’t call them even students in the scale of pupil-student-scholar) are objecting to non-Left speakers being allowed on “their” campus.

The [pupils] objected to the school’s Institute of Politics’ invitation to former Donald Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. They claim that allowing him to speak “normalizes bigotry” and provides a platform for fascism.

These precious ones are actively ducking away from a clear opportunity to “denormalize bigotry” by running away from him.

The coalition of students from U of C Resists, Graduate Students United, Students Working Against Prisons, and UChicago Socialists claim that the school’s “commitment to free expression doesn’t require the institution to host him….

Speech should be free only for the Left, they claim.  They are the epitome of the fascism and bigotry these wondrous ones pretend to oppose.

Alternatively, these precious ones are just so terrified of a different view, just so unconfident of their own reasoning faculties, that they’d rather run screaming for the Midway and avoid debate rather than face the alternatives and demonstrate with rational discourse, logic, and fact the suboptimality of their opponents’ viewpoints.  Or they’re aware of the fragility of their own and so of their own inability to mount a coherent, reasoned demonstration of the superiority of their own.

Cowardice? Or Tyranny?

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Earlier in the week, Breitbart News Editor Milo Yiannopoulos was scheduled to speak at UC Berkeley, but the institution (I can’t call it a school) canceled his appearance two hours before its start because protestors enrolled in the institution protested, violently with fire and smoke bombs.

Security allegedly was present, but the violence and damage occurred anyway.  UC Berkeley issued a statement about its decision that said, in part,

We condemn in the strongest possible terms the violence and unlawful behavior that was on display, and deeply regret that those tactics will now overshadow the efforts to engage in legitimate and lawful protest against the performer’s presence and perspectives[.]

The institution’s management talked about condemnation of the violence, but it chose to do nothing about it, it chose instead to allow the violence contribute to the destruction of free speech within its facilities.

Notice another thing in that statement.  The institution’s managers regret that violence “overshadowing” other protests against free speech, but they don’t have a minim of regret for the protests against free speech.

Nor is free speech in the Berkeley institution helped by the timidity of the Berkeley College Republicans.

Pieter Sittler, a spokesman for the Berkeley College Republicans, said the club doesn’t support everything Yiannopoulos says but “he gives a voice to repressed conservative thought on American college campuses.”

There’s no need for the protective qualifier; it isn’t relevant to the matter at hand: whether a man will be allowed to speak aloud a contrary opinion in the institution.

The cowardice, or the tyranny, of the Left says the only speech that may be freely spoken is that which the Left will permit and no other.  The timidity of the others functionally condones this tyranny.  The overt actions of the institution’s managers, limited as it is to idle chit-chat, actively condones this tyranny.

The only question remaining concerns Yiannopoulis’ description of the event:

[T]he Left is absolutely terrified of free speech and will do literally anything to shut it down.

Are they such cowards?  Or do they really favor such tyranny?  Or is this the cowardice of tyranny?

A Large Misunderstanding

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A Wall Street Journal article about Breitbart writer and speaker Milo Yiannopoulos and his impact on college campus views of free speech opened with a widespread misunderstanding.

The tour by Milo Yiannopoulos is sparking reaction from more groups than any recent speaker has on college campuses, heightening tensions between free speech and public safety.

There is no tension between free speech and public safety, though: there is no public safety without free speech.  The relationship between free speech and public safety is not only—not even primarily—concerned with people whose feelings get hurt, or people legitimately insulted, and who then act out emotionally and dangerously.  The relationship is centered on Government’s ability to control what will be spoken or done and the threat that those abilities represent to public safety.

It’s only necessary to look at the vociferous protests from the Left and from the Right against what each side saw in its time as Government overreach to see the relationship.

Again: there is no public safety without free speech.  Full stop.

The Bias of the Press

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It’s going to continue, as Howard Kurtz, writing for FoxNews has recognized.

Many in the media, mostly on the liberal side, have come up with a verb that captures their disgust at the man who will be America’s 45th president.

It’s a word that clearly signals that they will remain in opposition, in a state of perpetual outrage, that, in truth, they don’t fully accept the results of the election.

Donald Trump, they say, should not be normalized.

Especially that perpetual outrage part.  That’s not normal; that’s pathology.  Here’s Slate, as cited by Kurtz, describing the typical NLMSM and its refusal (not inability) to accept Donald Trump as the duly elected next President:

In an essay for the New York Times Magazine, Teju Cole wrote, of the days following Trump’s win, “All around were the unmistakable signs of normalization in progress. So many were falling into line without being pushed. It was happening at tremendous speed, like a contagion.” David Remnick told CNN, “We’ve normalized [the results] already. Less than a week after the election is over, suddenly Washington is going about its business talking about who’s going to get what jobs. You would think that Mitt Romney had won. It’s a hallucination.” …  “He is not normal,” insisted John Oliver over the weekend. “He is abnormal.”

The NLMSM as Fourth Estate?  Not anymore.