Everyday I read a couple dozen articles online and scan the headlines of hundreds more. But rarely do any of them move me to want to do anything about them. This is one of those cases as a teacher is arrested for making idiotic remarks on a blog from his home computer.
I hate anything that threatens free speech. I was debating this a little with paul not too long ago saying that I didn't think networks should have the right to even fire on air people for saying racist/insensitive remarks. At the time the thing was Dog the bounty hunter. But that is old news now. And at least in that case it wasn't government interference, merely a network wanting to distance itself from that sort of thing. Fine. Whatever. Fire the fucking teacher and see if I care. But arrest him? Arrest? For saying vaughly threatening things on a blog? An annoynomus blog?
Time has come to end this shit. I post about it here knowing it won't be read by that many people but I am outraged, outraged I say! I can't live in a society without free speech and I ain't moving to canada so we need to fix this.
Earlier I tracked down the phone number and home addresses of the Chief of Police and Mayor of West Bend. I had them up for a while but took them down as I've decided that I would rather, if anyone cares, have the address for the senator as this is more a matter of national importance than of a small Wisconsin town. Which you can do Here and Here
I realize this is more or less a futile attempt, but I can't sit idly while people are being arrested for saying shit. I almost hope someone tries to arrest me for saying shit so that I can be as loud as humanly possibly about why the fuck they have no right to do that shit.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
hmm... what he said i guess was that "West Bend teachers' salaries made him sick and the Columbine killers knew how to deal with that."
you should know mor from those criminal justice classes that freedom of speech does not cover making threats on people's lives.
the thing about that is that its not just some idiotic or insensitive statement, its a threat from what sounds to be a very unstable individual (he suggested a murderous rampage as the proper respose to poor salaries).
remember, your freedom to swing your fists ends at my nose.
as far as dog, i thought you had been saying that the network shouldn't have dropped his show. i guess you're actually saying that they shouldn't have the right even to do so, which is pretty extreme i think.
i do believe in free speech. i think dog the bounty hunter has the freedom to say what he wants, but i also think the network has the freedom not broadcast it.
By your logic then it means that if I said hitler knew how to run a country I should be thrown in jail. Just because you might be able to construe that as a threat against jews doesn't mean I'm actually planning an attack or that I am "unstable." Misguided, pissed off, whatever, but just saying something should never land you in jail unless you say "I am going to kill everyone at this school. Seriously. I mean it." This wasn't a threat. This was a comment left on a message board.
And I do know more about criminal justice from my classes. More than the police department in west bend, aparently.
The first amendment is supposed to protect people. Not stop people from venting on a website about some budget problem. I mean, what more do you know about this guy then what he said on a message board? Seriously, have you looked at the shit we have said on the internet? I mean, I have said a lot of crap on the internet that was used as a tool to vent. And I've read a lot of shit other people have said that could have been construed as a threat but that doesn't mean they should be thrown in jail and sent to court for saying.
When the days start to come when people can't talk openly without fear of being punished by your government then you no longer have any right to free speech. You may label this guy as unstable but nothing he said constituted a threat by any legal definition. All he did was say something that he shouldn't have. I'm not standing here to defend what he said, but his right to say it. Would I feel bad if he came in one day and shot up the place? Yeah, I'd feel bad for the victims, but this is just like the threat of terrorism. Yes its a threat, but is it something that should land one-third of the nation on some terrorist-watch list or another? Or that the government should have the right to monitor what I am saying and to who I am saying it to? Should I allow the government to systematically strip me of my rights just because of the slim, statistically improbably likelihood that I might be some sort of threat to nation security? Should the police be able to come to my house and arrest me if I say "at least suicide bombers get the job done!" Or something equally idiotic? Of course not. No law abiding citizen should be living in fear of their government because they may have a slip of the tounge once in a while. Or vent somewhere that they shouldn't.
As far as I know from the article the dude doesn't have any sort of police record or violent past, which is probably the case as he is a teacher. But lets just assume that he's going to kill everyone. thats whats best for our society. Lets make sure that no one anywhere ever says anything that might be construed as a threat and if they do lock them up. Why not declare him a prisoner of war as a terror suspect? Why not, indeed? He could be seen as a terrorist. What he said could be said to have "put the school in a state of fear." And since we are at war, clearly what he said was a terrorist remark because it was designed to strike fear.
I have no problem with them suspending him. Or firing him even. It was a stupid thing to say, but at the same time without the police they wouldn't have had anyway to know who had said it, so in that regard they shouldn't be able to even fire him because it is the 'fruit from the bad seed' rule which means that any information obtained illegally (i.e. as in an illegal search of the internet records as no crime was committed) should have to be thrown out. Which means that since he shouldn't have been able to legally be arrested he shouldn't have been able to be legally fired because no one should have known it was him that said it.
And honestly, how can you not see this as a blantent disregard for the first amendment? I mean, every time I point out someone getting in trouble for saying something you seem to be on the side of the censor. Fine fire dog and whoever else says shit you don't like on your network, its a private company and there are a billion places a show can go these days so its not like they are stopping him completely from saying whatever. But I think that in a free society it wouldn't be based on what was being said on a show but rather in a more capitalistic notion of money. If advertisers won't spend money on your network or the ratings go down as a result of it then, and only then, should a show be pulled. Content be damned. People often claim to hate shit that they watch all the time. Like most reality shows. And just because someone may from time to time say something offensive doesn't mean that their public life should be completely ruined. That goes contrary to what every idea of free speech is all about. The idea wasn't that in certain contexts people could say what they were thinking but that they could always say what they wanted without fear of reprisal. And even if the government isn't stepping in, it still creates a ripple effect. Censorship is never helpful. It may seem like a good idea to shield everyones delicate feelings all the time, but much like children of priests, the more we try to protect society from itself, the more of a monster we may unlease when it finally has a good look at whats around it.
sure he may not have exactly said "i'm going to shoot up the school" but in these things there is always going to be a matter of interpretation. the police decide if its something they need to take seriously and if it is deemed a serious threat on anyone's life, then they can act. its sort of like a bomb threat. you don't have to literally say "there is a bomb in the school" for it to be considered a bomb threat and thus a crime.
if the courts determine that the police overstepped then there you go. i'm just saying that you're exagerating the situation.
and if some company decides they don't want a racist to be on their channel, then good for them. if i were the president of the company, i might have made that same choice as a matter of principle. i think that huge companies driven solely by profit-motives with no sort of social conscience at all is a major problem in this country.
so i think your suggestion that the choices a company make be based only on a "capitalistic notion of money" is why we have such major problems with things like big companies polluting the environment or running sweatshops overseas, and always lobbying congress for favorable policies all at the expense of the public.
i know that obviously these things certainly aren't on the same level dog the bounty hunter. i'm merely pointing out that sometimes focusing solely on free market economics theory isn't the best way to run a society.
this sorta reminds me of a south park episode i saw the other day in which the kids are running a student news show. you should watch it. its funny.
Are you suggesting that I haven't seen an episode of south park? I mean honestly, have you met me?
As for the companies, there is a huge difference between a legal thing such as sweatshops and pollution and protecting speech. The problem with simply kicking out anyone who ever says a racist thing is that everyone is racist on one level or another. Yes paul, even you. You see, it has a lot to do with the way in which our brains work. Since out brains can't conceptualize every person in the world we create broad generalizations of various groups. In doing so, we create stereotypes that are associated with said groups. As you are no doubt aware it is quite possible to have 'positive' stereotypes, i.e. 'All Black people are good at basketball' that are still hurtful. I am not saying you hold that particular one, but one I have heard you say before is that 'all asian chicks are hot.' It may seem on the surface an innocent remark, but when you look at your reasons for believing it then it becomes apparent that this is an idea based on a stereotype as obviously you have not met every asian chick. As for myself I have all sorts of stereotypes on different groups. I often find myself believing all republicans are idiots, for example, as well as all democrats. I have a very negative view of 'white trash' folk (whatever their ethnicity, more of the idea of what it means to be white trash rather than simply being poor and white). The point being everyone has stereotypes, everyone has racist tendencies on one level or another, so kicking someone off the network for a moment of stupidity is ridiculous. Its this idea our culture has that you are a racist or you aren't one and there is no gray area inbetween. There is a huge amount, and punishing someone for saying something stupid does seem to be a violation of first amendment rights, and having a blanket policy against "racists" is equivelent to saying "if you say anything about anyone that I don't like I can pull the plug." Maybe in practice it would be different, but it is an attempt to control what is allowed to be said in society and anything like that should be worked against in a free society.
Getting back to the teacher, I went and looked up a site talking about just this sort of thing. It's a pretty quick read for what its about, and I could see a few things in there that would imply that this guy could have implied a threat enough for a legal definition, one thing that they can't prove, though, and thus something that will get him off in half a second is going to be intent. And I quote:
"Intent is among the more significant factors in determining a true threat. Courts have shown that there must be a willful intent to carry out the alleged threat. this tends to be a cautionary measure intended to protect individuals who mistakenly make a threat in a moment of desperation and frustration. In such instances, intent and context directly contradict. While in the context of the situation a threat could easily be interpreted as unlawful, it is often found that there is no intent to carry out the threat. This is why when determining context, the behavior of the individuals and their relationship to one another is an important factor."
There is no way, to my knowledge, of showing this guy had any sort of intent to carry this out. And from what he said it should be clear to any law enforcement person that he was merely venting frustration. Another factor according to the site in determining if it is a true threat is "Unequivical" in which "It deals more with the exact threat, and seeks to assure that a threat is not ambiguous and not obscure. In other words that the communicated speech is in no way debatable as a threat and that this is obvious to a reasonable person."
"In no way debatable as a threat." Granted this one isn't at the top of the list of things they consider, but I would say that it would be pretty hard to prove that it was meant to be a threat. As Here from the fark forum of where I found the article sometime yesterday is a long list of people who don't seem to interpret it as a threat. Does that seem as something that is not debatable? I don't think so.
There are more things I could bring up, but I am quite tired of talking about it right now. The thing that sucks about wanting to protect free speech is that it starts off with people having to defend the rights of crazy, asshat people. Unfortunately, shit like this has to be protected, regardless of who says it. So even though I wish this was a guy that got jailed for saying something bad about Bush, I will latch onto this case and cases like it whenever I come across them because if the first amendment falls then we are all screwed. Whatever values you really care about, gone, all gone, unless the government says its okay to care about those issues.
i'm pretty sure that the police investigate threats like that to see if there is intent - like if he has a stockpile of weapons and writings or plans about what hes going to do or something. chances are that he doesn't have any of those things and thus it'll get dropped or something, but i think thats why they check on that. i'm pretty sure this is way outside the norm of how authorities react to threats.
and i think there is a difference between the type of racism that you might see in stereotypes about basketball and the type that is plainly hateful. its not all the same and thus all ok. part of maturity is realizing that we live in a real not theoretical world where you can say that everyone holds racist opinions to some extent, so it all should be acceptable or forgiven.
and i believe i said that MOST asian chicks are hot (perhaps i should add on the redundant obviously implyed IMHO) and i'm prepared to stand by that.
"i'm pretty sure this is way outside the norm of how authorities react to threats."
that should be "isn't" btw
i'll add in though that i'm obviously not an expert or anything, so i might just be under the wrong impression, but the whole thing just doesn't sound quite so crazy to me
Post a Comment