MmmHmmmZmmmm

Here from Yahoo! News is an item that bears repeating:

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - U.S. free-speech advocates on Tuesday gave their annual "muzzle" awards to violators including police who charged a woman for swearing at her overflowing toilet, and a motor vehicles department that deemed a "GETOSAMA" license plate offensive.

Perhaps in the long run the most visible of our civil rights that get challenged most is Free Speech. Free Speech is often stpoped in order that someone else isn't offended. Or it may be that someone has a major disagreement with someone else's opinion. And then again it may be n attempt to control or impose morality.

The two cases cited are two good examples. Someone may be offended. Someone may be hurt psychologically. Someone is acting outside "the norm." Let's stop them. Of course one of the problems with such types of actions is that things get all mixed up in political correctness. Hate speech, for example, is hate speech whether it is aimed at some oppressed minority or the oppressing majority. Where do you draw the line? And is "hate speech" truly beyond the pale of being allowed through freedom of speech?

That's is where it becomes a really tough question. Is it still free to advocate the overthrow of free speech? Or are we afraid that if too many people start advocating an end to free speech for hateful reasons, will we then begin to lose all such freedom if too many people go for it?

Is free speech really that unpopular? In reality that greatest threat to free speech is the will of the majority, especially when that majority is afraid or being incited to fear against some immoral or hateful other. In fact, as time has shown more times than we care to admit, that is when most of our civil rights are most in danger.

But there was another award also given. This was for being, well, consistetly inconsistent:

And it gave a "Lifetime Muzzle" to the Federal Communications Commission for years of applying what it said were inconsistent or arbitrary standards of indecency on the airwaves.

The center noted that the FCC had ruled in 2001 that "fleeting expletives" would not be deemed indecent but then three years later judged that both the 'f-word' and the 's-word' met its definitions of indecency.

The FCC. The master at muzzling. I just hope that the FCC isn't put in charge of any Homeland Security anytime soon. Then we might truly be in trouble.

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::UPDATE:: After finishing the above I came across another story from a different sector on Yahoo!News. The American Family Association is back in the news. This time they are asking the Marriott Hotel chain to "to stop giving hotel guests the option of ordering pay-per-view movies with strong sexual content." No comment about a boycott of Marriott mentioned.

Yes, this is more in keeping with American ways of doing things- protest and boycott. And they are not asking the government to step in with some legislation. Which in the end may not therefore be "muzzling" free speech as much as perhaps making people aware of options that they can make choices from. I'm not sure I agree with it, but at least it isn't the government stepping in.

Yet.