The Freedom of Speech and Jerry Springer

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

How can I support the right to the freedom of speech and still want Jerry Springer to be publicly whipped to death? Freedom of speech is a basic necessity of a democracy. If you can't say what you want then how do you change governments? Yet sensationalist shows such as Jerry Springer's are vile displays of humanity which I would prefer be banned. If anyone thinks that it's better to air that laundry they have to be sick. Any time I look at a show like that or these disgusting video shows of people or animals getting killed or hurt I have to wonder just how far we've progressed from the Roman Forum.

The perfect society would be one in which we all had the right to speech, and yet we chose not to exercise it. Obviously that's not our world. It seems as though the only way to prevent censorship of political speech is to not infringe on any speech even if it's of utterly no use at all. After all, how enlightening is it, or constructive to our democracy is it, to watch people fist fight over some love affair? Does that help us decide if we should bomb North Korean nuclear facilities, or if we can fight AIDS in Africa? (kudos to Warren Buffet and Bill and Melinda Gates).

In fact I have come to the conclusion that we have gone too far. That too many forms of stupidity are protected by the First Amendment. Yet I can't see a way to limit the filth without impinging on the absolutely critical right to political criticism. I'd like to amend our constitution to say that states could not infringe on the freedom of political speech, but I don't think that would serve us well in the long run. There would be too many opportunities for abuse of how to interpret "political". At the same time I truly believe that sensationalist television is doing real irreparable harm to our society. I believe it degrades us, makes us violent, and makes us uncaring and unconcerned over things that really matter. It seems as though we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't.

All I can do, I guess, is to write some little criticism of sensationalism, and hope that Jerry will read this and change his mind, and be glad that I have the right to write this.

This is what got me going:
CNN