Totally intercourse-consent-capable.
Posted on 01/22/2015 8:40:09 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Unusual, not because it’s rare to see an American journalist bowing to Islamic sensibilities on depictions of Mohammed but because typically they don’t go so far as to demand legal limits on their own profession. When the New York Times refuses to run a cartoon goofing on Islam, they don’t want the reason to be government censorship. They prefer to be censored by more sympathetic agents, like violent Muslim radicals.
To be precise here, though, DeWayne Wickham, the dean of Morgan State’s J-school, isn’t demanding a “Mohammed exception” to the First Amendment. He’s demanding an exception for all speech that would make the audience so angry that they might react violently — exactly the sort of slippery slope on censorship that people like you and me worry about when images of Mohammed are suppressed. Actual line from this op-ed, regarding the new cover of Charlie Hebdo: “The once little-known French satirical news weekly crossed the line that separates free speech from toxic talk.”
The most current issue of Charlie Hebdo again has Mohammed on its cover. This time, he appears crying under a headline that reads: “All is forgiven.” Well, apparently not. Ten people have been killed during protests in Niger, a former French colony. Other anti-French riots have erupted from North Africa to Asia. In reaction to all of this, Pope Francis has said of the magazine, “You cannot make fun of the faith of others.”…
In 1919, the Supreme Court ruled speech that presents a “clear and present danger” is not protected by the First Amendment. Crying “fire” in a quiet, uninhabited place is one thing, the court said. But “the most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”
Twenty-two years later, the Supreme Court ruled that forms of expression that “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace” are fighting words that are not protected by the First Amendment.
If Charlie Hebdo’s irreverent portrayal of Mohammed before the Jan. 7 attack wasn’t thought to constitute fighting words, or a clear and present danger, there should be no doubt now that the newspaper’s continued mocking of the Islamic prophet incites violence. And it pushes Charlie Hebdo’s free speech claim beyond the limits of the endurable.
Amazingly for a J-school prof, none of that is right. The Supreme Court hasn’t used the “clear and present danger” test for First Amendment cases in decades. The test now for inflammatory speech is the Brandenburg test, a strciter standard that allows the state to criminalize incitement only in narrow circumstances — when the speaker intends to incite violence and violence is likely to quickly result. Charlie Hebdo’s Mohammed cartoons may have met the “likely” prong of that test but they sure didn’t meet the “intent” part. The “fighting words” doctrine is still good law but it too has been gradually narrowed over time. Today, for the moment, it’s limited to “direct personal insults” between people who are face to face. That’s the key difference between publishing an offensive cartoon and, to borrow the Pope’s recent analogy, stepping up to a man and insulting his mother. From the Supreme Court’s perspective, those situations are apples and oranges. I appreciate Wickham’s candor in trying to expand “fighting words” to allow censorship of all kinds of offensive speech, though; I’ve worried about that myself, as longtime HA readers know. If speech can be criminalized because it angers a man to the point where he wants to attack you, why should we limit it to speech said in his presence? “Fighting words” is a potential trojan horse for smuggling all sorts of exceptions for “hate” into the First Amendment. I’m surprised more lefties aren’t as forthright as this guy is in making the case for it.
Someone should poll the media on whether they agree with Wickham’s “heckler’s veto” assumption that it’s Charlie Hebdo’s staff, rather than, say, the jihadis like Al Qaeda who put a bounty on them and ended up murdering them, that’s guilty of “incitement.” I’d be curious to see the numbers.
They’re not afraid enough, or they would stop letting them in our countries at taxpayer expense. they are creating the crisis which they then want to use to further destroy our liberty and economic freedom.
But insulting the following is okay with him: The founders, the constitution, the 2nd Amendment, Christians, Jesus, God, white males, Sarah Palin, Palin’s children, and Conservatives.
That whole “fighting words” defense is just an attempt to justify the lack of self control some people have over their own behavior. People that are unable to control themselves are a threat to the public safety.
Mohamed was a pedophile and a savage.
What about insulting Catholics?
Insulting Christians?
Insulting Evangelicals?
Totally intercourse-consent-capable.
Insulting some dead guy who is buried in a box within a box out in the desert someplace? Our Yeshua lives, your prophet MoHAMmad is dead, Jim.
This is what I believe as well. Satan never sleeps, and I will never be silent.
Let’s us all just bury our heads in the sand.
Mabbie iffen we do—those scary Muzzies will just go away and ferget us and go somewares else and rob rape and pillage elsewhere and ferget all about us here in our ivory tower and and then WE can ferget about all the dead and beheaded folks in that there middle-east land and we won’t be bothered no more here where we are nice and safe under the soft warm sand.
Yep—that’s do.
Can anyone name a School of Journalism that ISN’T Marxist?
I can’t.
Indeed, I might decide to become violent and bomb a pornography outlet, because it offends and insults me to the point of violence.
As well, Muslims could eventually get us to cover up our women in burkas because the sight of their sexy bodies incites them to violence. There is no end to this but the double standard will stay in place as the boundaries move, I’m quite sure.
Sorry I can and will talk about people who have sex with children any way I want to.
Where in the first amendment does it say, “discretionary”?
This guy is a moron. And they made him dean.
He was qualified...
I’m waiting for the editorial cartoon showing the NYT front page, saying, “Je Suis Coward”.
So lets see if I understand liberalisms two stances:
1) Speech that incites violence is not protected speech, and Muslims are much more easily incited to violence than Christians.
2) Islam, Judaism, Christianity are equivalent religions and Islam is a religion of peace.
So, which is it, liberals? You can’t have both!
No it does not. If you can not speak out about evil then you have no free speech. Journalism is nothing but propaganda at that point.
Many muslims would also react violently to satirical depictions of Osama bin Laden. Is THAT to be avoided as well?
One day the Muslims are going to become arrogant enough in western countries to demand “respect” for Muslim views on, say, homosexuality (at least per koran, if not in practice). I await with interest the left’s response. It hasn’t happened on a large, public, microphone yet, but it will, as the left continues to appease them.
Actually, the left is going to have a lot of dilemmas in the near future as their special interest identity groups become empowered, one by one, to demand their competing interests. We already see it with the working-class white vote. I’m waiting to see if that’s an anomaly of the last election, or a trend.
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