Free Republic

The consequences of Cancel Culture can be more dire than we thinkIt's been more than three years since former University of North Carolina Wilmington professor Mike Adams killed himself after being pushed into early retirement for offensive tweets. My friend David French and my colleague Robert Shibley wrote powerful articles about it at the time, but I also wanted to say my piece.I first met Mike Adams back in 2001, when he was under investigation for responding dismissively to a student who was, as Mike summarized later, “blaming the 9/11 attacks on the United States Government,” all while the rubble...

Long before he defended O.J. Simpson on murder charges, Johnnie Cochran prosecuted Lenny Bruce for alleged obscenity. Even in the more genteel days of 1964, the young deputy city attorney couldn't convict the notoriously foul-mouthed comedian. In a 1996 memoir, Cochran belatedly conceded that his attempt to do so was contrary to the 1st Amendment. Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard another case that threatens the 1st Amendment, this one featuring the famed attorney as plaintiff. The issue in Tory vs. Cochran is straightforward: Can Ulysses Tory, who was found to have defamed Cochran, be permanently barred from saying...

CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK Lenny Bruce, Pardoned and Laughing By BRUCE WEBER f he were still alive, chances are that Lenny Bruce, officially pardoned last week by Gov. George E. Pataki for cursing in public 39 years ago, would have found the whole routine hilarious. For him, anything official was at least suspect, if not inevitably self-incriminating; dogma of any kind was anathema, and icons — from presidents to popes, from mob bosses to beloved mothers — cried out to be reduced to human size. Bruce certainly wouldn't have needed the governor to declare what he always knew to be true: that...

<p>First Amendment news item of the week, from the Associated Press: Comedian Lenny Bruce was granted a posthumous pardon by New York Gov. George Pataki Tuesday.</p> <p>Bruce was convicted in 1964 on an obscenity charge for a stand-up comedy performance in which he used more than 100 words that the prosecutor and the judge called obscene.</p>

Published: To the Editor: Re "No Joke! 37 Years After Death Lenny Bruce Receives Pardon" (front page, Dec. 24): The welcome and overdue pardon of Lenny Bruce is a commentary on how the world has changed in 40 years. I represented him and Howard Solomon, the owner of Cafe au Go Go, in 1964 when they were arrested for obscenity and had them released from custody that night after a midnight hearing at the apartment of Appellate Justice Arthur Markewich. I had the pleasure and good fortune to see Lenny Bruce's act; he was brilliant and funny. In comparison with...

Lenny Bruce, the potty-mouthed wit who turned stand-up comedy into social commentary, was posthumously pardoned yesterday by Gov. George E. Pataki, 39 years after being convicted of obscenity for using bad words in a Greenwich Village nightclub act. The governor said the posthumous pardon — the first in the state's history — was "a declaration of New York's commitment to upholding the First Amendment." "Freedom of speech is one of the greatest American liberties, and I hope this pardon serves as a reminder of the precious freedoms we are fighting to preserve as we continue to wage the war on...

New York Pressed to Pardon Lenny Bruce By LARRY McSHANE Associated Press Writer Here's a six-letter word rarely associated with the late comedian Lenny Bruce: Pardon. Supporters of Bruce, the foul-mouthed comic convicted of obscenity charges in 1964, have launched a campaign to win him a legal reprieve - 37 years after his tragic death. The goal is to "correct a grave injustice - the prosecution and persecution of comedian Lenny Bruce for nothing more than speaking his mind," said Ron Collins, co-author of "The Trials of Lenny Bruce: The Fall and Rise of an American Icon." The movement to...