Discernment and the Bullshit Detector

Two interesting stories today about freedom of speech and the use of propaganda. First, several Denver groups called for banning the free in-the-newspaper distribution of the DVD Obsession, a puff piece about radical Islam. Second, an 11-year-old is suspended from a Denver-area elementary school for wearing a home-made T-shirt saying "Obama is a terrorist's best friend."

OK, I'm on the board of the local and state ACLU, so my opinion is worth more than yours, mofo! Obsession is highly offensive but totally legal. It's an advertising insert. The energy on this one should not be wasted on getting its distribution banned, but in finding out whose money is behind the mysterious and despicable Clarion Fund who bankrolled this. And don't tell me this isn't partisan propaganda - Clarion drove around a semi truck at the Democratic National Convention, advertising Obsession with a huge portrait of Osama bin Laden, featured no doubt to draw some subconscious connection between Osama and Obama.

The Aurora school district was in their rights in suspending Daxx Dalton. The courts have continuously held that students do not have unlimited rights of free speech if the message is obscene or disruptive - in fact, one district's efforts to ban Oakland Raiders jackets as gang-related have been continuously upheld in court! An elementary-school student should have every right to wear a campaign button for Obama or McCain, or wear something that says "Nobama" or "Obama means higher taxes." If the student is of high school age, there might be a good civil suit as to whether that student could wear a shirt charging a candidate with being aligned with terrorists. With a younger student, it's just provocative and almost certainly a setup planned by the parent, Dann Dalton.

The point about such propaganda is that most Americans are too superficial to analyze propaganda and determine when they are the victims of vicious messages. My mother-in-law tells me she will vote on initiatives based on what the TV advertisements tell her. I say they are all paid garbage, and that she'd be better off studying voter guides from LWV, etc. She won't have any of that. If it's on TV, it must be true. We can't ban everything that tells a lie, we simply have to keep shouting louder.

OK, folks, I'm the civil liberties oracle around here, and if you begin to doubt what I am saying, you are probably hallucinating. You are certainly just plain wrong. Shut up and go back to work.