Ur petard, let me let you hoist urself on it

[maradydd]

In the comments to my last essay, editer writes:

Given [the fact that extremist right-wing radio and TV hosts are encouraging people to show up armed to Obama speeches, among other things], is it any wonder that the sight of gunmen at Democratic events makes a lot of us nervous?The thing is -- if they succeed in making you nervous, you're letting the

Comments

[heron61]

Sadly that sort of behavior is not limited solely to the right wing. Most people act this way for most of their lives. That's one of the reasons that I suspect that democracy and ubiquitous mass media that includes targeted advertising do not remotely mix. In the absence of any obviously better governmental option to democracy (I'm not particularly attached to democracy for itself, but on average, it works significantly better than the alternatives) I'm guessing that the only solution is to declare both advertising and the right to spend money to distribute mass media as exempt from the first amendment. At minimum, restoring the Fairness Doctrine is essential, I strongly suspect that much of the current craziness is due to the vast abundance of right-wing mass media compared to any alternative.

[maradydd]

I'm guessing that the only solution is to declare both advertising and the right to spend money to distribute mass media as exempt from the first amendment.

Apart from my own ideological horror at the notion of any speech -- even speech I find repulsive -- being restricted, I'm at a loss as to how this could be even remotely enforceable.

Beyond that, if a rule like that were in place, what happens when the tide shifts? If, once you obtain power, you use it to place limitations on the speech of others, when you are no longer in power, those limitations still apply to you. And then what?

This is what I mean when I say you cannot dismantle the master's house with the master's tools. This is what I mean when I say let us create abundance. If their voices are loud, then let us encourage our brothers and sisters who feel they have no voice to find their voices, to speak to their friends and speak to their families and speak to their neighbours and speak to those they are afraid of and speak at rallies and speak on the Internet and speak

[heron61]

I completely agree that there's no way to remove nonsense like Rush Limbaugh from the air w/o unacceptable restrictions. My suggestions are (to me at least) not in any way a restriction of personal speech, except (to a very limited extent) the speech of the very wealthy.

Specifically, I'd like to:

• Reintroduce the Fairness Doctrine, thus freeing mass media from near total right-wing dominance of talk shows and suchlike.
  
• Seriously restrict paid political advertising
  
• Restrict the amount of money individuals and groups can donate to political causes (thus allowing grass roots donations, but single people donating millions would not be allowed

[songblaze]

What if my exercise of my freedom of speech is to put my money behind words that I want out there? That suggestion you have beneath your bullet points would completely remove my ability to exercise my freedom of speech by propogating words that I want people to hear.

[heron61]

Permitting that permits the current travesty, where the wealthy, and in particular the ultra-wealthy control access to the mass media and where their opinions dominate public discourse. I do not find that to be remotely fair or just. We live in a social that has been overtaken by mass media demagoguery.

Also, on a fundamental level, money is not speech. Speech (or at least communication of some form) is something that we all possess innate access to. Money is unequally distributed and possessing it is not a right (rather the opposite in our vastly unequal society). I'd change my mind if money was allocated equally to all citizens (which seems to me like an excellent idea in theory, but impractical to implement). However, in the absence of that, equating spending money with free speech gives the wealthy even more power than they already possess.

[maradydd]

I'm in the process of responding to this, but it's turned into an entirely new post -- which, strangely enough, will be this week's Information Theory Reading Group discussion topic. (Synchronicity yay!) Please stay tuned. :)