Obama Official “Freedom of Speech is ‘Exaggerated'”
Some Political Food for Thought
I’ve bee way too busy to do much blogging on politics. It’s just too fucking boring and dreary. A bunch of bad people doing bad things to fuck up our daily lives. There you go, current politics in a nutshell.
That said, I came across a quote from Obama’s FCC “Diversity Czar” that I found really interesting. I’m not even sure I know how to fully digest these words, but here is what Mr. Lloyd, the man in charge of recommending and implementing new rules for the FCC has to say about the First Amendment.
My focus here is not freedom of speech or the press…this freedom is all too often an exaggeration. ..blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies.”
Mark Lloyd “FCC Diversity Czar”
I realize that any quote like this lacks context and if one wanted to one could find some logic in what he is saying. Of course do to that one would have to stand on the thinnest of platitudes and we should probably assume that Mr. Lloyd is not trying to make a philosophical argument, but a practical one. After all, he is talking about real policy.
I honestly don’t think that one can exaggerate the First Amendment. The Founding Fathers did make it FIRST for a reason, did they not? It isn’t like they put all of the Amendments into a hat and pulled them out at random. (Though I admit, that’s a visual that makes me smile just a bit.) The freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment, including the two Mr. Lloyd finds unworthy of his concern, should probably play a part in communications policy.
Come to think of it shouldn’t “communications policies” be ALL about freedom of speech and the press? Making sure that these freedoms are protected equally should be his ONLY concern. Instead he is trying to figure out ways to limit them because they are not his “focus” and are a “distraction.” Damn those pesky rights. They are always getting in the way of the power mad.
I realize that the FCC often controls the media by keeping people from dropping F-Bombs or exposing boobies to the public. I have some issues with FCC control over things like this, but Mr. Lloyd isn’t talking about fining stations for letting someone say “shit” or showing too much ass. He is talking about making it against the law for a station to carry “too much” programming that leans in a particular way. He is talking about controlling the content of one’s speech because it does not fit with his narrow view of what is politically acceptable. (Keep this in mind my lefty friends and readers, this particular douchebag may be targeting the right, but if this weapon to silence speech is forged, then you must be intellectually willing to have it used to silence you one day.) Isn’t the trying to silence the exact sort of “unpopular” (in the eyes of the Administration) speech that the First Amendment is specifically intended to protect?
It is perhaps ironic that the “diversity czar” hasn’t bothered to raise the issue that ABC, NBC, CBS and CNN are virtually all sharing the same brain when it comes to their reporting, their political leanings and their increasingly more open biases. How exactly is that diversity and why would someone who allegedly wants diversity single out one type of speech or radio program simply because it is the polar opposite from the dominate media elites who have had a monopoly on the airwaves for the past twenty years?
During the campaign when Obama claimed to be against bringing back the “Fairness Doctrine” to control free speech I called “bullshit.” I’m going to use that card now. This man who doesn’t think that freedom of speech or the press are worth his time were appointed by President Obama to carry out “communications policy.” We have to assume that his sentiments mirror that of his boss. Here he is acting on behalf of a man who claims to be against the “Fairness Doctrine” doing his best to carry out all of the policies included in the FD. All the President is doing is calling it something else. I’d say that makes the President a liar, but I never believed his stance against the FD to begin with. He’s just doing what we all knew he would.
I am sorry that Mr. Lloyd finds freedoms of speech and the press to be so minor as to not be worth his time. I’m sorry that he finds people who want to keep those freedoms in tact to be exaggerating their importance. I’m sorry that such a complete tool has been given the power the shape policy. Hopefully the SCUS will find the time in their busy schedule to give a shit about the First Amendment lest it become simply a distract from things like total control of the media and a complete suppression of anyone who dares speak out against the new regime.
Now before some of you write this off as some sort of right-wing Obama bashing think for a second. What is someone in the Bush Administration who was in charge of making communications policy said that First Amendment freedoms of speech and the press were not his concern and that concerns over those freedoms were exaggerated. I think a whole lot of people would be preparing the lynch mobs and blogging away. (Me included.) So where do you stand given these attitudes about the First Amendment by someone in the Obama Administration?
