Monday, May 08, 2006

Heroes of Free Speech

Yesterday the far left-leaning Seattle Post-Intelligencer published this column which echoed many liberal bloggers in proclaiming Stephen Colbert "my hero" for speaking "truth to power" to Bush at the Correspondent's Dinner last week. I just can't stand it any more.

Yes. Such undaunted courage! To take cracks at a man knowing there will be absolutely zero consequences, that your life or family is in no way in danger, and that the object of your sarcasm will just sit there and smile and take it, and because he is a man of class and decorum, won't even stand up and walk out in disgust. Think of how many minds he must have changed! Think of how many red state hicks woke up to the TRUE man they voted for, and will now vote for Democrats this November! What juevos! What moxie!

What a joke.

In the worker's paradise of Venezuela, that stunt would have earned Colbert a year or two in the joint (if he was lucky). Go find me a Cuban newspaper with an anti-Fidel editorial staff. A modicum of real courage would be showing the Danish Muhammad Cartoons on the Colbert Report. Or picking civility over liberal cred for ratings. Or doing that bit in Iran. (Warning - that last link is funny as hell, and may cause snickering in class.)

I'll save my free speech "hero" worship for Atwar Bahjat, an al Arabia TV journalist who had been risking her life to bring truth to the thuggery and evil of Michael Moore's "Minute Men" in Iraq, and was murdered in the most brutal possible way by opponents of a free press. She reminded us that this type of murder and censorship used to be public policy in her country, but that now good people are risking their lives by speaking out publicly against them.

That's courage. But then, the P-I has never really been threatened with real threats of censorship, save the threat of bankruptcy because their readership has continued to fall. And I doubt any of their columnists seriously thinks they are writing under threat of torture. The fact that they openly write about how they can't openly express their views is a self defeating statement that points to the total lack of insight, logic, thought, perspective, or any other indicia of reason that pervades their narrow world view.

1 comment:

Juvenal said...

To call courageous the re-telling of tired, old and obvious jokes about this President in his presence is to stretch beyond recognition the concept of courage.

In fact its probably infinitely more courageous to criticize Colbert's performance. Richard Cohen (hardly an administration apologist) essayed a mild criticism of Colbert in the Washington Post and has incurred the righteous wrath of the unhinged far-left.