3/28/07

Jamison Foser in the Huffington Post: No, you are the Nazi

It's growing awfully tiresome to read some of these blogs. Not an idea in sight. Not a thought to be found. Just yelling and pointing. That is how low American political discourse has sunk.
Ann Coulter, Steve Young, Nazis and Media Matters... A Response

On Tuesday, I sent an email to supporters of Media Matters for America, in which I asked people whose local newspapers carry Ann Coulter's column to contact those papers and ask them to either drop her column or explain why they chose to continue distributing her vile hate speech.

In response, Huffington Post blogger Steve Young compared my email to Joseph Goebbels' work in Nazi Germany, and accused Media Matters of attempting to deny Coulter her first amendment right to free speech.

Young isn't the first person to compare Media Matters to the Nazis; doing so is one of Bill O'Reilly's favorite tactics. Like O'Reilly, Young is badly mistaken.

Media Matters does not contest, nor do we seek to eliminate, Ann Coulter's right to write and say what she believes. Nor do we contest or seek to eliminate the rights of news organizations to promote her views by running her columns or hosting her on television. We simply urge them to reconsider whether their decision to do so serves their readers and viewers.

That's what Steve Young wants us to stop doing - he wants us to stop expressing our views about what news organizations should do.

Telling people to keep quiet about their belief that newspapers should not carry Coulter's hateful, irrational, and misinformation-laden writings is very nearly the opposite of defending free speech.

Just look at Young's headline: "Media Matters Needs to Lay Off Ann Coulter." Young compares Media Matters to Nazis for urging newspapers to exercise their freedom of the press in a way that we think is responsible. Yet Young feels no problem telling us how we should exercise our freedom of speech.

We, as private citizens - not agents of the government - are simply expressing our opinion about how news organizations should use their freedoms. Just as Young, as a private citizen, is expressing his opinion about how we should use freedoms.

In other words, if my email reminded Young of Joseph Goebbels, what must he think of his own response? [there is more but who can put up with this idiotic rhetoric?]

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"It's growing awfully tiresome to read some of these blogs. Not an idea in sight. Not a thought to be found. Just yelling and pointing."

Yup, the following words from a certain blog gave me those same thoughts:

"He is worse than a Holocaust Denier"
"He is worse than any Arab propagandist. He is a Jew who hates himself and his people."
"This man is both anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic. He has no shame."
"I am compelled to stand and scream at him."