peplaw06;1453157 said:
There's no such thing as being "guilty of free speech." Free speech is a right, not a crime. However if an employer wants to discourage that behavior, it's perfectly within their province to do so... assuming some contract doesn't prevent them taking action.
Correctamundo. This is lifted from one of my favorite blogs,
Captain's Quarters:
The FCC should not take any action against Imus. He said nothing that objectively violates FCC rules, with which I have some familiarity as a part-time broadcast talk show host here in the Twin Cities. The government should not make value judgments on content that does not break rules for obscenity, which are fairly clear and for the most part easily followed.
Outside of that, Meyers tries to make a First Amendment case where it does not apply. Except for the perpetually obtuse Sharpton,
no one is asking the government to take Imus off the air. The protestors have pressured CBS and NBC to fire Imus -- and they comprise what both networks would consider their potential audience.
Boycotts are a perfectly acceptable form of free-market protest. If a corporation offends its market in some manner, their consumers will take their business elsewhere. Those consumers can organize to attempt to change the behavior of the vendor in some manner, and that action has complete legitimacy in the marketplace as long as it isn't for illegal purposes. Especially in entertainment, the consumers have few other options available to effect change without organizing in some kind of manner.
Boycotts get used across the political spectrum, and the NAACP should understand that better than anyone. It was a boycott of the Montgomery bus system in 1955-6 that launched the modern civil rights movement. The NAACP has threatened or staged other boycotts since for various purposes and with varying degrees of success, and have often criticized the entertainment industry for its portrayals of black Americans and at least threatened boycotts as an extension of their protests. These boycotts didn't violate free speech or free association; they merely brought market forces to bear on a protest.
Imus has the right to say what he did. For that matter, the Ku Klux Klan has the right to say what they do, as long as it doesn't foment violence.
That doesn't mean that the First Amendment requires CBS and NBC to give either of them a platform for it. Free speech does not include a right to commandeer someone else's press or microphone without their permission.
Meyers should know all of this better than anyone. CBS and NBC have a market decision to make, and they'll probably conclude that Imus' audience will not dissipate over this piece of rank stupidity. They will almost certainly be correct in this judgment, which says plenty about Imus' audience. The two-week suspension will at least exact some kind of consequence for what Michelle Malkin accurately described as Imus' "verbal diarrhea".
Addendum: Here's the crux of the matter: media stars shouldn't attack kids, regardless of the nature of the attack. It's bullying, and nothing turns off people more than a bully. Imus either forgot this, or never learned it before now.
