[quote]Wreckless wrote:
I didn’t know there was a boycott of Ann Coulters books.
Tell me, is there an organisation behind it? Do they phone bookstores and threaten to burn down the store if they sell her books? Do they protest outside and keep people from entering the store?[/quote]
If there is an organization behind it, that isn’t problematic, though I would say that fact should be disclosed.
Threats of violence are not protected under free speech doctrine. Neither is trespassing. Neither is blocking public access. This is why a lot of the protestors in NYC were arrested during the Republican National Convention, and this is quite proper. Neutral time, place and manner restrictions on speech are permissible – it’s message-based restrictions that are problematic.
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
Because, if they did, I wouldn’t support that.[/quote]
Nor would anyone who understands freedom of speech, but none of those contingencies are necessary to a simple call for an economic boycott.
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
If I didn’t agree with the political views of a singer, and if he choose to express these views repeatedly, that might eventually lead me to not buying his records.[/quote]
And that would be part of your freedom of speech rights, if you meant it to be expressive. Obviously it impacts other rights as well.
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
But I wouldn’t go out of my way to prevent others from buying them.[/quote]
That’s what a boycott is. It’s organizing to convince other people not to buy or otherwise economically support someone or some organization. And that is part of freedom of speech.
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
I wouldn’t phone radio stations and threaten them if they played his records.
I wouldn’t go into shops and destroy his CD’s.[/quote]
Again, those are not protected activities - the latter might be if you happen to own the shop and the CDs, but not if you’re destroying others’ property.
All those claims of threatened or actual violence, BTW, to me are red herrings, as I haven’t heard any reports of any of those. What I have heard is that a lot of stations were boycotting playing their singles, and that the DJs and people on the internet were encouraging people not to buy the albums – by arguing people shouldn’t, not by threatening violence.
[quote]Wreckless wrote:
The Republicans have build a hughe mud-slinging machine and they smear everybody they don’t like with impunity.
O’Reilly may be an idiot, but he’s a usefull idiot. And Bush is using him.[/quote]
Large claims. No examples.
I’m sure the Bush administration organized a crack “smear” team to take on the Dixie Chicks because they were so scared of the rhetorical power of their arguments that the administration decided the Chicks must be stopped, and the best way to do so would be to organize a bunch of disparate radio-station owners and/or DJs to criticize them and urge consumers not to buy their records. And that they called and convinced Bill O’Reilly to do their nefarious bidding too.
How you come to your conclusions is beyond me.