ABC Anchor Trashes Trump Lies About the Media

In my view, Der Trumpenführer is rapidly pushing America towards a crossroads where either authoritarianism and propaganda based on lies will be rejected or the nation will go down the ugly road that has overtaken other nations in the past, with Germany and Italy being but two examples. Which path is taken will depend in large part on whether or not the media relentlessly confronts a would be autocrat and his enablers and insists on reporting the truth notwithstanding attacks and lies directed at it.  On This Week, Jonathan Karl laid into Donald Trump for his tweet attacking the “fake news media” and calling it an enemy of the American people, explaining that criticism of the press has a long and storied history involving U.S. presidents. Here is Karl’s full statement (transcript):

There’s been no shortage of outrage over the president’s statements on the press. But I’d like to close with a little perspective. There is nothing new about a President of the United States criticizing or even vilifying the press. Even Thomas Jefferson, the same Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence and who, ten years after that, wrote, “Our liberty depends on freedom of the press” — even Thomas Jefferson, when he was a few years into his own presidency, was so upset about what was being written about his administration that he flatly declared, “Nothing can now be believed that is seen in a newspaper.”

Teddy Roosevelt, who now is next to Jefferson on Mt. Rushmore, once wrote, “To announce there must be no criticism of the president or that we are to stand with the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.”

I couldn’t agree more. But I also know that T.R. wrote that nearly a decade after he left office. When he was still in the White House, he coined the term “muckrakers” to denounce investigative journalists who he felt were so obsessed with the negative that they were missing the good in the world, including the good he was doing as president. Such negativity in the press, Roosevelt said, is one of the most potent forms of evil.

And that brings me to President Donald Trump, who has taken presidential criticism of the news media to yet another level. In a way, it surprised me. The Donald Trump I knew as a young reporter in New York was nothing if not media friendly. And for most of the past Republican primary, he was the most accessible major candidate. No one else was close.

At Thursday’s press conference, we saw flashes of that — seventeen reporters called on, many that he knew would ask tough questions. But now the president has declared the press the enemy of the American people.

I’ve reported in countries where leaders not only complain about a critical press, but also try to shut it down, throwing reporters in prison or worse. I’ve seen my colleagues risk their lives and, with increasing frequency, lose their lives in their pursuit of the truth. We are not about to stop doing our jobs because yet another president is unhappy with what he reads or hears or sees on TV news. There is a reason the founders put freedom of the press in the very first amendment to the Constitution.

As long as American democracy remains healthy, there will be reporters willing to pursue the truth, even if that means incurring the wrath of the most powerful person in the world. A free press isn’t the enemy of America; it’s a big part of why makes America great.

The media - or at least the honest media (which excludes Fox News, a/k/a Faux News) - MUST keep reporting on Trump and his henchmen and enablers in Congress.  The free press is in some ways all that stands between us and a dictatorship. 

Conservative Hypocrisy Over Mozilla and the First Amendment

As often noted on this blog, conservatives - especially conservative Christians - are off the charts nowadays when it comes to hypocrisy and down right dishonesty.  They have victimized and demonized gays, blacks, unwed mothers and many others for decades but the moment their ability to persecute others is challenged, they go off the deep end and claim they they are the ones being persecuted.  They can dish out mistreatment but expect everyone else to worry about their own misplaced sensibilities - assuming one can call hatred and abuse of others to be sensibilities.  A piece in Slate looks at this amazing hypocrisy.  Here are highlights:

A repeated cry in conservative and libertarian circles over anti-gay Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich’s resignation is that the company is somehow trampling Eich’s free speech rights. Eich, as you’ve surely heard, donated $1,000 in 2008 to California’s Proposition 8 campaign, which successfully outlawed gay marriage in that state before getting shot down by the courts. It’s true that, because of this donation, Mozilla’s leaders and board members pressured Eich to resign. But it’s absurd and hypocritical to claim that this pressure constituted an infringement of Eich’s legal rights.

Let’s start with the obvious: It is literally impossible for Mozilla to violate Eich’s constitutional freedom of speech. At the risk of sounding pedantic, the First Amendment applies exclusively to state actors, like Congress or state legislatures, so a private corporation like Mozilla simply cannot infringe upon an employee’s free speech rights, even if it wanted to. There is no wiggle room around this point. It is a basic constitutional fact.

Mozilla’s decision to seek Eich’s resignation implicates the same First Amendment principles that famously allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gay troop leaders.

Oddly, however, I don’t see defenders of Eich also criticizing the Boy Scouts for excluding gay men because the organization disagrees with their conduct and beliefs. Nor do I even see conservatives taking Mozilla’s rights as a private corporation seriously—a predictable hypocrisy made especially obnoxious in light of last week’s widespread right-wing praise of the corporate plaintiff’s claim in Hobby Lobby. This is the conservative double standard in the realm of corporate rights: When the corporation supports a right-wing pet project—say, denying women reproductive care—conservatives pen encomia to the First Amendment’s corporate protections. But when a corporation dares to support a progressive cause like gay rights, conservatives cry foul at its alleged censorship of individual views.

The right wing’s backlash over Mozilla’s move only further proves that opportunism, rather than principled dissent, drives its frantic charge for full corporate personhood. Keep that in mind as the conservative outrage machine takes aim at Mozilla for daring to exclude a man whose values and conduct it finds unacceptable.

Supreme Court of Canada Upholds Restrictions on Religious Based Hate Speech

SUPREME COURT OF CANADA

I can already hear the shrieks and bleating  of the American Christofascists - actually, you can read it at the misnamed Christian News Net - following the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling that a man could be prosecuted under Canada's hate speech statutes for disseminating anti-gay fliers that went far beyond mere expressions of religious belief.  Not that Christian News Net bothers to tell the truth about the contents of the fliers and instead describes the fliers as merely stating "the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexuality."  The fliers (which are attached as exhibits to the Court's opinion) in fact went far beyond merely reciting Bible verses and claimed among other things that sodomy would be taught to school children, claimed that gay males would be soliciting sex with children, claimed that gays were 430 times more likely to have AIDS, and that gays were three times more likely to sexually abuse children.  

In short, the fliers contained the deliberate factual lies and inflammatory language one sees coming out of SPLC designated hate groups like American Family Association, Conservative Values Coalition, Family Research Council and the National Organization for Marriage virtually daily.   In upholding the conviction of "Christian" activist William Whatcott and the $7,500,00 in fines, the Supreme Court of Canada said in part:

The courts pose the question of whether “when considered objectively by a reasonable person aware of the relevant context and circumstances, the speech in question would be understood as exposing or tending to expose members of the target group to hatred”: Owens, at para. 60. In the course of this assessment, a judge or adjudicator is expected to put his or her personal views aside and to base the determination on what he or she perceives to be the rational views of an informed member of society, viewing the matter realistically and practically.

.   .   .   .  “detestation” and “vilification” aptly describe the harmful effect that the Code seeks to eliminate.  Representations that expose a target group to detestation tend to inspire enmity and extreme ill-will against them, which goes beyond mere disdain or dislike. Representations vilifying a person or group will seek to abuse, denigrate or delegitimize them, to render them lawless, dangerous, unworthy or unacceptable in the eyes of the audience.  Expression exposing vulnerable groups to detestation and vilification goes far beyond merely discrediting, humiliating or offending the victims.

 

Hate speech is, at its core, an effort to marginalize individuals based on their membership in a group.  Using expression that exposes the group to hatred, hate speech seeks to delegitimize group members in the eyes of the majority, reducing their social standing and acceptance within society. When people are vilified as blameworthy or undeserving, it is easier to justify discriminatory treatment.

In the context of this case, Mr. Whatcott can express disapproval of homosexual conduct and advocate that it should not be discussed in public schools or at university conferences. Section 14(1)(b) only prohibits his use of hate-inspiring representations against homosexuals in the course of expressing those views. 

If expression targeting certain sexual behaviour is framed in such a way as to expose persons of an identifiable sexual orientation to what is objectively viewed as detestation and vilification, it cannot be said that such speech only targets the behaviour. It quite clearly targets the vulnerable group.  Therefore, a prohibition is not overbroad for capturing expression of this nature.

[T]he fact that a person circulates a hate publication in the furtherance of a sincere religious belief goes to the question of the subjective view of the publisher, which is irrelevant to the objective application of the definition of hatred. Allowing the dissemination of hate speech to be excused by a sincerely held belief would, in effect, provide an absolute defense and would gut the prohibition of effectiveness.

Passages of Flyers D and E combine many of the “hallmarks” of hatred identified in the case law.  The expression portrays the targeted group as a menace that could threaten the safety and well-being of others, makes reference to respected sources (in this case the Bible) to lend credibility to the negative generalizations, and uses vilifying and derogatory representations to create a tone of hatred: see Warman v. Kouba, at paras. 24-81.  It delegitimizes homosexuals by referring to them as filthy or dirty sex addicts and by comparing them to pedophiles, a traditionally reviled group in society.

 

Whether or not Mr. Whatcott intended his expression to incite hatred against homosexuals, in my view it was reasonable for the Tribunal to hold that, by equating homosexuals with carriers of disease, sex addicts, pedophiles and predators who would proselytize vulnerable children and cause their premature death, Flyers D and E would objectively be seen as exposing homosexuals to detestation and vilification.

Kudos to the Supreme Court of Canada for calling the dissemination of lies and untruths to inspire hate for what it is and refusing to allow the supposed cloak of "sincerely held religious belief" as an excuse for inflaming hatred without consequences.  It is far past time that the Untied States enact similar legislation.   It is one thing to cite Bible passages and to disapprove of others.  It is something far different when one seeks to instill hate and thereby encourage discrimination and violence.  The victims of anti-gay attacks in New York City pictured below shows what hate speech brings about:

 

The "godly Christian" folk are not nice people. The sooner society at large recognizes this truth and ends the special rights and undeserved deference afforded to Christofascists the better off we will be as a nation. 

Going Dark on Jan 18 to Protest SOPA

As a blogger and frequent user of the Internet for both business and personal matters, I - like may, many others including Google, Wikipedia and countless others - I am very concerned about the censorship powers the U. S. House of Representative's proposed Stop Online Piracy Act and it's U. S. Senate equivalent, the PROTECT IP Act, would give the government. The strongest protection from a tyrannical government and abuse of the government's police powers is a free and unfettered press. Nowadays, that press includes the power of the blogosphere. One of the blogs participating in the Internet blackout tomorrow is the Bilerico Project for which I have been a contributor for almost 3 years. Frankly, this legislation is the first step towards government control of the Internet such as exists in China and other dictatorships. Here are highlights from Bil Browning's explanation of the importance of defeating these bills.

This legislation simply gives the government way too much power to censor America's internet and as a minority community that's something that should particularly concern us. While nothing in this suggests it would be used to target the LGBT community, the broad reach of the proposed laws could be used to censor any group worldwide.

This is not a decision I've made lightly. Quite frankly, my income is mostly based on our ad revenue and subtracting an entire day's impressions will take its toll - especially since our traffic has continued to climb.

SOPA, however, gives the government the ability to force search engines to hide bilerico.com, put me in jail, and take all of my ad revenue whenever they decide. This is a longterm decision - one day versus any potential day the government decides.

We will display a black page on every page tomorrow with a message about the importance of defending the freedom of the internet. We'll link readers to more information about SOPA and the protest by Bilerico Project and sites like Google, Reddit, Wikipedia, and Facebook.

To learn more about this threat and to take action, go here. Be assured, I have already registered my opposition.

Aussie Gays Win Pope Protest Battle

365gay.com is reporting that an Australian Court has struck down the draconian regulations that were passed to restrict the speech and actions of anyone who might want to voice protest over the visit of the Nazi Pope, Benedict XVI, in conjunction with World Youth Day. The new regulations had made behavior that "caused annoyance or inconvenience" to festival participants punishable by fines up $5,300. The language of the regulations was thus so open ended and vague that in addition to resricting free speech, it was open to arbitrary and capricious abuse (in fact, the language was like something the Chimperator and Emperor Cheney would have loved). Here are highlights:

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(Sydney, Australia) A court struck down a new law Tuesday that banned people from annoying participants of a Roman Catholic youth festival in Australia that the pope plans to attend, ruling that the law restricted free speech. The ruling handed down on the opening day of the six-day World Youth Day festival paves the way for activists to hand out condoms and coat hangers - symbolizing abortions - to pilgrims in a demonstration planned for Saturday. Three federal court judges ruled that the law was invalid under Australia's constitution because they limited freedom of speech.

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The legal challenge was brought by two activists from the NoPope Coalition, a group of gay rights and secular activists. The coalition is planning a rally on Saturday at which activists said they would wear T-shirts condemning Pope Benedict XVI and hand out condoms and coat hangers to pilgrims taking part in a procession through Sydney.

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"We now have a lot more confidence to take to the streets to condemn Pope Benedict's policies against condom use, against contraception, against homosexuality," said Rachel Evans, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit. "We are glad that the court has ruled that we do have the freedom of expression to communicate our political views on Saturday."