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migleefulmoments · 5 years

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Dear sweet lord. Ajw has just casually suggested that Darren and Chris have struggled with depression over their “closeted relationship.” Now, they could both struggle with depression, they aren’t exempt from mental health just because they’re rich/famous. Anyone can be depressed. But you don’t just go around making those assumptions about people you don’t know. What in the hell?

Ajw didn’t write the post but she did reblogged it and she only reblog what she wants to convey as truth.

The post is essentially masterpost of what convinced justcantgetenoughcc’s that Chris and Darren are married. Every single piece of evidence is more juvenile and asinine than the last. She “saved the best for last” and just wait...

This post proves how little the cc fandom needs to believe anything they want to believe because everything CC is made up in their heads. If you are writing the story, you don’t need much to prove it is true. They live in a world of baseless nonsense.

I will admit, I am shellshocked at how absurd this is. I’m used to their cruel and baseless attacks on Mia and their petty criticisms of everything Darren, but to be confronted with proof that the foundation of “CrissColfer are married” trope is nothing more than air shook me.

So...let’s look at it...(my comments in parenthesis).

One of the WHAT IFs that has been haunting me…

justcantgetenoughcc

We know they got engaged over the 2012/2013 NYE holidays.

(”we” don’t actually know)

(Wait...this goofy joke between Chris and Alla is what they are basing the engagement on? Chris telling his publicist that she would have to cover up “lots of stories, per usual” is it? This is clearly a joke because Chris NEVER does anything crazy...that’s why it is funny. Why would he Tweet that if it was true? He is smarter than to Tweet “don’t forget we have to hid the body tonight”.

(The bird reference... I know I once know what it means= but I can’t remember. How is it a reference to Chris is engaged to Darren?).

(This is the “ring” they have sold their souls swearing is on his finger and that it indicates he is engaged TO Darren. I don’t even know if there is a ring there and he clearly never wore a ring after this blurry photo SOOOOOOO...NOPE)

(I know someone told me about where Darren went during this same Glee hiatus and where Chris was returning from in this pic. If someone can fill in the details of this trip and I will edit this post. Maybe Chris went to South Africa? Maybe? And Darren went where?)

And yet they went ahead with the FAKE encage in January 2018.

—

I always believed Chris and Darren were married. There were a lot of serious hints in that direction from the guys themselves.Like the wedding in the woods and Alla’s hints to name a few. (Here we are seeing them once again hang their hats on their TLOS theories. The wedding in the woods is related to Darren and Chris exactly how? Alla’s hints to name a few? What few? You showed one Twitter exchange. This is a case of you wanted it to be true so you just believed it was true and then filled in “proof” to suit you and since you don’t listen to anyone who disagrees, you didn’t need to make your proof very foolproof)

Offering this as an admission that we weren’t always told about their personal lives. So marriage could fall under this category of sometimes true rumors?

(Um...yes? So Chris saying this in an interview is what you are using as your proof? ok?)

We even noticed and speculated that Chris wore his actual engagement ring in the Glee “The Proposal - 5.01” episode. I mean that’s the ring that Darren/Blaine slipped on Chris/Kurt’s ring finger and they switched it back to the Glee prop ring later. Many of us noticed the rings were slightly different after.

(Ok, this is nuts. Chris did not suddenly pull out his ring- after NOT wearing on for 2 full years- in order to wear it for some of a scenes in Glee. Many of you “Noticed”? Ugh)

***WHAT IF NOLA was just a FAKE wedding if you take into consideration… no rings, no wedding bouquet to throw, no real ceremony, no real family stepping out with the couple and other inconsistencies… It was funny that Darren’s recent casual pap-walk outfits were more dapper than his wedding suit in NOLA. There are several posts out there laying out all that in detail.

(So, here we are... Darren says he is straight for 9 years, he says he loves Mia in several interviews, says he is lucky to have her in several award speeches, he says he is engaged to her. He let us see small glimpses of their life together- at their home and their bar, a bar which he said he owned with her and he called it their “bar baby”. On the day they are clearly getting married- I can tell because their family and friends are all there, Mia is wearing a big white wedding dress and Darren is wearing at tuxedo, there is a photographer and several wedding attendants=wedding. On the day there is an obvious wedding YOU believe it is a FAKE wedding based on some untruths you refuse to stop repeating- namely that the paparazzi photos were taken after the wedding simply because ENews- had NO insider info- speculated they were coming out of the wedding because they saw a bride and a groom. You also believe that those photos were somehow representative of the entire wedding rather than just what they are- the bride and groom headed to the car that took them from the cocktail party to the wedding. They took pictures while they were in that gorgeous care. So after Darren told us that he and Mia were engaged and he spoke about their wedding many times in the press and we saw photos of lots of people attending the reception and we know their best friends were there and Vera Wang was there but you believe the wedding was fake because they didn’t share photos of the actual ceremony. You believe however, that Chris and Darren are married because you have a grainy photo of Chris you claim shows a ring that he wore once, a satirical exchange between Alla and Chris about covering up his bad behavior, another joke about untrue rumors, a joke about a bird and a made up story about 2 rings during the Glee proposal scene? Cuz that is all perfectly logical and exactly what a grown up would surmise from this evidence. Simply for the sake of the truth I must say: The photos of Darren and Mia we have seen of them coming out of the hotel were taken before the wedding. ENews were wrong. We know this because they now have rings and because the wedding was held at the Museum. It’s funny to me that CCers can’t accept this fact when you listed some of the reasons yourself :No rings, no bouquet, no family... not that you have to have any of those things to make it a real wedding. A real wedding is simply a vow which can be a simple as “do you promise to take this person in sickness and in health blah blah blah” and an officiant has to sign a marriage certificate. That is all it takes to be a real wedding-everything else bells and whistles. I got married 24 years ago and didn't throw a bouquet because the tradition is outdated and tired. We will never see the vows or the family “stepping out” whatever that means- because that is private and for them and not us)(I don’t understand the comment about Darren’s causal pap walk is more dapper than his wedding suit...please don’t tell me they are claiming that his zebra pants and Dalton sweatshirt are “more dapper” than his beautiful designer tuxedo because that is beyond juvenile and petty. That is something a 10 yo would say. You might not like Darren’s wedding style, but the wedding was for Darren and Mia and not a fandom of haters)

They were so young and so ill-prepared for the harsh bearding and constant separations they were subjected to. Not to mention the pressure both the beards put on them. They may’ve broken up a couple of times - with all the cruel and intense contrived situations and beards/bearding that played out right in front of our eyes and quite possibly other behind the scenes nightmarish scenarios thankfully hidden from us…

(Now we get to the fantasy portion of the show...the fanfiction he/she is writing as they go along...this kind of speculation where strayers are victimized is never a healthy way to think about someone you know very little about. This is a classic rescue fantasy)

Chris and Darren don’t seem to be the type who will run out and get divorced at the first sign of any discord. They were too in love and they thought they were “IT” for each other and no strangers to being under PR pressure. Depression even. Both of their parents have/had solid marriages and no one needs to be told of Chris’s childhood circumstances. I don’t think either one would cave under pressure of any kind or over a few spats.

(Here we get into absolute fanfiction. Nothing is rooted in any sort of reality...this is their fantasy playing out in their heads in minute and inappropriate detail. It is NEVER Ok to fantasize about someone else’s mental health or to put a diagnose on a stranger. Depression isn’t something you use to justify your concern. We know nothing about their parent’s marriages. Nobody ever knows what happens behind closed doors).

Translated, that would mean their marriage is still very much intact, despite the storms they had to continuously weather. (ugh)

It wasn’t just me spinning a tale with my vivid imagination. A lot of the fandom believed CC to be married.

(You are right about this-it is the entire fandom spinning a tale with a vivid imagination...that doesn’t make it any better).

There are so many CC hints out there that are so adorable. (I can’t wait)

Just like Darren’s touch or the sweep of his hand over Chris’s back EVERY SINGLE DAY… as he was leaving the stage after their Klaine routine at Glee Live. It wasn’t done for anyone else’s benefit - BUT JUST FOR CHRIS… as the stage lights were turned down or off completely. The cameras caught it in the subdued lighting. And we, the CC fandom ran with it.

(I never watched Glee Live and wasn’t aware of the CC fandom’s bananas back then- so I have no idea what this is even about...anyone? anyone.. Bueller?).

Glee Live was in 2011 but Hedwig on Broadway was from APR - JULY of 2015.

One of the biggest CC hints for me was the Chris Col-FUR that Darren introduced into his Broadway show, specifically on Chris’s birthday - May 27, 2015 and kept it going all the way to the closing show on July 19, 2015.

(riiiggghhhttt because a funny, clever joke -on stage- about a former costar is PROOF they are married.)

Why “Chris Col-FUR on Hedwig in 2015”,unless THEY WERE ABSOLUTELY AND UTTERLY IN LOVE and SERIOUS ABOUT EACH OTHER?!!!

In 2015!!!

(The leap in logic here is astronomical and scary. Why did he tell the joke? Because it is clever and funny. They were friends. The joke doesn’t need for them to be anything more than friends for it to work. “I know a guy”. It wasn’t “I’m fucking a guy”)

Look at this set of tweets from Belasco, from the same day - Chris’s birthday.

(aaannnd here we see how gullible the fandom can be when it suits their needs. Anyone can tell a story and as long as it proves CC is real, nobody questions it. it doesn’t matter if it is stupid-like the one where Max Adler saw a girl wearing Darren’s merch sunnies and asked “are you a fan of Darren’s” and without being asked, he proceeded to just unload about how awful Mia is, how everyone hates her, how Darren is such a pushover he doesn’t know how to get rid of her. The story is basically Max sees sunnies, asks if she is a Darren fan, and then speaks for 10 minutes straight about the evil Mia, they wrap it up with small talk about the area and everyone leaves. There is DisneyPrincessModelWorld who has been trolling them with “insider stories” and “the ghost” for years, and now we have this nonsense...)

Darren looked up on many days and you don’t need me to offer any clarification here.

I have trimmed the pictures to get past the new rules.

(Yes, Darren TOTALLY looked to the rafters where Chris was often hanging from his bat wings. He would spend the show sending heart eyes down to his lover- and Darren, who is so terrified to breach THE Contract that he married a woman he detests, couldn’t help himself...he had to sing to his man and look up, giving away Chris’s hiding place show-after-show. Risking being caught was worth it to sing to his man and to gauze longingly in to the darkness where he just KNEW Chris was hanging)

(oh look, the BEST is last....)

Keeping the best for last…

(Oh, another lie posted to social media that the CC fandom ate up because CC Confirmed. Damn, I was expecting something concrete...some real proof...this was the “best” after all. Instead we have a completely absurd fabricated quote written either BY a CCer or for a CCer)

And YET…

We are being asked to believe that Darren ran off and married his beard… - who was supposedly in a relationship with another man (there are rumors about beard being married to Hudson) the best part of 2014 - 2018. Give or take… as I don’t follow them or track them.

(Yes, you are being asked to believe that because that is what happened- there are photos and a hundred or so guests who witnessed the entire 4 days of events leading up to the wedding. There are candid photos of the reception inside the museum posted on their friends’ social media). (This might be my favorite statement “There are RUMORS about beard being married to Hudson”, who could have started those rumors? and of course, rumors make it true so this is a slam dunk)

Now, if it was all in our imagination, that would be one thing.

(It absolute is ALL in your imagination. Everything here- including “the best you saved for last” is just your imagination, but I’ll play along...whatchagot?)

Pic courtesy - Just Jared

My apologies for posting her picture. Forgive me for not masking her face as I need to make the point below.

(You are NOT forgiven, it is Darren’s wedding day after all and you claim to be his biggest fans so posting his bride shouldn’t be a problem)

Why do they all (including Ashley Weston) look like ‘deer caught in the headlights’ immediately after?

(Oh, THIS is your Proof? Proof that Darren and Mia didn’t get married? a picture of a bride and a groom and some of their groomsmen. You aren’t doing very good here. Your “proof” is a photo of everyone looking shellshocked coming out of a building on their way to their wedding ceremony? Well, let’s think really hard...thinking... thinking.. why would they look shellshocked? Maybe because they were ambushed by paparazzi they weren’t expecting and didn’t want)

As if they have no clue what to do next. I have never seen a newly-wed couple with that same expression.

(Yes, I would imagine that is exactly what they are thinking...worrying that the paparazzi just spoiled their opportunity to get married without the world knowing. Worrying that they might get ambushed by multiple paparazzi at their reception creating a nightmare. Worrying that the paparazzi might get inside the museum and catch the wedding itself. I actually believe you- I am sure that you have never seen newlyweds ambushed by paparazzi. I think this is the first thing you have said that is actually accurate and credible)

Now we have ajw’s tags:

#i always though CC was married as welli don't want to make any firm statements yetbut i lean it was staged and not real hence why the did it in NOLAI am sure however there will be more pics of the sham ceremony and suchthey fucked up the encage royallythey need to at least make this seem a little more real

(I am shocked that she actually believed they were married. I thought she just said that to convince her minions. I mean on Saturday night I figured out she meant it. Watching all of them go right back to the very techniques and beliefs the led them to such a meltdown on Saturday is interesting. They have no adaptation skills and no self preservation instincts. I love that she keeps stringing people along like a good narcissist. “I will be announcing my pick for _____(insert some swamp dwelling bottom feeder) for _____ Cabinet position). I love the rationale the it was in NOLA was because it was staged....because Hollywood isn’t perfect for staging a fake something. I can’t believe she said “fucked”. I didn’t know she had it in her. So she’s back to doing everything she did before she decided she needed pull back some. She’s back to harassing Mia, victimizing Darren, claiming she is his biggest supporter because she will rescue him from the horror that is Ryan Murphy. blah blah blah).

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madisonacampbell · 4 years

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Via the ACLU: The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

No one expected their words to be enlightening or their tone harmonious. Hatred rarely comes in such flavors. It spills out as an ugly, incoherent mess infused with the rotten odor of willful ignorance. And so it was with the Nazi wannabes — self-styled white supremacists determined to make their mark on the world, committed to convincing anyone who might listen that their superiority was both evident and inevitable. The setting was downtown Charlottesville, Virginia, August 2017. Their mission was unity — of like-minded hate mongers. Their leader, Jason Kessler, was a 33-year-old who lived with his parents and had once supported Barack Obama. He had learned that many demographers thought whites would eventually become a minority race in the United States. That news was so unsettling that Kessler remade himself into a white-rights activist. He styled himself as “a civil and human rights advocate, focused on the Caucasian demographic” in the mode of “Jesus Christ or Mahatma Gandhi.” His “Unite the Right” rally, observed the Christian Science Monitor, “was supposed to be the movement’s coming out party, an emergence from the shadows of internet chat rooms into the national spotlight.” Kessler was inspired in part by fellow University of Virginia graduate and white supremacist Richard Spencer who, in May 2017, led a band of racists in Charlottesville chanting “Russia is our friend” and “Blood and soil,” a Nazi-inspired slogan. Why they were enamored of Russia is anyone’s guess; I presume it had something to do with President Trump. The reason for the Nazi chant was evident; they thought it allowed them to channel the spirit of General Robert E. Lee, who had abandoned the U.S. Army in a doomed quest to preserve race-based slavery in the South. Charlottesville’s leaders recently had voted to remove Lee’s statue from the downtown park that no longer carried his name. Spencer and his crew opposed that effort and everything they thought it implied, including hostility to the legacy of whiteness. The Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan were similarly motivated by the perceived threat to American whiteness. Its members — 50 strong — converged on Charlottesville that July to march around and shout “white power” as hundreds of counter protesters responded with “racists go home.” How did the mad ravings of a bunch of intellectually confused, racially paranoid misfits end up spurring a national debate over the limits of free speech, the meaning of the First Amendment, and the moral obligation of the president of the United States? One reason is that — despite Kessler’s efforts to cast himself as the Martin Luther King Jr. of white rights — the rally engendered fears of made-for-TV-scale violence. As news of the event spread, and some sense of its size became clear, several local businesses announced they would temporarily close out of concern for the safety of their customers and employees. The University of Virginia, located in Charlottesville, asked students to stay away. Many rally participants showed up armed with rifles and other deadly weapons (thanks to Virginia’s open carry laws). Indeed, even before the rally’s scheduled noon start time, Kessler’s congregation had ignited so much hostility and ugliness that local authorities labeled the gathering an “illegal assembly” and ordered participants to leave. In the end, the racist, anti-Semitic hate-fest caused three deaths. Two of the dead were state troopers. Berke Bates and H. Jay Cullen, assigned to monitor the gathering from the sky, died when their helicopter crashed. The third victim was Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal. James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old Adolf Hitler fanatic from Ohio, killed Heyer by intentionally plowing his car into a crowd of counter protesters — injuring some 19 people in addition to Heyer, who died from blunt-force injury to her chest. Following the tragedy, Donald Trump famously condemned the “hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.” His words provoked a controversy that went on for months as Trump proved incapable of criticizing the racist mob without also condemning those who opposed it. Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, was so sickened by the president’s words that she refused to take his condolence call. “I’m sorry. After what he said about my child,” Bro told CNN, and added, incredulously, “I saw an actual clip of him at a press conference equating the [counter] protesters … with the KKK and the white supremacists.” James Fields’ lawyers sought mitigation by stressing his history of mental illness. A psychologist testified that he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder at the age of 6 and later with schizoid personality disorder. His lawyers also delved into his childhood traumas, which included coping with the murder of his grandmother by his grandfather, who had subsequently killed himself. “James’s mental illness causes him to lose emotional and behavioral control in stressful situations,” said his attorneys, who claimed he had taken himself off his meds when he was 18, meaning he was medically untethered when he murdered Heyer. After pleading guilty, Fields received two life sentences — one in state court and the other in federal court. Even with Fields confined to prison, questions raised by Heyer’s murder — and the rally that caused it — reverberated. Trump’s troubling insistence on calling bullying bigots “very fine people” was perhaps inevitable given his need to placate a base that contains more than its share of people like David Duke, the former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard who promoted the rally as an effort to “take our country back” and who, after Heyer’s murder, thanked Trump via tweet for his “honesty & courage.” Duke also tweeted, “This is why WE LOVE TRUMP and WHY the FAKE NEWS MEDIA HATES TRUMP. He brings to light what the lying, Fake News Media Won’t. The truth is the media covers up horrific numbers of racist hate crimes against White people!” But putting the president and his behavior aside for the moment, what about the free speech community — the civil libertarians who successfully fought in court for Kessler’s right to hold his rally in downtown Charlottesville? The city had wanted to move Kessler’s parade of bigotry to another park, one farther from the heart of town that officials claimed would be easier to police. But Kessler had said no; and the American Civil Liberties Union, along with a local outfit called the Rutherford Institute, had sued the city on Kessler’s behalf. Following the event, the ACLU was heavily criticized — and also lauded — for standing up for the racist rabble-rousers. Glenn Greenwald, best known for reporting on U.S. surveillance programs brought to light by whistleblower Edward Snowden, forcefully defended the ACLU. Civil liberties advocates, he argued, “defend the rights of those with views we hate in order to strengthen our defense of the rights of those who are most marginalized and vulnerable in society.” Others were not so sure. The Guardian reported on an erosion in “the belief that the KKK and other white supremacist organizations are operating within the bounds of acceptable political discourse — rather than as, say, terrorist organizations — and therefore have a moral right to be heard.” Jessica Clarke, a law professor at Vanderbilt University Law School, pointed to studies showing that bigots routinely hid behind free speech arguments as a cover for racism. Highly prejudiced people, she noted, “were less likely to voice First Amendment objections when the threatened speech was race-neutral, suggesting their free speech concerns were more about the freedom to express racist prejudice than free speech in general.” Legal scholar Laura Weinrib noted that the ACLU had never blindly supported free speech but had done so in the fight for a better society; and she wondered whether “a dogged commitment to free speech” was still the best strategy for an organization pursuing social justice: “The balances have shifted dramatically since the 1930s. In recent years, nearly half of First Amendment victories have gone to corporations and trade groups challenging government regulation. Free speech has served to secure the political influence of wealthy donors. Labor’s strength has plummeted, and the Supreme Court is poised to recognize a First Amendment right of public sector employees to refuse to contribute to union expenses. Long-settled principles of American democracy are newly vulnerable, and hate has found fertile terrain.” Even Susan Herman, president of the ACLU, questioned whether old assumptions about free speech still applied: “We need to consider whether some of our timeworn maxims — the antidote to bad speech is more speech, the marketplace of ideas will result in the best arguments winning out — still ring true in an era when white supremacists have a friend in the White House.” Leslie Mehta, the young black attorney who was legal director of the ACLU of Virginia when it took the Kessler case, seemed confident, when I interviewed her in the aftermath of Heyer’s death, that she had made the right decision. “There were certainly lots of conversations between myself and the executive director. There were a lot of revisions back and forth with briefs and having discussions about potential implications, but nobody has a crystal ball and no one [knew] exactly what [would] ultimately happen. I do think that the First Amendment has to mean something. And at the time, it was my understanding … that there was no evidence that there would be violence.” Mehta, a native of Woodland, North Carolina, is intimately familiar with the South and with the United States’ legacy of brutal racial oppression. She went to historically black Howard University School of Law because of its reputation for creating lawyers devoted to “social activism and social justice.” But she also is adamantly committed to the idea of free speech. “I think one of the reasons why free speech is so important to me is because … it exposes what you disagree with. And for me, I think it’s important to hear things like our president saying … ‘Well, there are good people on both sides.’” Mehta also thought it was important to consult with her mother and her 92-year-old grandmother as she proceeded with the Kessler case. Her grandmother, she confided, “never said that she fully agreed or disagreed [with Mehta taking the case], but she did not think that I was wrong.” As anyone trying to understand the Charlottesville fiasco quickly discovers, the issue of speech — particularly in a society polluted by racism and largely defined by economic inequality — is endlessly complex. So let me begin this journey with a brief exploration of how the U.S. came to embrace such a broad notion of free speech, and let’s look at some decisions made in its name. ••• We tend to think our current conception of free speech has been around essentially since the beginning of the republic. In truth, our firm and collective embrace of the First Amendment is a relatively recent phenomenon. The Constitution was drafted at a time when the Founders had rejected foreign tyranny. They were wary of the potential power of a centralized state. So the Bill of Rights was a balancing act, weighing not only the rights of individuals versus government in general but also the rights of states versus the federal government. Indeed, at the time the Bill of Rights was ratified, the First Amendment did not apply to the states. As legal scholar David Yassky has pointed out, the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech was “quite weak — at least to contemporary eyes. A citizen in 1800 had no absolute right to free speech; if the speech-restricting law was a state law, the Constitution was silent.” Eventually that changed, and that had a lot to do with the Civil War, the end of slavery, the 14th Amendment, and assorted court decisions. But even after the Reconstruction era, free speech, as we understand it today, was nothing but an aspiration, which is one reason that Southern states could effectively outlaw agitation for abolition. Free speech is very much an invention of the 20th century. And that concept of speech is very idealistic, inextricably linked to the notion that in the competition of ideas, good ideas generally crowd out bad. That argument received its most famous articulation in a 1927 case: Whitney v. California. At its center was Charlotte Anita Whitney, a wealthy California blueblood convicted of joining the Communist Party. She argued that her prosecution violated the Constitution. The Supreme Court unanimously disagreed. But even in disagreeing with her position, Louis Brandeis (joined by Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.) produced a brilliant and eloquent exegesis on the potential of free speech to enact social change: “Those who won our independence believed that the final end of the State was to make men free to develop their faculties, and that, in its government, the deliberative forces should prevail over the arbitrary. They valued liberty both as an end, and as a means. They believed liberty to be the secret of happiness, and courage to be the secret of liberty. They believed that freedom to think as you will and to speak as you think are means indispensable to the discovery and spread of political truth; that, without free speech and assembly, discussion would be futile; that, with them, discussion affords ordinarily adequate protection against the dissemination of noxious doctrine.” As Brandeis saw it, free speech was virtually a sacred right and an awesomely powerful force that would expose “falsehood and fallacies” and “avert … evil by the processes of education.” Hence, the remedy to bad speech was “more speech, not enforced silence.” That piece of writing has been deemed one of the most important commentaries ever crafted on the First Amendment. But Brandeis assumed something that has not been borne out by facts, which is that the better argument would generally win. He also assumed that relevant people on all sides of a question were equally capable of being heard and that skeptics were interested in listening. That fallacy continues to inform the thinking of those who see speech as inherently self-correcting. Much as many of us admire Louis Brandeis’s mind and spirit, the society he envisioned has never existed. Instead, we have created a society in which lying is both endemic and purposeful. We have brought the worst values of advertising into the political sphere and wedded that to long-established tactics of political propaganda, even as our political class has learned to use social media to spread disinformation that propagates at a breathtaking rate. The very idea that political speech would expose and therefore vanquish “falsehood and fallacies” now seems incredibly naïve. Free speech always had limits. But because of our new technological reality, because of the unexpected weaponization of speech, we are having to consider those limits in a new light. We live in a world where it is far from clear that the answer to bad speech is more speech; and where a foreign power, thanks to our freedom of expression, may well be responsible for the election of a U.S. president. We live in a time when a frightened white minority within the larger white majority fights to maintain control of our country; and when large corporations and cynical functionaries — eager to exploit fear — have a bigger megaphone (including their own television news networks) than anyone speaking for the powerless and dispossessed. We live in an era when the U.S. awarded its presidency to a man who lost the election by roughly 3 million votes, and who, with the cooperation of a submissive Senate, has appointed judges determined to thwart the will of the public; has proposed policies, supported largely by lies, designed to further divide an already polarized nation; and caters to an irrational mob whose most fanatical elements want to refight the Civil War. All of this raises a host of difficult questions: If the Brandeisian view of speech is fatally flawed, what is a better, or at least a more realistic, view? Is it possible to reverse these trends that are destroying our democracy? How do we balance an array of important societal values that compete with the value of free speech? How, in short, do we enable a relatively enlightened majority to rescue our country from an embittered, backward-looking minority? And what happens to speech — which has never been totally free — in the process?

Published September 21, 2020 at 01:40PM via ACLU (https://ift.tt/3iRPsAm) via ACLU

#IFTTT #ACLU

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nancydhooper · 4 years

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The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

from RSSMix.com Mix ID 8247012 https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/the-short-life-and-curious-death-of-free-speech-in-america via http://www.rssmix.com/

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oselatra · 7 years

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NOT ME!

I never groped a woman or did any of those other things that are flashing across the news outlets every day. True enough, I never had a "real" job, at least not one in an office environment, but the idea of invading a person's privacy in such a manner is just foreign to me. I mean, it's not like I'm constantly fighting off the urge to grope, like an alcoholic fighting off the urge to knock back a bottle of Schnapps.

NOT ME!

And what about the other men in the workplace, the non-gropers? Why don't they explain to the gropers that what they are doing is just not acceptable?

We need two things here. We need all the non-gropers to stand up and say, "NOT ME." Then we need them to take the gropers aside and enlighten those Neanderthals.

David Rose

Hot Springs

From the web

In response to the Nov. 6 Arkansas Blog post, "Supreme Court refuses to hear Mike Maggio's appeal":

It's a shame he only got 10 years. I wonder what the parole possibilities are? He won't serve enough time, in my opinion, for the incredible abuse of trust given a judge. He's contributed to the downfall of the entire justice system. Here's hoping that his income is attached for the rest of his life to pay off the civil case.

Perplexed

Shouldn't he have to serve extra time for showing what an a-hole he is? Remember geaux tigers?

Maxifer

There is no parole in the federal system, Perplexed, so he will serve all of his time, less a little bit (matter of a few months at most) off of that if he behaves himself. This is what is so great about federal sentencing vis-a-vis state ones. In the federal cases, you know how much time a person is going to serve, whereas in state sentencing, you have to divide the sentence handed down by either one-sixth, one-third, one-half or 70 percent, depending on the severity of the crime.

plainjim

In response to the Nov. 5 Arkansas Blog post, "More than 20 dead in mass shooting in Texas church":

Dear Sutherland, how are those thoughts and prayers working for y'all?

Vanessa

Vanessa, what a heartless comment.

Downtowner

Eagerly anticipating the athleticism from the usual sources as they bend, twist and turn to keep from calling this, like the Vegas massacre, an act of terrorism, yet speak with such rapid assurance when the perp is identified as having one of those funny names.

During the interregnum, before such is revealed, it's "thoughts & prayers" down the line from the blowhards and puffers.

tsallernarng

For those who disliked Vanessa's earlier post, explain to me, precisely, what benefit has ever accrued to the victims, as opposed to the self-indulgently thoughtful and prayerful, from thoughts and prayers.

Silverback66

Ho hum. Just part of the daily price of no coherent gun policy in the good old U.S.A. No amount of prayer will change that reality. Gotta wonder if our elected leaders see such mass shooting events as entertainment because they sure as hell aren't lifting so much as a little finger to do anything to change the status quo.

Damn shame, too. Maybe one of us on this blog will be in the next batch of mass victims. We can call it U.S.A. Roulette, just with more firepower and far more dead and wounded.

Oh, and where were the good guys with the guns we always hear will stop a bad guy with a gun like this? Or did Texas confiscate all the guns, and that news just hasn't percolated across the border yet?

Sound Policy

Just decided to buy a gun this week. Guess this is not the place for a recommendation on what kind to get.

Screen name taken

What makes me most sad about any of the mass shootings is that they even happen to begin with and that none of the perpetrators are being captured alive. The last mass shooting I can remember where the shooter was captured alive was the during the Planned Parenthood murders in Colorado Springs in 2015. Something is deeply wrong in our U.S.A. I believe in the right to bear arms, but I also believe that gun-worship is empowering the mentally ill to commit mass murder. So many hateful paranoid men thinking an assault rifle is going to right all the imaginary wrongs they feel have been done against them.

Artificial Intelligence

In defense of Vanessa, some version of the point she was trying to make has been all over Facebook, Twitter and the blogosphere all afternoon and this evening. Maybe she was the first one to "go there" on the blog, but she is definitely not the first to say it. It was out there well before it showed up here. People are tired of hearing "thoughts and prayers" and then that's the end of it. Anyone can say that. It's beginning to ring hollow and I cringe whenever I hear it now. If "thoughts and prayers" help in any way, how could this have happened in the most holy of places?

Something evil has been unleashed and is running amok in the U.S.A. I have no idea how we are going to find our way back to civilization, but I'm sure it will take more than a catch phrase to fix this mess.

mountaingirl

Thoughts and prayers never solved any crimes. It is just an excuse, a damned cover-up for insensitive politicians who don't want to solve what is one of the biggest — if not the single biggest — dangers of our modern society: the uninhibited access to weapons capable of mass killings. Politicians hide behind their thoughts and prayers while people are being killed. This same thing could happen at my church. We don't take any security measures because everyone should be welcomed to the house of the Lord. Speaking of "thoughts and prayers," how many of us really believe that the politicians are sincere in their offering them up?

plainjim

In response to the Nov. 5 Arkansas Blog post, "Honeymoon's over for Sarah Huckabee Sanders":

Dear Media, please keep it up. Sarah Huckabee upstaging her boss will simply shorten her time in the spotlight, and the administration will have to reach even lower for a spokesperson.

Vanessa

Better yet, Vanessa, if our world ever regains it sanity then maybe she'll never have a decent job again.

wannabee conservative

I notice lately she's taken to occasional attempted humor. Her jokes fall flat just like her dad's ... but without the outhouse flavor.

Do you Kool-Aid drinkers ever get tired of tearing down successful people just because you oppose their political views? Guess they are OK as long as they agree with your views but look out if they do not. What a collective bunch of phonies.

Razorblade

So, the willingness to lie to the nation on a daily basis meets the description of "successful"? The ability to ignore the voice inside yourself that whispers "you're not telling the truth" is admirable?

Such is the thought process of a party-before-country Republican. The blog members can expect to be chastised by Mr. Razorblade for criticizing Manafort, Gates, Flynn and Flynn Jr., when their chances to lie in the spotlight come along, soon.

Emersum Biggins

Prediction: Barring total implosion, she keeps this gig up just long enough to declare for Boozman's seat when he formally announces he's not running for re-election.

Pygface

In response to the Nov. 3 Arkansas Blog post "State tourism official warns of economic damage from 'bathroom bill' ":

Unfortunately, the political atmosphere is one reason we've decided to move back to our home state. Won't miss the regression of women's rights, the push for more religion interference in public schools and the narrow-minded views of LGBTQ citizens. What ever happened to the Arkansas of David Pryor and Dale Bumpers? Instead we get Rutledge, Rapert and Mr. Re-Homing Harris. Truly sad.

Irishgirl2012

I just moved back to Arkansas from the bluest city in one of the bluest states in these united. To those of you bemoaning the present political climate in Arkansas, oh, and let me add J. William Fulbright and William J. Clinton, let me offer this nugget of consolation: The people and policies that so bedevil you in the present day will be swept away by the inevitable tide of progress. The past that the others are trying to regain is not coming back. The present, such as it is, will be transformed into the future that is evident in the more progressive societies in our country and world.

Inequities persist, but many of those prejudices of our past have been eroded in ways that may not be appreciated. Mixed race families might be a bit odd in some corners of Arkansas, but are not illegal and for the most part do not attract all that much attention. The public persons who formerly hid in the closet who have come out, well, that does not attract all that much attention, really no big deal, at least if they stick to consenting adults.

Yes, a rational, educated and thoughtful people should not take so long to do the right thing, but if you are smart enough to realize things should be better, you should be smart enough to realize that most of our fellow Americans, perhaps especially Arkansans, are not. Take some solace in the fact that Jeff Sessions, Donny Trump and Harvey Weinstein, among others, are not from Arkansas. We begat Johnny Cash, Jim Jones, Douglas Blackmon and Jeff Nichols. Take some pride in their works, and don't take any crap from others, and surely don't crap all over yourself.

Get to work, register, think and vote. Go get 'em.

deadseasquirrel

In response to a Nov. 1 Arkansas Blog post about Sarah Huckabee Sanders' defense of the weird characterization of the Civil War by White House Chief of Staff John Kelly:

Sarah may be dishonest, but she is not dumb, as many here try to portray her. She is an expert in the mechanics and the machinations of a political campaign. As White House press secretary, she is still running a political campaign. She did a good job managing John Boozman's 2010 campaign for the Senate, as well as her daddy's go-nowhere presidential campaign in 2012. She is politically savvy, and knows that politicians are rarely punished for lying. She also knows how to avoid critics. She simply quit communicating with the Arkansas Times, took the Times off the list of media receiving notices and never returned Max's phone calls, according to what he has posted previously. Politics is a duplicitous game at its best. She knows how to practice duplicity very well.

plainjim

NOT ME!

#NOT ME!

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lodelss · 4 years

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ACLU: The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

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lodelss · 3 years

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The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

Published September 21, 2020 at 11:10PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/3iRPsAm

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lodelss · 3 years

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The Short Life and Curious Death of Free Speech in America

Published September 21, 2020 at 06:40PM via ACLU https://ift.tt/3iRPsAm

#IFTTT #Blogger

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