(no subject)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

There has been a view here that has been repeated that freedom of speech is absolute, and words should be spoken free of any consequence. So here's a simple pair of stories: in the 1960s there was a famous actress daughter of an actor who starred in a really famous softcore porn film, who went to Hanoi to sit on an anti-aircraft gun and agitate against the Vietnam War, thereby giving a boost to the Hanoi Politburo. Then you have her a few years later telling Vietnam POWs right out of the Hanoi Hilton that they were never actually tortured and that it was all a propaganda exercise by the evol capitalists.

Does she have the freedom to speak and act thus? Does the exercise of freedom of speech in her particular case extend to this? If the answer is no, what precisely is the difference between this and "proudly saying Nigger, Spic, Kike, Dago" and all those other lovely sentiments the "anti-PC" crowd wants said, aside from the repellent and repugnant view being expressed being one they detest as opposed to one they approve of?

Personally, I think what she did is beyond the pale, but I am not empowered to say "This and no further does speech extend", at least IMHO. Otherwise it gets into hypocrisy very quickly. What say you?

Comments

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

I am not "Fonda" Hanoi Jane. What she did was reprehensible.

[blondebaroness.livejournal.com]

And treason.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

However if she's a traitor, so's Oliver North, and so would Henry Ford and Robert Taft and Joe McCarthy in a short list also have been.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

You don't know.You weren't even alive then.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

One could argue that Kennedy's coup against Diem provided aid and comfort to the enemy. There were people who charged him with such at the time.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

And I would agree that it's reprehensible. Especially WRT the POWs.

[rimpala.livejournal.com]

I thought said famous actress has already expressed regrets over doing that.

But in any case she has, or had, the freedom to speak and act thus, but as we're still talking about it many years later it's clear there were consequences. The United States government protects our freedom of speech it doesn't protect us from the public's reaction to it.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Yes, she has, and she's tried to move on from it. A good number of US military people, however, have turned her into their big scapegoat for the Vietnam Dolchstoss, as though the 1960s version of Drew Barrymore had magic mind-control powers. The interesting bit here, is that I am willing to wager the same people who think they should spout racist and ethnic slurs aren't going to accept that she had equal freedom to do what she did.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

There was an incident in San Francisco not too long ago where the police informed a protester that they could not protect him from the violence of the crowd gathering against him.

[rick-day.livejournal.com]

What Fonda said is covered Free Speech. And most of what she said was just an Inconvenient Truth.

I've always been a supporter of what she did. Even today she admits she got tooled and used (ex: AA battery photo).

We had no business being in Vietnam in the first place and anything that happened to pilots dropping napalm on civilians is not 'torture' it is 'justice'.

I'll be over here in my bunker, hunkered down or the shit storm.

If you did not live the times, you are only speculating based on what you have been taught, not what you saw.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, that's true, but when we had Diem bumped off the idea that we ever had a chance to say we either weren't involved or able to extricate ourselves from the mess died then, under JFK, not LBJ. At that point we were deep in a quagmire (giggity giggity goo) and we had little way to get out of it. The view that Jane Fonda should be the scapegoat for a Dolchstoss is frankly put absurd and is like saying Maggie Gyllenhaal should be blamed for the USA losing the Afghanistan War. Nam unfortunately is a situation that it would have taken a Paul Atreides to fix.

[geezer-also.livejournal.com]

And if you are 10 years younger than I am, which I suspect is the case, you didn't actually
SEE it either.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

Eyewitness accounts from the early 70's deserve some suspicion as well.

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

I lived at the time. The "police action" in Vietnam convinced me to sit down during the pledge of allegiance at school. If the media covered the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as they covered Vietnam, there would have been stronger opposition to the more recent misadventures.

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

We all have the freedom to say stupid things. That's what the First is designed to protect.

Yes, a bunch of folks still hate her for what she said. So what. As long as the Klan can proudly clean up highway medians or march in Jewish neighborhoods with police escort, Jane can still be young and silly with her politics, and so can anyone else.

[sandwichwarrior.livejournal.com]

She did us a favor.

If she hadn't been such a stupid bint early in life there would be the serious risk of people taking her seriously later in life and we can't have that now can we?

[jonathankorman.livejournal.com]

I vigorously disapprove of both major examples of speech you offered, but I also vigorously defend them both as examples of rightly protected speech.

Threats are not protected. Lies presented as facts are not protected. Violations of intellectual property are not protected. A “right” to access to a megaphone is not protected.

And I would point to one other strange fallacy of our time: freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism for what one says.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, that one would be pretty straightforward, at least to me.

[gunslnger.livejournal.com]

There has been a view here that has been repeated that freedom of speech is absolute, and words should be spoken free of any consequence.

Citation needed.

Does she have the freedom to speak and act thus?

Yes.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

See the post involving "I am proud to say nigger, kike, and spic and I should do so without any consequences whatsoever." You commented to that one, as I remember right.

You're consist, and I'll give you that.

[chessdev.livejournal.com]

There has been a view here that has been repeated that freedom of speech is absolute, and words should be spoken free of any consequence.

However, since this view is not supported by our current legal system and its interpretation -- then the dilemma of proudly cursing at people and telling revisionist
stories that give comfort to an enemy during a time of war can be avoided.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Well, sure, when you bring logic and reason into it.....

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually yes, it has. Remember that post about how you were so proud to say nigger, kike, dago, and all those other words and should do so in any situation, and nobody should ever criticize the action or show the least sign of a reaction, where you were soundly puzzled that people did in fact react to such words?

[sophia-sadek.livejournal.com]

The more interesting case of free speech is the publication of the Pentagon Papers. Nixon did his damnedest to stop it, and in so doing distracted people from the original message.