From: shou@quads.uchicago.edu (roger colin shouse)
Subject: Re: Sinead O'Connor's Freedom of Speech (was: Re: Sinead on SNL...YAY SINEAD!  
Reply-To: shou@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 18:35:01 GMT

I just can't pass this one up!

In article <1992Oct7.170231.5188@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges) writes:
>In article <BvrA6x.n2z@news.cso.uiuc.edu> locker@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu (Jon Locker ) writes:
>>In article <ed.718436302@cwis> ed@cwis.unomaha.edu (Ed Stastny) writes:
>>>cb366@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Mark B. Bendiksen) writes:
>>> 
>>
>>Consider a different spin on this argument.  What if a Palestinian
>>entertainer had come on a show and blamed Judaism for the sins of the
>>world?  Would that be considered an 'anti-institutionalized religion'
>>stand?  Or would it be (correctly) viewed as hateful words coming from a
>>hateful person? 
>
>  You conceal one important fact.  Sinead is Catholic
>in the same way Jews are Jews.  That is, while she probably does not
>practise, Jews don't lose their right to protest real anti-Semitism if
>they stop going to shul.  Sinead was raised, and seriously harmed, in a
>profoundly Catholic society and she protests the effect of this society
>on her and millions of others.  As such, she is quite authorized to rip
>up pictures of the Pope, just as a Jew, even a non-observant Jew, is
>authorized to make jokes about Jews and to criticise Israel in a way
>that non-Jews should NOT make jokes or (unjustified) criticism (the Jew
>is, in some sense, authorised to make unfounded criticism of Israel,
>whereas I must research any criticisms because I am not a Jew: Jewish
>criticism of Israel is discourse that enjoys certain "insider" rights.)
>
>>
>>No congregation/race/group should have to put up with this crap.
>
>I quite agree that German Protestant and Catholic youth may not insult
>Jews, and that Protestants shouldn't put Catholics down.  However,
>internal self-criticism of a group by its members is healthy and
>DIFFERENT from ignorant attacks from the outside.  I hope I've made this
>important distinction clear!


You are clear.  You are also making a false distinction.  By your logic,
women should not criticize men, blacks should not criticize whites, etc. 
We are all entitled to criticize whoever we feel like.  This, however,
is not the point of the Sinead issue.  

She's certainly got the right to tear up a picture of the Pope.  And
SNL has the right not to have her back on their show.  And people have
the right to refuse to buy her records or attend her concerts.  In fact,
people have the right to start a mass-movement boycott of her work and
of the sponsors of any show that has her on.

Personally, I don't really care.  I'm not Catholic and I don't care if
Sinead is or was.  Clearly though, she comes off as very close to a
total kookburger.  I just pay very little attention to her.
>

>I have reviewed posts on Sinead here and in rec.arts.tv.  Nearly all
>condemn her, either directly or using slimewords like "constructive
>criticism."  These are the same people who bay loudly for "free speech"
>on the network; free speech for technically enabled white males, for the
>most part.  My pleasure is that of the astronomer who predicts a
>heavenly body that "swims into his ken", for for some time I have
>maintained that the net and EFF committment to free speech is
>dangerously akin to similar committments in the Soviet Constitution,
>revocable if the free speaker says the wrong stuff in the wrong manner
>or has the wrong sex or wrong haircut. My pleasure is tempered by the
>fact that Catherine MacKinnon would point out that the silence of
>countless women and men speaks louder than Sinead's brief moment.
>

So I guess by your understanding of free speech, it doesn't include the
right to  criticize someone else's speech!  Fascinating!



-- 
Roger Shouse
The University of Chicago 		Email: shou@midway.uchicago.edu

Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv,rec.arts.sf.tv