“Somewhere along the line we started misinterpreting the First Amendment and this idea of the freedom of speech the amendment grants us. We are free to speak as we choose without fear of prosecution or persecution, but we are not free to speak as we choose without consequence.”
~ Roxane Gay
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What a time to be alive.
If someone had told me 10 years ago that a federal judge would have to make a ruling on the President’s Twitter and whether or not blocking users was allowed, I would have laughed. What a fascinating, yet unbelievable, concept!
It happened, though. Just two weeks ago a federal judge in Manhattan ruled that President Donald Trump cannot block users who are critical of him on Twitter because it is a violation of the First Amendment.
You read that right. Trump cannot block other Twitter users who are critical of him because it violates the First Amendment. The plaintiffs in the case argued that, since Trump’s Twitter feed amounts to a digital town hall, blocking users is tantamount to suppressing free speech. Judge Naomi Reice Buchwald agreed.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, it has been a weird couple of weeks for the First Amendment. Let’s be honest, it seems nearly impossible to come up with the time or the energy to keep up with the national news. It is easy to get fatigued.
Around the same time that Judge Buchwald made her ruling about Trump and his Twitter feed, the National Football League (NFL) unveiled their new policy on the national anthem. As many will likely remember, former NFL player Colin Kaepernick made headlines when he chose not to stand for the national anthem at the beginning of games to silently protest police brutality.
Kaepernick, as some might remember, first sat down during the anthem but would later kneel after a conversation with former Green Beret Nate Boyer. Several other NFL players would follow and Kaepernick would end up blackballed from the league.
The newly introduced policy dictates that players are required to stand during the national anthem if they are on the field, but have the option to sit in the locker room. If any players do kneel on the field, the players or the team can be fined. A week after the new policy, it was revealed under oath by Jerry Jones, owner of the Dallas Cowboys, that none other than Trump himself influenced the NFL’s decision.
This influence from Trump, as well as Vice President Mike Pence, makes the decision by the NFL possibly illegal. Both Trump and Pence have been actively critical of Kaepernick and other players who were kneeling during the anthem. According to Benjamin Sachs, a Harvard professor of labor and industry, this is the same as having the government censor your speech.
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“There is a fine line between free speech and hate speech. Free speech encourages debate whereas hate speech incites violence.”
~ Newton Lee
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Then, a week ago, Roseanne Barr found herself without a show. Barr, who was riding high on ratings for the resurgence of her self-titled sitcom, took to Twitter to write a racist tweet aimed at a former presidential adviser. In the tweet, Barr compared Valerie Jarrett to an ape, writing “muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby = vj.”
The backlash was swift. The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) canceled her rebooted show and several other stations, including TV Land and Paramount, removed reruns of the original series from their lineup. Barr is no stranger to controversy, having butchered the national anthem at a baseball game and doing a photoshoot of herself dressed as Adolf Hitler with burnt cookies made to look like Jews, among other things.
Some of the same people who were silent, or cheering, the new policy put in place by the NFL were now upset that Barr’s show was canceled.
Surely, this was a violation of the freedom of speech!
Except, it wasn’t.
Much like how “Duck Dynasty” star Phil Robertson was suspended by A&E for homophobic comments, a business is not the government and the Constitution doesn’t protect you from being fired for comments you have made. How was this different, then, from the NFL’s new policy?
Well, for starters, there wasn’t any political influence when it came to Robertson’s suspension years ago or Barr’s recent cancellation. It was a decision reached by the network themselves without repeated calls from a sitting president. Meanwhile, Trump took to Twitter to denounce NFL players who were protesting and even called for the suspension or firing of players during rallies.
Many of these statements were made around the same time that members of the alt-right, wearing white polo shirts and khakis while brandishing tiki torches, swarmed into Charlottesville, Va. shouting anti-Semitic slogans.
While the NFL players who knelt were “sons-of-b----s,” the group that marched on a Virginia town (one of whom plowed a car into a crowd of counter-protesters—killing one) and surrounded a church filled with religious leaders and civil rights activists were “very fine people.”
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“If large numbers of people believe in freedom of speech, there will be freedom of speech, even if the law forbids it. But if public opinion is sluggish, inconvenient minorities will be persecuted, even if laws exist to protect them.”
~George Orwell
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Had the NFL reached their decision after consulting with the players’ unions and without influence from the President of the United States, this might be a different story, but neither is the case. People tend to forget some important factors when it comes to things like the Freedom of Speech.
Crying “free speech” after saying something that is demonstratively offensive will not protect you from facing consequences, such as losing your job or having your show canceled. When it comes to the First Amendment and Freedom of Speech, it is not there to protect you from being fired by your employer but rather to keep the government from infringing upon that right.
Case in point: On the television show “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee,” Bee referred to Ivanka Trump in vulgar terms. Following the airing of the show, Bee apologized and some advertisers have begun pulling their support of her show.
This, of course, is nothing new. What is new is that, along with many people on the right expressing outrage at Barr’s show being canceled while Bee’s show was not, the White House officially weighed in calling for the cancellation of the show.
In a statement made by Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, Sanders said “Her disgusting comments and show are not fit for broadcast, and executives at Time Warner and TBS must demonstrate that such explicit profanity about female members of this administration will not be condoned on its network.”
Almost immediately, people began comparing the statements made by Barr on Twitter and by Bee on her show.
There is no comparison, however. While Bee’s statement was by all means vulgar, it was not racist and therein lies the difference.
While a number of people will demand that Barr be vindicated or that ABC be boycotted for canceling “Roseanne,” they will gladly turn a blind eye to the government demanding that people be reprimanded for taking part in a protest because they don’t agree with said protest. You may not agree with a protest or what someone says, but you have an obligation to ensure that they are not censored by the government.
We all do.
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