The left is notoriously two-faced when it comes to freedom of speech, preferring the “for me, but not for thee” approach to censoring critics and mockers. And Hillary Clinton isn’t just another guilty party: She’s out there on the front lines.
The Clinton campaign went nuts this week over a comedy sketch montage posted at The Laugh Factory’s website [strong language, NSFW and, we think, hilarious], siccing one of its staffers on Laugh Factory founder Jamie Masada for approving the clip.
Based on the Hillary campaign’s behavior, the clip’s title — “Hillary vs. The First Amendment” — is fitting. Not only does Clinton want the video taken down, but she also wants the names and contact info for every one of the comedians who made fun of her.
From Judicial Watch Wednesday:
Besides demanding that the video be taken down, the Clinton campaign has demanded the personal contact information of the performers that appear in the recording. This is no laughing matter for club owner Jamie Masada, a comedy guru who opened Laugh Factory more than three decades ago and has been instrumental in launching the careers of many famous comics. “They threatened me,” Masada told Judicial Watch. “I have received complains before but never a call like this, threatening to put me out of business if I don’t cut the video.”
… Masada told Judicial Watch that, as soon as the video got posted on the Laugh Factory website, he received a phone call from a “prominent” person inside Clinton’s campaign. “He said the video was disgusting and asked who put me up to this,” Masada said. The Clinton staffer, who Masada did not want to identify, also demanded to know the names and phone numbers of the comedians that appear in the video. Masada refused and hung up.
Good for him. Masada, like many other comedians, believes in equal-opportunity mockery and offense. “Just last night we had (Emmy-award winner) Dana Carvey doing Donald Trump and it was hilarious,” he told Judicial Watch. After the Clinton campaign threatened him, he reached out to Judicial Watch for help, Mediaite reports.
There are only 24 hours in a day and Masada’s probably a busy man with a club to run; but if he’d had time, a quick Internet search would have warned him that, for Hillary, silencing censorship is nothing new.
Noting the “free speech is toothless without money,” Donald F. McGahn II wrote earlier this year in The Wall Street Journal of Clinton’s threat to amend the Constitution to reverse the Supreme Court’s landmark Citizens United decision:
In a sense, it’s fitting that Mrs. Clinton supports efforts to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling that dealt with the right to buy television ads for a movie that criticized her. The constitutional amendment she wants could return American elections to where they were in 2008, when her opponents and critics were often muzzled in the public square.
Despite the hyperbole surrounding Citizens United, the justices were actually debating a simple issue: Whether a movie critical of then-Sen. Hillary Clinton could be aired on pay-per-view television.
George Will picked up on the omen of a Hillary presidency that aims to target free speech, telling Fox News he can’t recall a presidential candidate ever running against the Bill of Rights:
I hope our listeners heard her that one of her four fundamental goals is to change the First Amendment to empower the political class to write legislation restricting the quantity, content and timing of political speech about the political class. I don’t think anyone has ever announced running for president that they wanted to change the Bill of Rights.
Whether lending buddy support to Tipper Gore and her assault on music lyrics back in the 1990s, fretting about shirtless kids in advertisements for clothes (in the late 1990s), or going after “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas” in 2005, Clinton has always had a problem with free speech — unless it’s freely spoken in support of her ever-evolving political positions.
It’s a safe bet the comedians won’t be cowed. Check out how many comedians come down on the side of free speech in “Can We Take a Joke,” a just-released documentary on the comedy world’s alarmed reaction to political correctness, censorship and innovative interpretations of the 1st Amendment.
The post Hillary forgets there’s a 1st Amendment — again appeared first on Personal Liberty®.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/hillary-forgets-theres-a-1st-amendment-again/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/11/19/hillary-forgets-theres-a-1st-amendment-again/
No comments:
Post a Comment