“Will anyone be able to police what Carlson says, or is this the point? Is it just a free for all?”
—CNN exile Brian Stelter on NBC, reacting to the news that Tucker Carlson is moving his opinions and demagoguery to Twitter, where Elon Musk refuses to censor views Stelter and his ilk don’t agree with.
I know this keeps coming up, but when did the supposedly liberal side of the ideological divide start opposing free speech rather than defending it? How did it happen? Stelter just casually endorsed speech “policing” as if there is no problem with the concept. No ethics alarms pinged at all. I can see many reasons why a news network, even a conservative-biased one like Fox, wouldn’t want Carlson to be its public face, but Twitter’s purpose is to create a town square. Stelter’s complaint is like advocating for speakers in Hyde Park’s veritable Speakers Corner to be tackled if they offend the majority.
Stelter went on to say, “I think this is the point. It is a free-for-all. It’s what Elon Musk wants to provide. This move from Tucker may cement Twitter as a right-wing website.”
Wow. If a platform doesn’t censor speech, it must be “right-wing.” (How did this happen?)
Imagine: NBC hired this hack. By all means, as long as he’s roaming free, he should say whatever comes into his dishonest, biased, intellectually corrupt little mind. It’s informative: now we know the kind of news analysis the Peacock Network endorses.
Ethics Alarms 
I don’t know why this is a surprise. Stelter is either too stupid to understand it or, I suspect, is simply mouthing what the DNC truly wants. The fellows plastered by Stelter’s head in the lede photo are leftists, not supporters of a free and organized liberty. Suppression of ideas and speech – hallmarks of liberty and a free society – are leftist values. Everyone points to Orwell’s “!984” as some kind of right wing dystopia. They don’t get it. “1984” is about socialism and its inevitable resolution into totalitarianism. The Stasi? The Gestapo? The Brown Shirts? Those are not examples of a free society but are trademarks of leftism.
jvb
But those pictures behind him are his heroes, eh? No doubt where they would stand on the subject of policing speech on Twitter, and Stelter endorses their positions.
J B,
You forgot the Chinese Red Guard, you racist.
-Jut
Well, I didn’t want to criticize our Asian brothers and sisters.
jvb
Good point.
-Jut
I expected no less from The Potato. Keep feeding the tiger, Brian. I just wonder which of your ilk will be last on the menu.
I find it remarkable this vapid bald freak still has enough of an audience to command airtime and a good salary. How is it that dems ridicule the FOX news audience with this slimy embarrassment still roaming the airways? Have they no shame, or are they really that self-unaware?
“Have they no shame, or are they really that self-unaware?”
Yes.
Ah, but – don’t you know, friend – it’s only censorship if the government does it!
I don’t know when this happened either. I remember the ’70s and ’80s when people complained about the content on “Three’s Company” and “Married with Children” being harmful to society (only for the Streisand Effect to kick in) and the Left coming back with a sing-songy, “First Amendment! If you don’t like it, turn the channel.” That refrain went on and on for about 25-30 years until conservatives realized they were fighting a losing battle with the culture.
Now it’s the Left that demands everything be censored and wants corporations to be the enforcement arm of the government.
I am old enough to remember the cancel culture faction of the religious right.. (and some lady at the pool in TI thought I was twenty-eight years old)
Of course, the cancel culture faction of the religious right lacked the support of the academic, media, and entertainment elites.
Correct. They were dismissed as moralizing, holier-than-thou, freedom-hating, theocratic control freaks.
At this point, the ’80s Christians not wanting people to sleep around or make crude jokes on TV seems almost quaint.
I don’t know if you’re a fan of 80s Christian music but back then, Christian satirist Steve Taylor sang about this very stuff and where it ultimately leads. I didn’t care much for his music back then, but when I listen to it now, I realize just how prophetic he was.
Their woke children clearly kept their ethos.
You know, that’s actually the way that things work in the People’s Republic of China. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are held accountable for ensuring that their subscribers don’t violate any of the CCP’s myriad laws about what can and can’t be posted online. While it’s true that users can be punished for their offending posts, if the ISP doesn’t efficiently monitor their network for such posts and remove them, they’ll also be fined or worse.
Maybe it’s those on the right who are actually “progressives”. The hippies of the 60’s and 70’s were for limited government involvement in people’s lives, freedom of expression, and other general individual freedoms, less involvement in foreign conflicts, …. Many on the right are now what might be called “classical liberals”, with similar views. Those on the current left are often totalitarian statists, advocating for more intrusive and controlling bureaucracy, suppression of “unapproved” ideas, and the use of government force to ensure compliance with favored behavior.
When did the liberal side of the aisle become fans of censorship? I’m not sure. I’m just over 50. I never had anything censored by the right when I was in school. Yes, the religious right wanted things banned, but they didn’t ban them, they just said they didn’t like them and said people shouldn’t listen to them. That isn’t censorship, that is an opinion. Now, Mark Twain books WERE censored in my school, removed from the curriculum (in Missouri!) and the school and public libraries. A student who disagreed with abortion when it was promoted in health class was suspended from school. This was in the 80’s. In the 90’s, I was in college and again, the censorship came from the left. Students were thrown out of school for disagreeing with the school’s affirmative action policies or the student fee-funded masseuse in the Gay Student Lounge. White students were forbidden from attending the Martin Luther King, Jr. events in January. The music industry was facing censorship as well at that time, led by Tipper Gore. I am not old enough to remember when the left was a fan of civil rights. I was told the ACLU stood up for a right-wing group once in the 1970’s, but I always just assumed they did it so they could point to it any time they were accused of being left-wing zealots.
Dear Brian:
The answer to your question is, “Yes!” An explanation follows.
The key word here is “free,” as in freedom to speak without fear of censorship. When in the context of government and the media, this freedom to speak without censorship is referred to as “free speech,” or sometimes noted as the object of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.
Sorry for your confusion and exasperation, but this “free speech” is not only a tradition in the United States, but it is also the primary cornerstone of our society, or was. I know you would like to change that, but not everybody agrees, fortunately.