Dear Mike Adams,
Listen, buddy, d’you think you could talk a little sense into your campus’s student newspaper? I’m not talking about the embarrassment of it being the administration’s lickspittle ? even though I must admit it’s hard to believe that a student newspaper would volunteer to fill that role. No, I’m talking about the UNC-Wilmington Seahawk‘s even more embarrassing predicament of being completely clueless about free speech.
We talked about this last week, remember? OK, you’re right; actually we laughed about it. But still, I think that since the Seahawk is a member of the press, which benefits greatly from the First Amendment’s protections of speech and press, its editors really ought to show at least a rudimentary understanding of the rights reserved for them. It’s one thing to ask, rhetorically, “whatever happened to the separation of church and state?” ? and think you’ve made a stellar First-Amendment argument. Or even to compound that in the same article by arguing that free speech protects the public-university instructor who sexually and racially harasses and discriminates against her student, but it doesn’t protect the government authority figure’s victim. Those were all in just one article; the editors could have been having a bad-err day.
But the editors followed it up the next week with an article bemoaning the “censorship” and loss of “free speech” by the Rolling Stones. Apparently the NFL, in contracting with the Stones to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show, had designed to lower Mick Jagger’s mic two times during the most suggestive of his lyrics. But how is that censorship? Were the Stones forced to play? Were they forced to agree to play despite the mic-lowering agreement? Since when is the NFL a government agency?
If that isn’t clear enough for your student editors, Mike, I suppose you could write them and ask, Everyone who feels the NFL is part of the government raise your hand. How many hands do you see?
