“The books are to remind us of what asses and fools we are.” — Ray Bradbury

It always starts easily enough. A concerned citizen sent a list of 60 books that she found objectionable. These books should be removed from the public library. At least that is how everything got started in Llano County. It ended up turning into a federal lawsuit.

In the meantime, a librarian was caught in the crossfire as they usually are. She was fired when she refused to remove books from the shelves. A secret cabal of concerned citizens bandied together to come up with the list of books that should be removed. The same librarian caused a stir when she attended the meeting. Obviously, she wasn’t supposed to be there.

Why should she be there? The meeting only concerned the books that would be on the shelf in her library. Again, I would have to repeat that we aren’t talking about school libraries here. We’ve already seen enough stories about districts (Katy, cough) that have tried to censor what their students can read. Now, we are going after the adults.

One of the groups most effected is a group you wouldn’t think would be effected. The group that is the most up in arms in Llano County are the senior residents there. Many of them have taken up electronic books because they are not as mobile as they used to be and can’t necessarily make it to the physical branch. Many of these titles have been wiped off of the electronic catalog.

I still remember battling with my parents over technology. Simple word processing and spreadsheet tasks were a nightmare. I remember when my mother first got one of those Nooks from Barnes and Noble. She was reluctant at first, but now she hardly ever puts it down. She can purchase new titles for pennies online and at Itunes. I could just imagine if her favorite author was removed from the list.

These things are very simple. If you have to meet in secret to do anything then there is something rotten in Denmark. I won’t say that you are definitely on the wrong side, but chances are pretty good that you are. Anything that you want to do in private should be able to be done in public. It really is that simple.

The New York Times is supposed to be one of the cornerstones of journalism. They were a beacon of light throughout the TFG presidency bravely calling balls and strikes. That’s ultimately what the free press is supposed to do. Their recent staff editorial on free speech certainly caused a stir for all of the wrong reasons.

The staff editorial made two huge mistakes in logic with their screed. First, one of the beacons of the free press misunderstood what free speech is and therefore misunderstood what censorship is. Aa you might suspect, they got quite a bit of push back on their opinion. The editorial presents two distinct problems plaguing journalism and the marketplace of ideas.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from criticism. I don’t get to broadcast my truth free and clear of any push back from anyone else in the marketplace of ideas. There are ideas worth shunning. There are ideas that demand shunning. Shunning horrific and grotesque ideas is not censorship. If cancel culture is even a thing, it has been a thing for an eternity.

However, it is the second problem that is perhaps even more alarming. The NYT seems to think it is their job to be fair and balanced. Fair is a four letter word. To borrow from the baseball analogy, fair and balanced seems to indicate calling balls and strikes as they come. Yet, the NYT seems to think that if there isn’t an equal number of balls and strikes then they haven’t done their job.

Some pitchers have impeccable control while other pitchers occasionally hit the mascot. The free press cannot treat them equally. A ball in the dirt is still a ball in the dirt. It does not become a strike because you’ve already called a bunch of balls on that particular pitcher. Some ideas are just wrong. Some schools of thought are not to be taken seriously. Bad ideas don’t get equal consideration because we are supposed to give all ideas equal air time.

That also means that some people are wrong and are not to be taken seriously. We don’t give them equal air time because we have some new fangled idea of what it means to be fair. It also means that we don’t take them seriously because we are afraid that crazy people will consider us to be biased.

Calling balls and strikes means that you report facts. Calling balls and strikes means that you present ideas and report on all ideas. It doesn’t mean giving them an equal amount of support. It means that when an idea is not supported by the facts then you say so. It shouldn’t matter that you also said this yesterday and the day before. We don’t give credence to stupidity because we gave airtime to the other side.

Someone has to be the arbiter of what is true and what is not true. In a free society we want an independent source to do this. If the government is left to do this then we wake up one day with our neighbors being bombed and somehow believing that isn’t happening. We somehow believe they are bombing themselves and the guy doing the bombing is somehow the good guy. We somehow end up believing things that are clearly not true. In many ways, we are nearly half way there. That’s especially true when the NYT refuses to tell people they are wrong. They told them they were wrong yesterday. It wouldn’t be fair and balanced to do it again.

The story of the day is the continuing saga of Joe Rogan and the cheap calls of censorship on the other side. Yogi Berra originally coined the phrase Deja vu all over again. He was good for the zany one-liner. Right wing media and other social media commenters are caught in a loop.

The online dictionary defines censorship as the suppression or prohibition of any parts of books, films, or news that are considered obscene, politically unacceptable, or a threat to security. I’ve said this a few times in these parts, but the first amendment guarantees no one access to a platform. So, people lobbying Spotify or applying pressure to Spotify has no bearing on whether Congress passes a law to ban Joe Rogan’s speech.

Now, the social media warriors have unleashed the hounds of war on Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. That’s their right. As you might suspect, they have played on the fact that Young’s audience trends on the older side of the ledger. Some of them are quite humorous, so I’ve reluctantly tipped my cap to some of their attempts of humor. Again, it is an example of people exercising their free speech to counteract others exercising their free speech.

Spotify chose to pull episodes of Rogan’s podcast. It started off with 70 and then it was pushed to 110 as the article above suggests. By the time you read this it could be more. These episodes were pulled based on liberal use of the “n” word during those episodes. There could become a point where his place is just too toxic to keep around.

Again, I will keep repeating myself until people get it through their thick skulls. You do not have a right to a platform. No really, you do not have a right to a platform. You can say what you want to say. You can record it so other people can hear it. Spotify and other platforms have the right to say no. Of course, this wouldn’t be so maddening if many of the same people that were up in arms about Joe Rogan were also not the ones in favor of banning books from school libraries across the country. The irony is palpable. Some day someone needs to explain the difference to me.

In this instance, a student in Grandbury ISD said it far better than I could. She told the school board that no government has ever banned books from public consumption and ever been seen in history as the good guys. At first blush, it would appear that banning a book from a school library and pressuring a platform to drop a podcast are the same thing. If you squint hard enough and close one eye it is exactly the same thing.

Except that isn’t reality. Rogan’s podcasts have been available on a number of different platforms. So, if Spotify were to drop Rogan you could easily see another platform adding him. People that want to find Rogan on their virtual radio dial will find him. No amount of snark, feaux outrage, or false equivalencies will ever change that fact. You do not have the right to a platform. School libraries aren’t really platforms. They aren’t making money off of your kid. They are there for their enrichment and therein lies the difference.

We live in a world of shoulds. It has been common for a people to mix up their coulds and their shoulds. Can Spotify pull Joe Rogan’s podcasts? Of course they can. Can your local school library decide not to carry certain books? That one is a little harder, but the answer is yes. The question is whether they should do those things. That’s the only question that matters.

This whole Joe Rogan situation has just blown up. If we have an inkling that we’ve seen this before it’s because we probably have. At least we have seen the Neil Young portion of the proceedings before. Young has made a habit of combatting on free speech issues. Who knows? Maybe he has learned something in the intervening decades.

We should start with the deja vu all over again portion of this story. This is not censorship. Nobody has drafted any law keeping Rogan from doing what he is doing. Nobody is throwing Joe Rogan in jail for what he has been saying. Spotify is a private company that has the ability to make its own decisions regarding content. What we are seeing is that artists also have the right to choose where their art is showcased.

I think I had one Neil Young CD from back in the day. I have no idea where it is. I don’t own anything Joni Mitchell has produced. I’m not even sure if either of them have produced anything this century. I did go to a Crosby, Stills, and Nash concert once, but Young wasn’t there. That’s about as close as I have gotten to these particular artists.

However, if you take a step back, this whole story becomes fascinating. One facet is the Joe Rogan facet of the discussion. Still, that’s only the beginning. Spotify themselves are just another platform for music and podcasts, but they have taken a serious hit. Meanwhile, a boycott that started with two artists that haven’t done anything relevant in at least 30 years suddenly has grown beyond that.

The final leg in these protests has been the consumer reaction. Businesses like Spotify sign guys like Rogan because it helps expand their brand. Rogan has millions of listeners and if Spotify can be the one place you can hear it then you have to subscribe to Spotify. It makes perfect sense.

As a consumer of music and occasional consumer of podcasts I get it. There are literally hundreds of musicians and podcasts on Spotify that I would never listen to. Rogan’s is one of them. It’s not a hardcore protests on my part. He just isn’t my cup of tea. I don’t begrudge him his spot any more than I would begrudge any gangster rapper that I would never listen to. They are there for people that enjoy their work.

The question for us and for people like Rogan is what responsibility they have. Rogan is first and foremost an entertainer. He was on New Radio back in the day. He hosted Fear Factor. He was a co-host on the Man Show. It’s difficult to look at that resume and somehow come away thinking he is meant to be taken seriously. I’m sure he would tell you the same thing.

Yet, he has his staunch defenders. I made this same point on Twitter last night and was lambasted by some guy that asserted that Rogan had on medical experts that know more than Dr. Fauci. Sure. Keep in mind that I said nothing negative about Rogan. All I said was that he probably wasn’t meant to be taken completely seriously.

The question was never whether Rogan had the right to say what he does, those artists have the right to pull their catalog, or consumers having the right to quit Spotify. The question was never whether Spotify had the right to pay Rogan or not pay Rogan. The question is how we manage to put things in proper context. Rogan is an entertainer. Entertainers can inform, but that is not their primary function. Somewhere along the way we collectively got lazy. When did we start relying on entertainers to be our primary outlet for information?

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” — First Amendment

Lately it seems that we get to complain about obvious things. I enjoy discussing things that aren’t that obvious. It stretches the brain to have to consider multiple points of the view. The recent breach of the conservative social network Epik brings this kind of debate to life.

This kind of discussion always begins with the first amendment. I included the verbiage above because it is one of the most misunderstood amendments in the constitution. Too many people seem to think it means you get to say whatever you want without consequences. That has never been the case and the folks discovered in the Epik breach are learning this the hard way.

In particular, this story came to a head when a Florida realtor was fired because of his social media presence. In essence he had set up numerous domains with controversial content. The end result is a classic case pitting someone’s misunderstood free speech rights against a business’s rights to have people they want to represent their product.

All that being said, the bolded portion of the first amendment is the key part in this case. The whole idea behind sites like Parlor and Epik was that people wanted a “safe space” to air their grievances. They knew they couldn’t regurgitate their bile in public, so they were seeking a private place where they wouldn’t get in trouble.

The operative word there is the right to PEACEABLY assemble. The trouble with these right wing sites is that they don’t seem to peaceably do anything. Sites like these are where a lot of the January 6th actors coordinated their efforts. Again, they are mistaking the nature of the freedom. Congress cannot outlaw people from meeting in groups as long as the meeting itself is not against the law or that those groups break the law during their meeting.

A classic example of this scenario might involve NAMBLA. As most people know, this is an organization of pedophiles. If they describe their love for pedophilia they technically aren’t breaking any laws at the meeting itself. If they exchange pictures or any other materials then they would be. The question is whether the government has the right to identify who is at this gathering in the first place.

These are all interesting questions given that all of these groups know full well that the majority of the population does not accept the validity of their point of view. So, individuals avoid voicing unpopular opinions because they understand the fallout. They join private groups in the hopes that they can voice their true feelings without facing direct consequences.

The difficulty here is that these are not groups just idly sitting around and talking about how much they hate black people (or any other group). Such a group would be reprehensible, but basically harmless. What creates this issue is that some people in the group (or even most in some cases) are using the assumed anonymity to plan actions that are obviously dangerous and against the law.

Moreover, while we have the right to free speech, we do not have the right to social media. We do not have the right to amplification. Anyone is free to set up social media with their own terms of service, but we can also be judged for what happens on those forums. It’s not cut and dried and it’s never easy. I can sympathize with someone hoping to keep their views private, but if a group is planning the next insurrection then that right to privacy should go out the window.

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”

One of the things we try to do in our social studies and English classes is teach our students about logical fallacies. One of those fallacies is the slippery slope fallacy. The idea of censorship is one of those ideas that seems to be bandied about lately.

What’s hilarious is that everyone is familiar with the first amendment. However, it is the bolded part that most interests me. It is the one conservatives seem to miss. It is amazing what they consider to be censorship. Facebook shutting down a post is censorship. Twitter kicking someone off their platform is censorship. It is all a slippery slope.

Except slippery slopes are a red herring. It is something conservatives are extremely consistent about. Regulation of any right is somehow a slippery slope to tyranny. Speech can’t be regulated. Gun ownership can’t be regulated. It’s the same argument.

Except they can be regulated and SCOTUS decisions consistently back this up. The question is what responsibility media outlets have. Congress shall make no laws. That doesn’t mean that private entities can’t limit what it allows. Businesses are free to govern their employees. People are free to suffer blowback from their speech. There’s no slippery slope here.