Month: April 2003

Another quick note on the matter of the practicalities of speech-oriented boycotts:

It’s the Internet era. We’re moving inexorably closer to the day when you can’t shut anyone up. Ask Christopher Allbritton — not that anyone was trying to shut him up, but he’s a great demonstration of how much the reach of the independent commentator/journalist has grown. People who want to get their message across need big media less and less.

Right now, you can pull together a sizable interest group without media help. That’s a distinct change in social possibilities. You probably can’t put together an interest group big enough to matter in a national election, but the day is coming. Put differently: South Park got on the air because a little Christmas card video was distributed all over the Internet.

Those who want to influence the opinions of the future ought to be thinking about establishing the core mechanisms for person-to-person communication right now.

So I was reading this entry from Mike and it made me think — which reminds me, cause I’ve been meaning to talk about Cold Fury for a while, so I’m going to digress. Back to the main point in a minute.

I read Mike because he’s honest and a man of integrity. He’s also pissed off, but so am I. Thing is, he does not have a secret agenda to take over the world, and he isn’t plotting to send hordes of jackbooted Young Republicans marching down the streets, and he doesn’t hate all Muslims, and he’s not living in some weird little world of his own. He’s a good guy who has different politics than I do. If I couldn’t read Mike’s stuff and think about it rationally, rather than just writing him off as a right-wing thug, I’d be pretty worried about myself. When I express an opinion, he listens to it; I owe him the same courtesy. Also, he plays a mean guitar.

OK, on with the thoughtfulness.

The above-referenced entry is a shot at Tim Robbins. I pretty much disagree with Mike on the whole Baseball Hall of Fame controversy, on a number of levels; mostly, I think it’s morally right to encourage expression of multiple points of view. I happen to agree with Robbins some of the time, but I’d be just as cheesed off if the Baseball Hall of Fame uninvited Randy Johnson to a festivity on the grounds that Johnson might say something praising Bush. Once you start telling people to shut up based on what they might say, you’re stifling free speech — it’s what they call a chilling effect in the legal world.

A bunch of people in the comments section said that they could boycott anything they wanted. Well, it’s not a boycott if someone else is making the decisions for you — in this case, it’s the Baseball Hall of Fame exerting control over what we hear, and man does that ever piss me off. I’m an adult; I can make my decisions for myself.

But — and this is where I got thoughtful — what about boycotts? What about the Dixie Chicks? What about… oh god… what about the Michael Savage boycott?

You know, I can’t honestly say I think anyone should be trying to shut Savage up by applying that kind of economic pressure. Truth is, if Savage is succeeding it only means there are a lot of people willing to listen to him. That problem isn’t going to go away by gagging the man. You don’t win the battle for hearts and minds by creating martyrs.

And that’s just the practical standpoint. From a moral standpoint, I can’t see any way to praise a Michael Savage boycott without also accepting the reasonableness of the Dixie Chicks boycott. Even if it’s ClearChannel pulling the strings in the latter case, aren’t we asking Savage’s advertisers to pull the strings in the former case?

Yeah, I think we are. Let’s stop trying to eliminate ideas that we find unpleasant, already.

US comes out against ridding the Middle East of WMDs. Film at 11.

Yeah, I’m simplifying. But not much. Syria introduced a Security Council resolution that would require all Middle Eastern countries to rid themselves of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. The US said “No, no, the time isn’t right.” That means, of course, “We don’t want to make Israel give up their nuclear weapons.”

I have to grudgingly admire the acumen of Syria. Not only did they make the US object to a positive resolution, they nudged us into admitting that the Security Council matters after all. Odd; I could have sworn Bush said that the Security Council would be irrelevant if it didn’t vote to allow us to invade Iraq. Why do we care what resolutions Syria introduces?

Answer: because even if we don’t care, most of the rest of the world — including the UK, Spain, Italy, and Australia — does. And we are not capable of defeating the rest of the world singlehandedly. From a military perspective? Quite possibly. From a financial perspective? Not a chance in hell.

Heh. I was speculating earlier today that the Iraqi National Museum looting might have been pro art thieves. Through sheer luck, it looks like I was right.

Someone should tell those Marines to redo their sign in Arabic, but I’m glad they’re awake now. The FBI is on the job, too. Right reactions, even if we got the initial actions wrong.