The late, great stand-up comedian, George Carlin, in one of his many hilarious and shockingly accurate diatribes, was describing the lack of free speech in the media due to the FCC and said, “Why did they decide that? Because they got a letter from a minister in Mississippi! A reverend Donald Wildman, who heard something on the radio that he didn’t like. Well, reverend, did anyone ever tell you there are two nobs on the radio?”
Almost every day, there is a story in the news of someone losing their job or bearing the full force of public outrage over remarks they made that were distasteful or an attempt at the removal of a public statue, banner, or slogan because a group of people was offended.
Whether their remarks were racist, sexist or any other number of subcategories of the overarching “politically incorrect” family, the effort to remove these legitimately detrimental aspects of society has evolved into a meddlesome, intrusive, and utterly pathetic systematic attack on the rights that were guaranteed by the First Amendment.
Now, do I agree with racist or sexist remarks? Absolutely not. This does not change the fact that, regardless of my personal opinion that these sort of remarks are completely ignorant, these people have a right to say them.
Why did many of us have to read "Fahrenheit 451" and "1984" in school? These novels depict societies in which freedom of speech is impeded to a highly exaggerated degree, and what terrifies me is that these science-fictional societies increasingly mirror that of America today.
There was one story of a group of parents trying to censor the text of Fahrenheit 451 due to the mild swear words used throughout the book. I like to think of myself as a relatively creative person, and I can honestly say that I could never, in a million years, come up with something more ironic.
A high school in Lexington, Massachusetts vetoed a student-voted “American Pride” prom theme proposal because it excluded other nationalities. Not only are we in The United States of America, but this high school happens to be in the very place where one of the first open conflicts of the American Revolution occurred.
Another high school in California sent five students home for their refusal to remove their American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo. It was my apparently mistaken understanding that we were allowed to wear the American flag while living in America.
There is a never-ending push to change team mascots from “offensive” characters such as the Cleveland Indians and Washington Redskins to other, more publicly acceptable mascots. One such effort succeeded in changing Stanford University's mascot from the Indians to the Cardinal. The color, not the bird. Very intimidating.
This is a slippery slope.
The only way to form truly educated opinions about anything is to hear the opposite point of view and personally formulate the reasons why you disagree with it. I fear this is becoming increasingly impossible as younger generations have fewer and fewer opportunities to hear points of view that oppose popular and politically correct opinions.
I sincerely hope that the lessons of George Carlin, George Orwell, and Ray Bradbury are not buried in the purging of unpopular opinion from our society, and I urge each and every person in this country to either learn from what we are offended by rather than eradicating it, or put the nobs on the radio to use.
