Quote:
Originally Posted by ThurgreedMarshall
(Post 523466)
Can you explain why Maher saying something stupid is part of the marketplace of ideas and an angry reaction by a number of people large enough to influence his employers is somehow outside the marketplace of ideas? Aren't they just saying, "We have listened to your idea and we think it is overwhelmingly stupid"?
Or do you picture the marketplace of ideas as an actual Greek amphitheater in which everyone gets to stand up and advocate for their ideas? And those with the best ideas get a TV show?
TM
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An angry reaction by a number of people which gets the attention of HBO execs and causes them to fire Maher is fine. That's an organic process ending in a business decision. An angry reaction by a number of people demanding that Maher lose his job and pushing for that result is not within the marketplace of ideas. It's not a response to an idea at all. I'll explain by example:
Maher made a dumb racially insensitive joke a few months ago.
In response, normal people said, "That was a foul. Bad joke, bad idea. Bad Bill. Don't do something like that again." Other normal people, like Ice Cube, came on his show and took him to the woodshed about his bad judgment in making the joke.
That is the marketplace of ideas at work. Maher offered an idea -- that it was okay for him to make that joke, and that the joke was funny. The marketplace said, "Nope, Bill. That joke is not okay. It sucks and it's offensive. Bad fucking idea."
Bill lost. If his idea, or his joke, were a company, it'd have failed. If it were a stock, it'd have gone to zero. And consequently, everyone learned a lesson about boundaries. And Maher, whose program showcases important issues and important guests (climate change almost every week, to name one of many) remains a source of useful and enlightening entertainment (for a TV crowd).
But... If the Twitter mob had its way, much as dipshit right wingers threw Maher off of HBO in 2001 for telling the truth (that the 9/11 hijackers were not cowards by any stretch of the imagination), Maher and his show would have ended. This is not a competition of ideas. This is retribution. It's childish anger -- and it's the low seeking to take down their betters. It's a bully with a Twitter feed seeking to preclude the competition of Maher's dumb joke and the public's view of it within the marketplace of ideas. It's seeking to attack not the idea, but the source of it. It's also weak. It suggests that the idea might not fail or be sufficiently rejected on its own.
I find many opinions and ideas repugnant and stupid and offensive. But should I seek to silence their speakers in reply to them? Or should I seek to express why and how such views are flawed and stupid and offensive? Clearly, for the thinking person, the smart and evolved person, the latter is the preferred course. (It's not even up for debate.)
If you say something I don't like, I've the right to tell your boss to fire you for it. But I would hope, and I trust this would be the case, that your boss would say, "Fuck you" to me in response. But as you correctly note, if the mob gets large enough and loud enough, in many instances, a board will fire the offending comic or pundit regardless of whether the mob has asked for that redress. That's unfortunate. But I don't blame the mob for that. Should the mob demand the offender be fired, however, fuck that mob. Fuck that deeply un-American mob and its childish, thuggish behavior. And yes, they are low. He who defies the spirit of free speech in that regard - and that defies it - is low.
