Speech, Free and Otherwise:
Ya gotta have principles in this fucked-up world, ya know? Ya gotta be able, at the end of the day, to stand up and say, "This is what I believed and you know what, motherfuckers? I stuck by that shit until the bitter end." The Rude Pundit's got a few principles, here and there, most of them involving essential oils, old Portishead CDs, and glow-in-the-dark condoms, but one towers over all of them: you got to believe in freedom of speech or all else in the detritus-ridden national "dialogue" is worthless. Supporting freedom of speech as a relative absolute can be soul-sapping, like watching the last season of MASH - goddamn, it sucked tanks of noxious gas, but you're gonna stick by it until the bitter end. And it means that you have to support the right of fucktards of all political stripes to make stupid ass statements.

So it means you can't stand there and do a little happy jig when some rank little turd like talk radio jackass Michael Graham gets fired for something he said that doesn't violate any laws or putrid FCC regulations. Graham is known to many on the left as the occasional token conservative on Bill Maher's shows, sniffle-giggling in that vaguely righteous repressed-white-guy way that right wingers use when they deign to make a "point." His book is Redneck Nation, with its bizarro cover of Graham apparently fucking a pick-up truck. Guess that's what rednecks must do now that donkeys are in much smaller supply.

On July 21, Graham said, "Because of the mix of Islamic theology that—rightly or wrongly—is interpreted to promote violence, added to an organizational structure that allows violent radicals to operate openly in Islam’s name with impunity, Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization. It pains me to say it. But the good news is it doesn’t have to stay this way, if the vast majority of Muslims who don’t support terror will step forward and re-claim their religion." In essence, Graham is actually being far, far more polite than, say, Michael Savage, who, it seems, wants to eat a screaming Muslim child live on the air, or Congressman Tom "Nuke Mecca" Tancredo or Ann "Convert 'Em With My Magical Cunt of Christian Justice" Coulter. But because Graham said that "Islam has, sadly, become a terrorist organization," and refused to apologize for it, he incurred the wrath of the Council on American Islamic Relations.

Again, Graham is just another Limbaugh/Hannity wannabe, flouting his "redneck" credentials as if saying that a man from the South is conservative is some kind of revelation. He says vile things, and, in the end, he was fired because he upset people with his words. You wanna call the advertisers and get them to bail on the show or the station? Great. You wanna boycott shit? Fine. You wanna put up posters saying that Michael Graham is a wad of fuck and photoshop his face into Satan's? Go right the fuck ahead. And if Graham gets cancelled because he has no listeners and no advertisers, then so be it.

But let us not "applaud," as CAIR did, Graham's firing for his words. It's the same as applauding ABC for firing Bill Maher after 9/11. It'd be the same as taking Marc Maron off Air America for some of the (really funny) shit he says about fundamentalist Christians.

Graham is a martyr now for the right. He's gonna be on O'Reilly's watch-me-lick-my-own-taint show tonight. Because of CAIR's actions, Islam will be bashed far more than if the organization had argued with Graham, put out statements opposing Graham's words, or a thousand other actions. Graham's gonna end up with more exposure, more "fans," more ways to spread whatever the fuck he believes. All because of the failure to believe in freedom of speech.

Sometimes supporting freedom of speech is one fuck of a burden. Ask the ACLU (who, by the way, Graham criticized profusely like a good conservative nutzoid). Ya gotta be willin' to get down and dirty, into the shit and muck, willing to prop up that right for even the most odious fucks around.

But if you support it wholeheartedly, even for those you despise, you can feel free, free, so liberatedly free to say things like: "Fuck you, Pat Robertson, you squinty-eyed shitbag, so full of years of unmitigated hate and bile that it oozes out of you like pus from an untreated herpes sore. And fuck anyone who still buys that said bag of shit is anything even remotely related to Christianity and is gonna defend Robertson no matter what crazed nightmare vision of reality spews from him like vomit from a flu-ridden toddler. Like male dogs who suck their own balls to get little red hard-ons, you 700 Club fans want everyone to see your proud, slimy cocks, but, really, you're just blowin' yourself. Robertson wants the U.S. to assassinate legally-elected Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Ain't that what we call a 'fatwa' in other contexts? Or should we just call it more bloviation and bullshit from a man who's been buggering Jesus on live television for decades?"

Damn, that free speech feels good.