Free Speech is So Scary

Mistaken identities: Charles Black is not the enemy

Unless you’re driving in your Prius 5 mph under the speed limit on your way to buy incense and tofu, you accept as fact that Charles Black uttered an unspoken truth of the campaign trail when he said a terrorist attack would be good for John McCain’s candidacy. That’s like saying $6 gas would be good for Obama’s campaign.

If you’re upset by Black’s unvarnished truth, try doing something worthwhile with your outrage and go read Dr. Seuss to the old folks at the rest home until your blood pressure stabilizes.

I would kill for the day when we can speak openly and honestly without fear of retribution from the right or the left and all the people who fall in between.

For more evidence that we aren’t there yet, read the delightful piece today by L.A. Times campaign reporter Jim Rainey on his pursuit of a sit-down interview with John McCain’s free-speaking 96-year-old mother. Read the whole entertaining column packed full of insightful snippets of Rainey’s phone conversations with Roberta since he decided to go-around McCain’s less-than-helpful handlers and try to set up the interview himself. The all-too-candid Roberta McCain finally tells Rainey: “They’ve got me muzzled. Now don’t you print that…I really don’t like to be interviewed.”

Note to McCain staff: Nothing this woman could say could possibly hurt your stinkin’ candidate. She could even say he hates a certain ethnic group, or race, or Texans, or thinks immigrants, legal or not, are second-class Martians. She’s nearly 100 years old. Talk about missing a big opportunity to defuse the issue of John’s age.

For more on the issue of free speech, and the lack of it, on the campaign trail, and Black’s honest words, see Frank Rich’s column in the New York Times and an op-ed column by Ezra Klein in the L.A. Times.

And, whatever you want to say about any of this, it’s OK.
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