Well, if you welcome the "moral caution" of the reviewer who felt The Book of Jokes to be unpalatable, why would you not welcome the presumably similar "caution" that is the "pummeling" received by comments that offend readers? I mean, you sorta defended Polanski; others (including myself) expressed their disagreement and argued he was a man who raped a child. (I note that most defenders of Polanski do not defend the rape of a child; they defend something else, while deflecting attention from the act or insisting it's something else.)
Free speech does not guarantee freedom from verbal pummeling - quite the opposite. Here in the US, where "freedom of speech" is supposed to be constitutionally protected, there's certainly no shortage of loudmouth Americans who bombastically defend free speech...and then shudder in umbrage when some idiotic remark they make incites vigorous speech condemning the first remark's idiocy. That's free speech too.
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Date: 2009-10-26 07:36 pm (UTC)Free speech does not guarantee freedom from verbal pummeling - quite the opposite. Here in the US, where "freedom of speech" is supposed to be constitutionally protected, there's certainly no shortage of loudmouth Americans who bombastically defend free speech...and then shudder in umbrage when some idiotic remark they make incites vigorous speech condemning the first remark's idiocy. That's free speech too.