Thursday, January 13, 2011

Radio Station Pulls Limbaugh "Straight Shooter" Billboard

Considering that this sign is in Tucson, I can certainly appreciate the motives of the corporate execs who decided to pull it. On the other hand ...

I think certain people have gone off half-cocked with this no gun metaphors thing. I mean, I can’t go for it lock stock and barrel. I’m setting my sights on a more nuanced approach. A scattershot response that targets every sort of speech that has any association with violence misses the mark, in my opinion. The target ought to be speech that, partly because it is intended to do physical harm, makes the speaker morally responsible for the mayhem inflicted. The full arsenal of the law should be brought to bear on speech like “Shoot him!” or “I’ll give you $10,000 for killing my wife. $20,000 if the body disappears.” But go much beyond that and you are just shooting blanks or, worse yet, gunning down the innocent along with the guilty.

_____________________________
Hat-tip to Ruchira Paul for the story and L. Neil Smith for the basic idea, which I shamelessly stole.

Lagniappe:

4 comments:

Brian N. said...

That's some excellent trigger discipline, Mr. Hunt.

Lester Hunt said...

Thanks! I was trying not to jump the gun.

Max Kuenkel said...

That was funny, because it properly ridiculed the underlying ideology that prefers to see collective guilt instead of individual guilt, and prefers to see collective responsibility instead of personal responsibility: that's why they don't want individuals carrying guns, either. When challenged on this, they say: "we have nothing against hunters or sport shooting", but it is the hive mind that speaks here in disguise, it works to weaken and undermine individual freedoms and responsibilities.

Lester Hunt said...

To me, the silliest idea here is the assumption that people are going to be moved to acts of violence by metaphors and similes. It obviously is possible for speech to cause violence, but it seems to me that to do so it must give people reasons to do something violent. For instance: "Bush (or Obama) is a murderer" is certainly the sort of thing that can make someone feel like doing something violent. But talk of crosshairs and targeting, in and of itself, is not.