Like a lot of people, I've been watching with interest Free Dominion's situation with the Human Rights Commission complaint that was laid against it, and one poster specifically. My initial response was that it was a steaming crock of bullshit -- freedom of expression trumps all else, and if someone found something objectionable (it's a smorgasbord, ha!), surely it could be handled without government interference.The nature and source of the offending post made me grudgingly concede that in this particular case the complaint might not be quite the steaming load I'd originally thought. Even I can admit that there are limits to what we have to accept in the interest free speech, and it's possible, especially in light of the recent increase in anti-Muslim bigotry, that this crossed the line. (Although I still maintain that even if I was filing a complaint, which I personally wouldn't have, I wouldn't have done it without any preliminary dialogue with the site owners.)
Some FD posters aren't helping: publishing the complainant's personal information serves no purpose other than to incite some whacko to make contact, or at the very least, make the board look like the drooling, bullying mouthbreathers they're accused of being. Dragging up the offending thread and keeping it bumped up for awhile wasn't too bright either. This is the kind of stuff that I can't help laughing at. But it's kind of a horrified, "what are you doing!?" laugh. I don't want them to lose this thing, but sometimes they seem intent on doing so.
Site owner Connie Wilkins was on the Coren radio show yesterday and impressed me as sounding very reasonable... until the question about Bill Whatcott, the source of the complaint, came up -- then there was a momentary stumble into the gutter of homophobia. Again, it was another one of those "Oh shit, what are you doing!?" moments.
None of this makes me particularly happy. Popcorn in hand, I'm watching how this plays out, as I think anyone wary of hate speech laws should be. But I'm certainly not cheering for FD's downfall -- quite the opposite, I'd be appalled if the site were shut down. We need more voices out there, not less. (And I don't want to lose a rich mine of conservative comedy gold.) I hope FD wins this and learns something from it ("don't let extremists hijack your site" maybe?), and from what I've seen many of us on the leftish side feel the same way.
And yet I find this on one of the "SoCon Blogs":
"The cackle of the Left is almost deafening."
Where the fuck does that come from? What cackle? I don't think anyone finds this situation particularly funny. It baffles me that right-wing blogs and FD itself go on about how gleefully happy "the left" is about FD's troubles. Other than a couple of isolated snarky comments, I've seen nothing but support for FD -- some of it given grudgingly, but support nonetheless. Even on Babble the general consensus is that they hope FD will win this. And yet the right seems totally clueless about all the support coming from this side of the aisle. That's what's so frustrating about them, their knee-jerk response that wherever they're at, the left must be 180 degrees away. Things aren't always that black and white.
Of course there's the possibility that the reason they can't conceive of us being supportive of them is because if the situation were turned on its head, they wouldn't be supportive of us. Sadly, I think that's probably closer to the truth.
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