"I hope he fails."
Those four words set off a national firestorm in 2009 when Rush Limbaugh uttered that phrase about newly elected president Barack Obama. The media crushed him for being Anti-American and even Limbaugh himself had to take to the airwaves to clarify that he meant that he hoped that Obama's policies fail. I could further elaborate, but you can go into the EIB archives and do that for yourself.
The reason for citing that example to start, is now, in 2017. I don't know what news is anymore. Earlier this week there were riots at UC Berkeley, "home of Free Speech," relating to a speaking engagement by Milo Yiannopoulos of the Breitbart News Network. As a personal preference, I prefer to read left-leaning publications, CNN, Rolling Stone, Daily Beast and prefer to listen to right-leaning broadcasts, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck, so I'm not really familiar with the Breitbart News Network. Since the kids at UC Berkeley were so upset, I decided to investigate the site for myself. (Full disclosure, my brother-in-law did once send me a link to Breitbart Sports for an article on witchcraft in African Soccer for my Blasphemers Facebook Page.)
I assumed that due to the Yiannopoulos' speaking engagements getting cancelled across this nation, I would click on BNN and swastikas would be rotating in the background and Hitler himself would pop up from the bottom of the page and give you the Nazi Salute. Nope. Just right-wing crap. As a matter of fact, I'm going to ask myself a question: Describe the Breitbart News Network in one sentence. Okay. BNN is the right-wing version of the Huffington Post.
I scoured Breitbart News looking for things that would cause a riot. Couldn't find anything. I found a ton I disagreed with, but nothing that would make me take to the streets with a rock in my hand. When the left calls everyone on the right Fascists, it lessens the impact of when the real Fascists do show up. Unless I am missing something, there is nothing on Breitbart that isn't covered by the First Amendment. I keep reading the rebuttal that Hate Speech isn't Free Speech, but then you have to ask yourself: What is hate speech?
Just this week Eminem rapped about killing Trump, Madonna screamed that women should blow up the White House, and Sarah Silverman tweeted that there should be a United States Military coup against Trump. You can't just have free speech for your side and label the other side's speech as hate.
That's why we are living in dangerous times. Very few news outlets cover the facts, period. Top stories are agenda driven and slanted toward the messenger's politics. I cannot comprehend how a lead story on one news outlet can be totally omitted on another's site. Which circles us back to the Berkeley Riots, circa 2017. A so-called bastion of free-speech riots over unlike thinkers and prevents their speech. Let that sink in for a while. Symbolically, there is nothing more upsetting to those of us at Beacon of Speech than that.
"....but Kellyanne Conway lied about a Bowling Green Massacre that never happened this week" the left would counter "isn't that the most egregious abuse of free speech you've heard?" Again, never acknowledging their own short-comings, only the abuses of the other side.
Note: Both photos are stolen from Berkeley Riot stories 48 years apart.