Unsought Input

Kurt Vonnegut, one of my favorite authors, died a few days ago on April 11th. You may or may not have heard by now. The New York Times wrote a nice piece on his life and a large number of blogs and forums have filled with discussions of his books, essays, and politics.

If you haven’t heard by now, I guess I’m not too surprised. Ablogistan took a look and found that there were more twice as many mentions of Anna Nicole Smith in the news than Vonnegut.

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Unless you’ve been under a rock I’m sure you’ve heard of the Don Imus controversy. They underlying point of this whole thing is free speech. Yeah Don Imus made a bad joke that wasn’t PC, but in this country he has that right under the 1st amendment.

The point of free speech isn’t to protect speech that you like and isn’t offensive, but the kind that is. Pretty much anything you say someone will be offended by. This country is made up of diverse groups of people from different backgrounds. Its impossible to know every little thing that will hurt people’s feelings. And if you do you should be able to say your sorry and move on, not his witch hunt that is currently happening. I can’t stand it when people say, “I’m for free speech, but…”, no there’s no but, either people should be allowed to say whatever they want or they shouldn’t there’s no middle ground.

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