Posted by Dan Ewert : 4/28/2003 12:02:00 AM (Archive Link)
You really need to read this speech given by Tim Robbins at a National Press Club luncheon on April 15th. It’s mostly the usual woe-is-me whining we’ve been hearing so much from the left. In it, he mentions how many folks have come out and criticized him and how his relatives, including children, are getting cold shoulders from adults and teachers. Make no mistake, children shouldn’t be drawn into this sort of fray. Robbins, though, is using it as an example of dangerous intimidation that demonstrates some sort of new McCarthyism in America.

Here’s the problem. Speech doesn’t exist in a vacuum; Speech has consequences. As I’ve stated elsewhere in this blog, if you say something that you know will be controversial and that some people won’t like, don’t be surprised and get bent out of shape when it causes controversy and people don’t like it. Robbins and many other liberals, though, seem to think that they should be able to say whatever they like and get a free pass on it. They think nobody should criticize them and nobody should look at them askance. The fact that just the opposite happens is taken by them as an indication that the First Amendment is crashing down around us… First Amendment Chicken Littles. Well, first of all, that amendment to the Constitution is meant to be a limit on governmental power. In fact, if you look at the Bill of Rights (of which few people know more than the first two amendments) all 10 of the amendments are restrictions on federal power. Anyway, the first one holds back the government, not private speech. Therefore, if I say Robbins is a raging idiot, that’s not being anti-free speech… that’s utilizing free speech and the utilization necessarily means I’m pro-free speech. So keep in mind, speech has consequences. They may be good, they be bad, and most often they’ll be both. Free speech may receive further free speech in return. Get used to it.

There are other parts of the speech that are positively amusing. Especially this section concerning the aftermath of 9/11:

“I imagined our leaders going on television, telling the citizens that although we all want to be at Ground Zero we can't. But there is work that is needed to be done all over America. Our help is needed at community centers, to tutor children, to teach them to read, our work is needed at old age homes to visit the lonely and infirmed, in gutted neighborhoods to rebuild housing and clean up parks, and convert abandoned lots into baseball fields. I imagined leadership that would take this incredible energy, this generosity of spirit, and create a new unity in America born out of the chaos and tragedy of 9-11. A new unity that would send a message to terrorists everywhere: If you attack us we will become stronger, cleaner, better educated, more unified. You will strengthen our commitment to justice and democracy by your inhumane attacks on us. Like a phoenix out of the fire we will be re-born.”

“This incredible energy?” Where are the moon crystals, daddy-o? This is why Robbins shouldn’t be in charge of foreign or domestic policy. It’s doubtful that bin Laden would have felt outdone had we taunted him with the fact that while he may have bombed our embassies, our Marine barracks, a U.S. warship, the Pentagon, and destroyed the World Trade Center, we have new baseball fields and cleaner streets. “Well, I tried my best at destroying the Great Satan, but their tutor rates are at all time highs. I guess I should just call off this whole jihad thing.” Right. With Robbins’s plan, we would have had to do that phoenix out of the fire routine many times. That’s a lot of ashes for Americans to deal with.

Here’s another fun part:

“And here in Washington, Helen Thomas finds herself banished to the back of the room and uncalled on after asking Ari Fleisher whether our showing prisoners of war at Guantanamo Bay on television violated the Geneva Convention.”

Helen Thomas stopped getting questions because she’s been increasingly turning into a wild-eyed loonball who doesn’t ask a leading question until issuing commentary that illustrates her leftist views. Also, considering that she’s gotten at least one question in every press conference of the past 30 years or so, it’s hard to feel bad for her.

How about some twisted logic? In one paragraph, Robbins put forth the theory that teenage violence is not the result of Hollywood movies, but actually stems from real wars that the U.S. perpetrates. In the next paragraph, however, he complains that U.S. news media sanitizes war images and doesn’t show the real gore involved. So… war coverage is sanitized and this somehow leads to Columbine. Wouldn’t this argument work better if war images were bloody? Actually Robbins’s idea is that the gore would give us pause in committing to war. No word on whether it would stop teenage violence. It seems doubtful since movie gore doesn’t seem to have done it. If images of real violence would stop war and teenage malfeasance, wouldn’t it follow that the realistic images of simulated violence in movies should have accomplished the same thing?

The conclusion to the speech gets to the nitty-gritty of what Robbins wants to say to the media. He essentially wants them to be more liberal and advises them to work against the horrible intimidation of the Bush Administration like the brutal suppression of Helen Thomas’s questions. This leads to an extremely aggravating point. Robbins says, “A bully can be stopped. So can a mob. It takes one person with the courage and a resolute voice.” He makes it seem as if it takes a great deal of bravery to speak out. No! You’re perfectly free to speak out. People may criticize you, but you’ll never have government agents at your door ready to haul you to jail. You’ll never have the soles of your feet caned like in Iraq. You’ll never be sent to a gulag like in the USSR. You’ll never be convicted to years in prison on trumped-up charges like what has just recently happened in Cuba. If the worst the Bush folks can think of to punish Helen Thomas is to not call on her, I’d say we’re in good shape. The liberals who think they’re showing unusual courage in condemning the government’s actions are sheer idiots and are far below those brave dissidents throughout history who really have risked everything, including their lives, just by speaking.