Miami Student

Issue date: 12/10/04 Section: OpEd Page

There's something I have to clear up. Due to some editorial cleansing, at the end of one of my previous columns it sounded like I was apologizing to members of a conservative Web site for an even earlier column about Ann Coulter. Let me make something abundantly clear: I would sooner (insert something overtly perverse here) than apologize to those reactionary geeks. What was cut from that concluding statement was that I would apologize to them by promising to cuddle with a certain presidential daughter after performing certain illicit acts.My editor (a real good guy), assured me that the line was excellent, but with all the phone calls and e-mails they received from "administrators" after the original column ran, he just couldn't leave it in. At a staff party I pointed out to said editor and another editor, that this was coming from the kids who wrote about legalizing incest and masturbating with the wrong hand, respectively.On top of all this, earlier this year I heard unconfirmed rumors from my co-workers that I would be fired from my job because of a column I wrote in Amusement. Here's a brief lesson in irony: I work at the library, and this came up during Banned Book Week. I almost wish they had fired me. The case would have been an ACLU lawyer's wet dream.This poses the question, what the hell happened to free speech? Where did "I may not agree with what you say, but I'll defend to my death your right to say it" go? This goes way beyond watching Die Hard 2 on TNT and hearing Bruce Willis say "Yipee-kai-yay mellon-farmer." Puritan oppression is alive and well here in America. We'll all stand up for that quaint little document, the Bill of Rights as long as it's convenient for us. Maybe we should go back and revise Voltaire's statement to "...I'll defend to the death your right to say it as long as you write about nice things like popped collars, how hard finals week is, and don't evoke various parts of the human anatomy for crude humor."I'm not sure if those anonymous "administrators" are earning their over-priced cars if they can't understand something as simple as the First Amendment. Freedom of speech means all speech, including (and especially) the stuff you don't like. Eminem can say the word "fag" in a song just like GLAAD can denounce him as a homophobe. Ann Coulter can spout all the bigoted trash she wants just like I can say that I hope she comes back in her next life as... well, you see what I mean. So please, stop sending me your grammatically-poor hate mail, and stop bothering my editors, who I bet work harder in a day than those "administrators" do in a week. Therefore, in the spirit of free speech, I'd like to cordially invite said administrators, Free Republic members, and Miami hate-mailers to eat my (comment deleted by editorial board).

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