True, you have a right of freedom of speech, but other people have a right to privacy, and a right to their dignity. Freedom of speech is of no merit if it is being used to defame someone with lies. The fact that they are “public figures” is immaterial (Does Sarah Palin have to put up with attempts to besmirch her character?)
Now of course, if what you are saying are lies, then there should be no problem, but unfortunately people believe there is no “smoke without fire”. And how much value should your good name have?
So, if you assert that MJ is a kiddy-fiddler, then you are, frankly, telling a lie, because a court of law has cleared him of that charge. You can say that he was accused of molesting children. You can say that he was arrested and charged with the crime. You can say that you disagree with the verdict. You can even say that MJ got off because of his money and power (very likely), but you cannot say he was a paedophile (actually I think you can now, because I dont believe it is possible to slander or libel a dead person).
First, freedom is speech is of no merit if it's only used to gush nice things about public figures who have given 20 million to pay off the parents of various "boys" who have accused him of pedophilia. I can assure you if Sarah Palin had paid 20 million dollars to keep various parents quiet who had accused her of diddling their daughters - the press would never shut up about it.
And really and truly - all people who are found "not guilty" are not necessarily innocent. You do understand how our legal system works even if you don't quite understand the first amendment, right?
OJ was found "not guilty" - did you think he was innocent of the crime? Or that the State didn't prove their case to that particular jury on that day?
Should we all show great respect for OJ?
How about great respect for the man who killed the abortion doctor?
Or do you draw a line there. How about great respect for skinheads who lynch blacks? Do they also get "great respect"? What if one of the skinheads wrote a beautiful song? Or six beautiful songs - and danced to one of them? Does that trump our ability to condemn him for being a racist-killer?
You need to get real Vanders.
You seem to feel that you know where the "line" is - it's where the people you like are on the good side of that line - and the rest of us are not.
That's heavy handed totalitarian. It seems I don't agree with you on any of this - it happens.
“(Does Sarah Palin have to put up with attempts to besmirch her character?)”
Evil SOB’s smear Palin. I am not an evil SOB, and Palin is as far as we know above reproach. Comparing Palin and Jackson is like comparing Reagan and Obama....not intelligent, and in commensurable.
Ask ABC News or Katie at CBS or Letterman or Maureen at the New York Times or ANYONE at the Washington Post. YES. They besmirch her all the time - and they sure as hell don't kiss her behind like they do with Michael KING OF PEDOPHILES Jackson. Do you live on this planet?
On Sarah by David Kahane:
Hit her with everything we have: Maureen Dowd of the New York Times, taking a beer-run break from her quixotic search for Mr. Right to drip venom on Sister Sarah; post-funny comic David Letterman, to joke about her and her daughters on national television; Katie Couric, the anchor nobody watches, to give this Alaskan interloper a taste of life in the big leagues; former New York Times hack Todd “Mr. Dee Dee Myers” Purdum, to act as an instrument of Graydon Carter’s wrath at Vanity Fair. Heck, we even burned her church down. Even after the teleological triumph of The One, the assault had to continue, each blow delivered with our Lefty SneerTM (viz.: Donny Deutsch yesterday on Morning Joe), until Sarah was finished.
You know what? It worked! McCain finally succumbed to his long-standing case of Stockholm Syndrome (“My friends, you have nothing to fear from an Obama presidency”), Tina Fey turned Palin into a see-Russia-from-my-house joke, “conservative” useful idiots like Peggy Noonan and Kathleen Parker hatched her, and finally Sarah cried No más and walked away. If we could, we’d cut off her head and mount it on a wall at Tammany Hall, except there is no more Tammany Hall unless you count Obama’s Tony Rezko–financed home in Chicago. And it took only eight months — heck, Sarah couldn't even have another kid in the time it took us to destroy her. That’s the Chicago way!