The New Normal:
Posted on 03/19/2013 8:19:45 AM PDT by Pyro7480
Philadelphia magazine published an article called Being White in Philly, with the subtitle, “Whites, race, class, and the things that never get said.” Apparently the Mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, thinks there’s not even a constitutional right to say those things; in a letter to the Philadelphia Human Relations Commission, the mayor argues,
While I fully recognize that constitutional protections afforded the press are intended to protect the media from censorship by the government, the First Amendment, like other constitutional rights, is not an unfettered right, and notwithstanding the First Amendment, a publisher has a duty to the public to exercise its role in a responsible way. I ask the Commission to evaluate whether the “speech” employed in this essay is not the reckless equivalent of “shouting ‘fire!’ in a crowded theater,” its prejudiced, fact-challenged generalizations an incitement to extreme reaction.
The implication — which I think is very strong — that the “speech” is indeed unprotected by the First Amendment under the “incitement” exception is absolutely wrong: Under Brandenburg v. Ohio and Hess v. Indiana, the speech in the article is clearly protected....
The specific call in the mayor’s letter, which is for the Commission to “conduct an inquiry into the state of racial issues, biases, and attitudes within and among the many communities and neighborhoods in the City of Philadelphia,” and to “consider specifically whether Philadelphia Magazine and the writer, Bob Huber are appropriate for rebuke by the Commission,” is not as troubling — both the mayor and the Commission have the right to express their own views, and indeed it is commonly argued that the proper alternative to suppression of speech is counterspeech. But the Mayor’s rationale wasn’t just, “this speech is constitutionally protected but so is our response.”
(Excerpt) Read more at volokh.com ...
... obliged to publish everything ...
>> Nutter: “I ask the Commission to evaluate”
This is not an infringement. It might be anal, but not yet an infringement. Constitutional “withstanding” will prevent this from going any further. And Nutter clearly knows this.
Its called the Justice department and it’s headed by Eric Holder. Where oh where have you been?
They haven't? the shooting down of Voter ID laws, "free speech zones", tracking net use, rebirth of the "fairness doctrine"...
So this is more like strong-arming or trying to bump up his street cred
http://www.phillymag.com/articles/white-philly/
That’s the link for those who haven’t read the article. I just read it and completely agree. The article is worse than mild, it’s weak. The writer appears so timid in his approach that he sounds as though he pleading for a kinder gentler approach to race relations, for Blacks to recognize that the new Progressive Whites are not the same old more conservative Whites of previous generations.
It’s not what I would have said at all. I went to Temple in late sixties. I was part of a committee to attract more Black students to graduate school at Temple. We were not the racists that this writer likes to think that we were. At the time, the Black Panthers were just getting started, I remember them walking down the sidewalk of North Broad, five abreast with their arms linked, laughing and clearing the sidewalk in front of them. We just laughed and moved aside to let them pass as if it was a game. We treated the kids at the clinics, my friends did volunteer work at the drug rehab, gave legal advice, and volunteered at the schools. We weren’t the enemy, even after a med school student was attacked and castrated one night, while jogging on the sidewalk near the school.
What I see today, when I visit Philadelphia is an open hostility toward White people, sullen clerks who refuse to make eye contact or speak to a White person while working the cash register, airport workers who are openly hostile and try to make your visit to Philadelphia as miserable as possible, and a real fear of mayhem. Heck, my nephew was attacked and beat up at a gas station because he took too long at the gas pump.
I agree completely. I was going to say the article was tame, but weak is even better. The author pines for a more gentle, conversational "can't we all get along" time. There is so much that could be said that would have been considered incendiary starting with not describing Whites who just accepted that it was okay to be robbed and mugged and just move on, but the author didn't. Nutter must really be a nutter to consider this insipid piece to be any threat at all.
“It might be anal, but not yet an infringement.”
I believe that Nutter may be preparing people to defend Obama’s new appointee to head the Dept of Labor, the man who refused to prosecute the Black Panthers for voter intimidation in Philadelphia. Obama has been weak on standing up for Blacks so far and we can expect all sorts of actions on the part of his minions to rally up the Blacks to vote in the mid-term elections. Accusations of racism will be the battle cry and Perez was going to take the lead at the Dept of Labor, demanding all sorts of affirmative action policies and going after industry for imaginary racist policies.
While Holder has stated that we (the country) needs to have a conversation on race, he means a scolding lecture.
The only negative comments were made by immigrants (a Russian woman and a Panamanian woman), not by whites born and raised in the U.S.
The New Normal:
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