Sunday, July 23, 2006

ACLU Defends Phelps:

Hey, if the Nazis have a right to march in Skokie.... This type of case seems to be the ultimate reductio ad absurdum for free speech.

On a related note, apparently the Phelps's have created commercials for their cause (I can't imagine anyone ever voluntarily selling them airtime). Most of them have been uploaded to YouTube. I guess it's out of morbid curiosity that I find these commercials entertaining. They are so bizarre, you have to wonder if they are serious. Yet, one thing I've learned is that a small fraction of people living on the margins really do believe in comically bizarre things.

Should we take these people seriously? Or should we just mock them?

This one entitled "Thank God for IEDs" is typical.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Way back when, when the ACLU won, and the KKK could march in Stokie, I was positively jubilant. Friends and family thought I lost it (having already lost faith in the ACLU). Likewise, as much as Phelps is an infected pimple on top of an infected sebacious cyst, I could not be happier that the ACLU took his side. The UGLY needs expression, if for no other reason to make the UGLY obvious. If one is already an aesthete, the UGLY is already a forgone conclusion. But if one has no clue to beauty, then UGLINESS is often the only way to show why the infected pimple on top of an infected sebacious cyst, smack in the middle of the anus, with other biological phenomena protruding, and exacerbating the infection, illustrates how UGLY UGLY can be.

Aesthetes have already turned their heads, searching for disinfectants and antibiotics to treat the vulgar disease. But until the disease is evident to the SICK, and the sickness is made manifest and obvious, the aesthetes' actions only conceal an UGLINESS that demands exposure. Concealing the disease only allows it to fester. Exposing the wound to the air is the first step to treatment. I stand with the ACLU in exposing the sickness in order to be healed, even if the patient dies.