Free Speech For Wingnuts

by digby

Via Kevin Drum, I see that the CBS News “free speech” segment has some funny ideas about what is permissable and what isn’t. Bill Maher isn’t allowed to talk about religion but some rightwing fundamentalist is allowed to freely share views like this:

This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value.

We teach there are no absolutes, no right or wrong. And I assure you the murder of innocent children is always wrong, including by abortion. Abortion has diminished the value of children.

That’s your liberal media at work.

Don’t get me wrong — I think the guy has the same right to free speech as everyone else. But CBS was nervous about Bill Maher’s commentary which was critical of religion. The fact that they let this man speak, obviously without restriction, while balking at Maher means that CBS’s little exercize in free speech is not just a milquetoast middle of the road program, it is affirmatively asserting that far right views are acceptable while Maher’s are not. This man says that abortion and teaching evolution are causing school shootings. That’s not mainstream.

If I didn’t know better I’d say that Rathergate successfully intimidated the network of Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite into being a rightwing lapdog. How sad.

.