On Larry King last night, Dr. Laura Schlessinger said she was leaving her radio show to regain her First Amendment rights. "I want to be able to say what's on my mind and in my heart and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry, some special interest group deciding this is the time to silence a voice of dissent and attack affiliates, attack sponsors. I'm sort of done with that," she said.
She's referring, of course, to the racist rant in which she said the N-word 11 times but, as Jamelle pointed out, that was the least racist thing about what she said. She berated a black caller who was a victim of racism and told her she was being sensitive. It's a resentful, racist invective, and she was rightly criticized for it.
That's where Joan Walsh at Salon makes the same point I made during the outcry over the Harvard Law Student who e-mailed her peers to ponder whether African Americans might actually be genetically inferior: People clearly have no idea what their First Amendment rights are. Schlessinger can say just about anything she wants to say, but she doesn't have a right not to be criticized for it. Moreover, she has no constitutional right to a radio show; that's entirely up to the people who pay her salary.
On a disturbing side note, CNN has a poll connected to the story asking readers whether they think there is a "racial double standard." "Is it ok for people to make racial slurs if they are part of that racial group?" The poll isn't closed yet but, so far, the results are close: 49 percent say yes and 52 percent say no. During Schlessinger's rant, she used the "black people say it, so why can't I" defense for the racial slur she used. It's evidence of the same sort of misplaced resentment we've seen too often lately, the idea that black people are getting something that white people are missing out on. The question is vague enough that it's hard to tell whether all the "yes" votes carry that same resentment or are simply observing social norms, but, either way, it's the type of beside-the-point discussion on race people are overeager to engage in.
-- Monica Potts
