Days later and establishment media types are still struggling to define the Garland shooting at Sunday’s “draw Muhammad” event.
CNN anchor Chris Cuomo, son of late New Governor Mario Cuomo, waded into the free speech pool today. Needless to say the ill-fated soirée was short-lived.
Whilst debating the merits of the first amendment, Cuomo fired off this misinformed statement:
Well, I’ve read the Constitution and I’m pretty sure no where in the first amendment or elsewhere is “hate speech” excluded from protection. “Hate speech” of course being the term progressives toss around any time words or phrases offend their delicate sensibilities or confront their requisite acquiescence to what Tom Wolff describes as, radical chic.
Thankfully, the Free Beacon’s Sonny Bunch was there to clear up the misunderstanding:
But where? WHERE in this make believe Constitution is “hate speech” unprotected?! the informed public asked.
Oh… right… Chaplinsky vs. New Hampshire? Wait, what?
But then Cuomo kept going…
And going…
The Chaplinsky Test. Well, why didn’t someone tell us sooner!
Probably because Chaplinsky isn’t a detriment to free speech. The skinny on Chaplinksy vs. New Hampshire is pretty straightforward:
Chaplinsky, a Jehovah’s Witness, called a city marshal a “God-damned racketeer” and “a damned fascist” in a public place. He was arrested and convicted under a state law for violating a breach of the peace.Does the application of the statute violate Chaplinsky’s freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment? No. Some forms of expression–among them obscenity and fighting words–do not convey ideas and thus are not subject to First Amendment protection. In this case, Chaplinsky uttered fighting words, i.e., words that “inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”
And then the backpedalling began:
Dogma prevents the Cuomo’s of the world from admitting that the abject hatred which propels a would-be jihadi to attempt murder over a cartoon is pretty jacked up. There must exist a reason for the behavior, and that reason, at least in the instance of the Garland shootings, is certainly provocation by the culturally insensitive. And so the Cuomo’s of the world in turn, become terrorist apologists.
When the politically correct mob comes a knocking for the “there’s a fine line between free speech and provoking people” crowd (and no one is immune), maybe then they’ll understand. Maybe.
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