Wildly-Overpaid Teevee Opinion Man Does Not Understand How Free Speech Works

For a man who is paid (at last report) $77K a week, every week, to spout inane Conservative bullshit on MSNBC three hours a day, every day, Joey Joe Joe Junior Scarborough clearly has no fucking idea how this "free speech" thing works.

Liberal leaders should explain how shutting down free speech by protest or violence is illiberal and shortsighted. https://t.co/t3mE1gvd3H

— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) September 20, 2017

Well, as leader of all liberal activities in Casablanca, I am an influential and respected man.  So allow me to explain.

Slowly.

So even Joey can understand.

First, "free speech" is indeed a cardinal American value.   A pillar of our democracy, so important that we enshrined it in the very first amendment to our Constitution.  So important we even tolerate it being abused to the point where clowns like Joe Scarborough are paid vast sums of money to spout inane Conservative bullshit on MSNBC three hours a day, every day.  Because that's how we roll here in the U S of A.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

But the thing is, Congress has made no law abridging the freedom of speech of skinheads or Nazis or even basic meatheads like Joe so no ones actual free speech rights are being trampled on in any way that the Constitution would recognize as unconstitutional.

Second, protest is speech you fucking idiot.

Remember these assholes, Joe?  Bulldozing their way through town halls?  Shouting down anyone who didn't agree that Barack Obama was a dirty, dirty Kenyan commie who was going to take away your tiny penis compensators and  kill your sainted white granny with Death Panels?

Packing public parks, shrieking about the blood of tyrants...

...threatening "Second Amendment solutions"* if their unhinged paranoid claptrap wasn't taken seriously?

Funny, but I can't seem to find a single column by Joe Scarborough during the rise of the Fake Tea Party in which he gets up on his hind legs about their shoutycracker tactics.  

Instead I found this:

The truth about the tea party

By JOE SCARBOROUGH 10/21/2012 12:57 PM EDT

...let’s not get bogged down by history. Instead, we can blow apart this fanciful meme by reviewing the tea party’s short history. Let’s simply review how terrible the tea party has been for the GOP.

— They energized a conservative movement battered by eight years of bloated Republicanism,

— they shocked the political world by taking Ted Kennedy’s seat,

— they put Obama Democrats in a constant defensive crouch,

— they led the resistance against “Obamacare,”

— they helped bring about the largest legislative landslide in U.S. history in 2010,

— they grabbed six seats in the U.S. Senate that year,

— they helped elect six governors,

— they helped win 700 seats in state legislatures, and

— they helped elect a Republican majority that included the largest number of Republicans elected since 1946.

With a track record like that, the Republican Party had better watch their backs. If this trend keeps up, they might just win the White House and the Senate.

Regardless of what happens in the next few weeks, the general theme that the tea party has been bad for the GOP is pure malarkey.

Finally, and burying the Ridiculousness Needle in the red, considering that the Right has their own teevee network (Fox), and another teevee network  (Sinclair), and their own religion with its own megachurches and media platforms, and half of MSNBC and half of CNN, more than half of the seats on every god damn panel on every god damn Sunday show (which are then padded out with Conservative enablers known in the business as "Cillizzae"), half the op-ed pages in major American newspapers, their own book publishing houses, their own magazines,  god-knows how many think-tanks, foundations, white-paper generators, advocacy groups and myriad wingnut welfare funded websites...

...and their own stable of crackpot plutocrat billionaires footing the bill for any little thing their fascist movement might need...

...and they control the White House, Congress and the Supreme Court...

...and you can't turn on terrestrial radio anywhere in America without Rush or Sean or Laura or Mark or The Lesser Reagan puking out toxic Conservative hatespeech 24/7/365...

... tell me Joe, how exactly is Conservative speech under dire threat by a few universities that choose not to give platforms to a few fucking Nazis, or by protesters raising their voices loud enough to momentarily drown out the tidal wave of poisonous Conservative bile in which we are drowning? 

Behold, a Tip Jar!

*Thank you for the catch.  I wrote this at ramming speed and with no rear-view mirror :-)