While many alt weeklies around the country have cutting back staff and sliding towards irrelevance even before, the Boston Phoenix, bucks the trend. Their cover this week is their 11th annual “Muzzle awards”, exposing New England’s worst offenders when it comes to attacking the First Amendment. If this type of stuff goes on in and around Mass., the only state in the union that voted against Nixon and for McGovern in 1972, and home of lefty, elitist universities, what is going on in the rest of the country? Here’s Dan Kennedy’s cover story:
Freedom of expression may be guaranteed by the Constitution. But it’s an idea we have to fight for every day.
The great civil libertarian Nat Hentoff once said that our sex drive pales in comparison with out urge to censor. It’s an urge that is played out in places high and low, encompassing both the serious and the absurd. Military veterans protesting the war are arrested in Boston and charged with disturbing the peace. An anti-bortion activist in Maine borrows sex-education books from public libraries and refuses to return them. A legislative leader in Rhode Island– the head of John McCain’s presidential campaign in that state– compares anonymous critics to `terrorists,’ and helps kill a proposal aimed at guaranteeing their First Amendment rights.
The whole story can be read here.
This blog sends a shout-out to Priscilla, Matt, and Pete from Somerville, Mass. We will pander to try and get a few more readers. When we blog from Scranton, we talk about shooting up the backyard and woking in the ol’ lace factory, and when we blog from San Francisco, we write about how people from Scranton cling to their guns and churches….
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