Category Archives: Free Speech

Does the First Amendment still protect free speech?

Cronkite School Dean Battinto L. Batts Jr. will join legal scholars Jody David Armour of USC and Eugene Volokh of UCLA, and attorney Jean-Paul Jassy to discuss how to protect free expression while also protecting society from the misuse of that freedom in an event sponsored by Zcalo.

This event will take place at the ASU California Center in Los Angeles and streamed online. The discussion will start at 7 p.m. PST in Los Angeles and 8 p.m. MST in Arizona.

Proof of vaccination (at least two weeks after the final dose) and face coverings will be required for those attending in person. It is recommended attendees have a negative COVID test prior to attending the event. You can find more information here.

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Does the First Amendment still protect free speech? - Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

A bank used by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has chosen to cut ties with him due to fear of risk to its reputation. The Minnesota Bank & Trust terminated its relationship with Lindell after warning they would do so if he didnt voluntarily close his accounts. The pillow tycoon went on Steve Bannons show War Room to discuss the situation. Lindell said, I just got served the papers. Theyre closing my account at Minnesota Bank & Trust, thats Heartland Financial Inc. . . . Well the cowards served this paper on Friday afternoon after the close of business.

They didnt even bother to sign it. Of course, having a bank account, especially at a particular institution is not a legal right and Lindell is not being oppressed here. Conservatives used to argue all the time that private businesses have the right to choose the people with whom they want to do business. But now their talking points have changed so that when a right-winger isnt accommodated to, its all of a suddenly canceled culture and an infringement of free speech.

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War Room #davidpakmanshow Heartland Financial infringement of free speech Mike Lindell Minnesota Bank MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell private businesses Steve Bannon

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Minnesota Bank & Trust Terminated Its Relationship With Mike Lindell - Free Speech TV

Image sourced from The Economic Times.

This article is published under the Opinions Section of The Skidmore News.

In May 2020, when the pandemic was still in its infancy, Spotify paid over $100,000,000 to become the exclusive platform of mixed martial arts commentator Joe Rogans popular Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast. Now, nearly 2 years later, this decision, which received relatively little media coverage at the time, is coming back to bite them. In the interim, Rogan has built a reputation for medical misinformation, promoting unsupported alternative therapies for COVID-19 and telling his audience that they do not need to get vaccinated. He also has come under fire for using his platform to spread hatred toward minorities to his millions of listeners, having repeatedly used anti-Black racial slurs and compared transgender people to satanic ritual abuse.

This controversy came to a head on January 24, 2022, when multi-Platinum certified Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young demanded that Spotify stop distributing Rogan or they would lose access to his own discography. Two days later, all of his music was removed from the site, and in the subsequent days, multiple other artists joined Young in pulling music and podcasts, most notably Joni Mitchell.

The effect was swift. Spotifys market value plummeted more than $4,000,000,000 in the week following the announcement, and many subscribers scrambled to cancel their subscriptions. In an attempt at damage control, Spotify published content guidelines (which still do not seem to affect Rogan) and claimed that they would place content warnings before podcasts discussing COVID-19. Meanwhile, after it was revealed that over 100 episodes of the podcast contained Rogan saying racial slurs, Spotify removed these episodes (though allowed numerous other episodes promoting hate to remain available).

Meanwhile, Rogan has become the latest right wing celebrity to play the victim of cancel culture, with others parading him as a warrior for free speech. However, commentators that reduce this controversy to free speech completely misunderstand the situation. This was never about free speech.

Free speech is one of the most frequently misunderstood topics in US political discourse, so it is important to remember the original definition:

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. -Amendment I, US Constitution

Astute readers will notice that this law does not mention private corporations or platforms. This is because it does not guarantee a right to a platform. The First Amendments only stipulation about speech is that the US government may not restrict it by act of Congress. There is no right to a platform, nor a requirement for any other individual or entity to listen to, support, or amplify ones speech.

Spotify is a private corporation. As such, people are in no way entitled to hosting on Spotify, and Spotify can enforce its own terms of service. The same is true of all streaming services and social media platforms; since these entities are not parts of the US government, the First Amendment does not negate their terms of service and prevent them from controlling what they host on their site.

The issue of freedom of speech is therefore not relevant to whether or not Spotify should host Joe Rogan. If they were to remove his show, his First Amendment rights would not be violated, as the government would not be using any legislative means to restrict his speech. He would still be able to say anything he wants to, he simply would not have a multi-billion-dollar corporation broadcasting his words to millions of listeners every week. Additionally, Spotify paid Rogan over $100,000,000 for the exclusive rights to his podcast. There is no right to being paid for ones speech, either, and while Spotify cannot rescind the money they have given him, they could choose to avoid future deals.

Nor is Neil Youngs protest a violation of any individuals right to freedom of speech. As Young explicitly stated himself, I support free speech. I have never been in favor of censorship. Private companies have the right to choose what they profit from, just as I can choose not to have my music support a platform that disseminates harmful information. Young is also not the government, and in asking Spotify to choose between him and Rogan, he was allowing them as a corporation to make a choice. They chose Rogan, and Young exercised his own choice to remove the music. There is no obligation for Young to keep his music on any platform that he does not support.

As Young said, Spotify can choose whom they promote and profit off of, and they have exercised this choice before. In 2017, after the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Spotify and other streaming services removed many artists who promoted white nationalism and racism, and the mainstream political establishment had no similar outcry about free speech at the time. This is not that different from the situation then, as Rogan has been criticized for repeatedly using racial slurs and for promoting false and hateful ideas about minorities. However, from an optics standpoint, defending Rogan is seen as much more acceptable than defending small racist artists, so the establishment rallies around him.

The public cannot control Spotifys decisions of what artists to platform, and can debate endlessly about whether or not Rogan should be removed from the site, but that is a separate discussion. The author of this piece is of the opinion that he should be removed, due to his promotion of vaccine misinformation and hate. However, framing this as a freedom of speech issue is incorrect from a legal perspective and distracts from actual discourse about the responsibility of corporations, disinformation, and platforming.

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Joe Rogan and Spotify: It Isn't About Free Speech The Skidmore News - Skidmore News

The Conservative Party Chair and Minister without Portfolio, Oliver Dowden, made headlines on Tuesday after a speech at the Washington-based Conservative thinktank the Heritage Foundation. In his speech Dowden lambasted woke ideology, berated cancel culture and even argued that these concepts constitute a new brand of modern Maoism.

Despite this sabre rattling, it is clear that this is not an administration that cares about free speech. While Dowden uses the language of cancel culture to defend a free society, the government is fast finalising plans for a censors charter which Dowden himself helped craft during his time as Culture Secretary. The Online Safety Bill, as it is formally known, promises to be one of the most damaging pieces of legislation to free speech in the UK in living memory.

This Bill as currently drafted gives express state-backing to social media censorship and specifically targets lawful expression in a way that will do untold damage to free speech in Britain. Plans to tackle lawful speech free speech to you and me that the government believes to be harmful could include statements that risk, even indirectly, an adverse psychological impact. This is such an absurdly broad definition that it would encapsulate even the mildest bit of speech. Worse still, the Bill hands the government of the day sweeping powers to create a list of speech categories which it believes could be harmful, in a brazen attempt to strengthen executive power over online discourse.

Rather than rein in the big tech titans the legislation will strengthen their hand and actually entrench some of Silicon Valleys most nonsensical rules. These could include an absurd Facebook policy which has seen womens posts removed for saying that men are idiots under the guise of hate speech and Twitters censorious rules which have seen individuals of all persuasions removed from the platform for using the widely used terms cis and Terf when discussing trans rights. Under the Online Safety Bill, all of this Big Tech interference would become state-backed.

Far from being great protectors of free speech, this governments new Bill will stymie sensitive discussions on identity issues altogether. If Conservative MPs truly want to protect free speech, they should be demanding that the government entirely remove this notion of legal but harmful speech from its proposed legislation.

All the more worrying is that this seems to be another piece of anti-free speech law from a government which talks the talk when it comes to freedom of expression but legislates to stifle dissent at every turn. We are now weeks away from the passing of legislation which will make it materially harder to protest in the UK. Newly proposed measures in the governments policing Bill will give officers the power to curtail protests where they are considered to be too noisy. This should be any libertarians nightmare. The policing Bill fundamentally empowers the state at the expense of the individual, opens the policing of protests up to politicisation and will fundamentally stifle the expression of citizens on Britains streets. If Conservative MPs want to protect free speech and freedom of assembly then they must act quickly.

Concerns about so-called cancel culture are not unfounded. It is clear that liberal societies are going through a period of intolerance when it comes to accepting diverging and unorthodox views. At times this amounts to deliberate attempts at censorship, stifling alternative perspectives and even the ruination of individuals. Yet the acceptance of this intolerance as a problem means nothing from a government which is intent on making it harder for people to have their voices heard both online and in the streets.

Free speech is the bedrock of our democracy. The rights of people to be able to speak and consequentially think freely are paramount to human flourishing and development. That is why all of this matters so much. There is little doubt that societal intolerance is a problem in many Western nations in 2022 but political intolerance is too, and the spectre of state censorship is fast coming down the track. If the government wants to show a true commitment to protecting freedom of speech, it must demonstrate this where it matters in the coming weeks. The preservation of the free society that Oliver Dowden describes may depend on it.

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Do the Conservatives really care about free speech? - Spectator.co.uk

The Online Safety Bill will attempt to protect users from content that while legal would be harmful

GETTY IMAGES

Next month the government is to present to parliament the Online Safety Bill, which ministers claim will bring a new age of accountability for tech and make Britain one of the safest countries in the world for online and social media communication. So far so good, but the boasts may be premature. In the attempt to tackle pornography, criminality, the promotion of suicide and other obvious obscenities rampant on social media, the bill invents a new category titled legal but harmful. The implications, which even a former journalist such as the prime minister appears not to have seen, are worrying. Could they give the censors in Silicon Valley power to remove anything that might land them with a massive fine? That would enshrine the

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The Times view on social media safety and free speech: Legal but Harmful - The Times

New guidance on 'political impartiality' has been criticised for seeking to chill discussion of political subjects.

On February 17, the UK government released a report on Political Impartiality in Schools. The document effectively tells teachers how they should talk about sensitive issues in the classroom in a politically impartial way.

Leaving aside the fact that it is not possible to be politically impartial, the guidance has some disturbing aspects which seek to neuter teachers and suppress real discussion about topics like the British Empire, Black Lives Matter, and the Israel-Palestine conflict.

The governments former mental health champion, Natasha Devon, likened the new rules to Section 28, which banned the promotion of homosexuality by teachers. She told The Guardian that the rules will harm minority students by taking away their space to explore issues like race and social justice.

Schools Minister Nadhim Zahahawi says in the report that parents and carers want to be sure that their children can learn about political issues and begin to form their own independent opinions, without being influenced by the personal views of those teaching them.

The document reminds teachers of their legal duty to be impartial. The law prohibits the promotion of partisan political views and says teachers should take steps to ensure the balanced presentation of opposing views. Partisan views are those which seek to further the interests of a particular partisan group, change the law or change government policy.

This leads to some strange ideas about what is political. For example, while teaching that climate change is caused by human activity is not political, offering solutions to this issue is.

Even more bizarrely, when teaching about humanitarian crises, one of the two options that should be on the table in the interests of balance is British military intervention. The assumption here that Britain just regularly does military interventions to prevent humanitarian crises is truly odd and, I would say, not impartial.

The report also singles out the Black Lives Matter movement, saying Where schools wish to teach about specific campaigning organisations, such as some of those associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, they should be aware that this may cover partisan political views. These are views which go beyond the basic shared principle that racism is unacceptable, which is a view schools should reinforce. Examples of such partisan political views include advocating specific views on how government resources should be used to address social issues, including withdrawing funding from the police.

Teachers unions told The Guardian that the rules were confusing and would discourage teachers from addressing sensitive political topics. The guidance was however welcomed by some Gender Critical campaigners, who want teachers to have to put forward their views on trans rights as well as those of LGBT+ organisations.

This new guidance seems to form part of a general desire by the culture war wing of the Conservative Party to intervene in the education system because they perceive some teachers to be too ideological. Last week, right wing media attacked Welbeck Primary School in Nottingham who showed students a report about the Partygate scandal and asked them to write a letter about it.

The school was accused of indoctrinating pupils by showing them a news report, with unsubstantiated claims that the pupils had been told to write a critical letter to the government. Nadhim Zahawi said the school was encouraging young people to pin their colours to a political mast.

Beware of Tories bearing gifts

The government is also proposing the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill, which aims to stop no-platforming and allow academics to promote controversial views without consequences for their careers. Chloe Harris of Withers law firm says that, Freedom of speech is defined by the Bill as including freedom to express ideas, beliefs and views without suffering adverse consequences. The extent of what constitutes an adverse consequence is not defined. If interpreted as a low bar, this could include criticism.

The Tories have form in trying to intervene in the education system to promote their agenda. The recent release of a podcast about the 2014 Trojan Horse Affair shed light on how the government used a personal dispute in Birmingham schools to push its Islamophobic counterterrorism strategy. The incident came directly before the launch of the Prevent strategy which gave schools a legal responsibility to have due regard to the need to prevent people from being drawn into terrorism.

Just as in the Trojan Horse Affair, Zahawi has now been asked to conduct a probe into Welbeck Primary School, thereby translating a moral panic cooked up by right wing media interests into political capital it can use to justify attacks on educational institutions.

Last week, LFF covered Oliver Dowdens speech at right wing US think tank the Heritage Foundation. Heritage have been one of the main proponents of the right wing moral panic about Critical Race Theory (CRT), an academic critique of racial power relations. Heritage and other right wing institutions have pushed the idea that teachers are using CRT to indoctrinate students into left wing political attitudes.

It seems that this form of culture war, which has led to the banning of some books in US schools, is now also being imported into the UK. The irony is that while right wingers claim to be in favour of freedom of speech, rules on political impartiality risk having the opposite effect, and stifling discussion of important political topics.

John Lubbock leads on the Right-Watch project at Left Foot Forward

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New government rules on 'political impartiality' in schools will chill free speech - Left Foot Forward

Friday, 18 February 2022, 3:18 pmOpinion: Free Speech Union

The Free Speech Union has launched a petition calling onParliament to remove Trevor Mallard as Speaker of the Housefollowing his unacceptable interferences with press freedomduring the Convoy 2022 protest. (Link to the petition: http://www.mallardmustgo.nz)

TrevorMallards conduct during the protest has degraded theoffice he occupies. His instruction to journalists not toengage with protestors shows a disdain for fundamentaldemocratic principles, says Free Speech Unionspokesperson, Jonathan Ayling.

The Press Galleryliterally exists to report on parliamentary news and events.Dictating to them how they may report on a story is anunacceptable restriction on press freedom which has acritical role in our democracy, now more than ever. Freedomof the press is founded on free speech, and it protects ourbasic liberties by giving us access to credibleinformation.

"It was especially alarming to hearthe Speaker made the Press Gallery Chair relay to BarrySoper that there would be consequences if he continuedto ignore his instruction - that is to say, if he continuedto do his job as a member of the free and independentmedia.

"Similar comments by a Minister at anothertime would rightly result in the Prime Minister demandingtheir resignation. The Speakers disdain for democracy ispalpable. Only his removal can restore dignity to hisoffice.

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Petition Launched By Free Speech Union Calling On Parliament To Remove Mallard As Speaker | Scoop News - Scoop

Once again, some among us are falsely interpreting the intent of the Constitutions guarantee of freedom of speech.

The Supreme Court has already ruled that falsely yelling Fire! in a crowded place is not protected. So its obvious that constitutional scholars using common sense can interpret the intended limits of acceptable, responsible and democratic freedom of speech, ensuring the safety and well-being of all.

The premise that just one tiny pushback to one persons free speech will lead to an autocratic state is bogus. Without limits to untruthful, unscientific and noninclusive lies, a democratic nation plunges toward disaster. To begin: Define ethics parameters for all persons who are in elected office (local to national); all running for elected office, and radio, TV, phone and internet businesses.

This would not squelch free speech. It would demand that any person or business would have to support any statement with verifiable evidence at the time of presentation. This would allow another to seek legal recourse if misinformation is intentionally spoken or allowed that could result in the loss of safety or well-being of others. It would encourage free speech from real Americans and guard against those who spew words without any regard of truth. If we are to remain free, stop the few who are stealing our freedoms using words of hate, division and lies.

Unless you choose to talk to yourself, your speech must always safeguard the security and all the constitutional rights of others.

Jim StorerWestbrook

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Letter to the editor: Unchecked free speech can destroy freedom - pressherald.com

Iconoclast: Joe Rogan Saves Free Speech

They can have Rogan or Young. Not both. That ultimatum from singing legend Neil Young to Spotify had a justifiable sense of certainty, quips The Hills Jonathan Turley. Spotify stuck with Rogan, and perhaps more importantly, free speech. But the choice between Rogans 11 million listeners or an aging rocker was economically clear. Spotifys music side isnt raking in much profit; Rogan and podcasts are a cash machine, with revenue up a staggering 627 percent. This is good news for free speech. Normally, companies see no profit in defending dissenting viewpoints. Now, for the first time, the economics may have actually worked against censorship and for free speech.

Libertarian: Public Health Camouflage

The pandemic era, argues Reasons Peter Suderman, has revealed a tendency to use public health as a pretext for some other goal that has little or nothing to do with public health. Neil Youngs fight with Spotify and New Yorks battle over to-go cocktails are both over non-COVID issues. Liquor-store lobbyists worked heavily against extending the [to -go cocktail] policy for selfish reasons but claim its a public-health issue. Young cited Joe Rogans chats with vax-deniers, but he took his music down from all streaming services in 2015, complaining that low-quality streaming devalued his music. Both used the totalizing emergency of the pandemic to cast their moves as pure and selfless when the reality is anything but.

Conservative: Dems To Pay for Border Bungles

The Biden administration doesnt seem much interested in the havoc on our southern border, notes Jason L. Riley at The Wall Street Journal, yet its worsening, and Republicans will make it a campaign theme for the midterms. People have seen record levels of illicit crossing, overflowing detention centers and, more recently, video footage of illegal immigrants being ferried (in the dead of night) across the country with disastrous results. Immigrants respond to incentives, and Dems have encouraged them to try their luck. President Donald Trumps rhetoric was often over-the-top, but his point (Americans should get to decide who comes here) resonated. Team Bidens failure to grasp this could cost Democrats dearly in November.

Foreign desk: Xi Must Win Olympics

If Chinese President Xi Jinping wants to stay in power to achieve his goal of being Dictator for Life he needs to win the 2022 Winter Games, asserts Gordon G. Chang at Newsweek. Xi seeks a precedent-breaking third term as general secretary of the Communist Party instead of following recent custom and retiring. That would batter the power of the party, which since the 1980s worked to establish rules, customs and guidelines to limit leaders, the result of elite horror at the near-absolute power of Mao Zedong. The partys next National Congress, likely this fall, will decide Xis fate. So Xi, whos personally supervising the Olympics, needs no scandals, no terrorism, no visible protests about Uyghurs or other issues. And most of all, given Chinas role in unleashing the global pandemic, it means Xis zero COVID strategy must work.

Analyst: Mike Pences Moment

Ex-prez Donald Trumps insistence that he won the 2020 election remains a serious problem for Republicans nationwide, explains Henry Olsen at The Washington Post. Candidates cant ignore him, so the GOP could be saddled with a large number of 2020 truthers in the midterms. And while the emperor has no clothes, it takes someone with the courage to say it out loud to break the spell. Ex-veep Mike Pence is the perfect person to do this, as the vast majority of Republicans and GOP officeholders respect him. And since hes now under direct attack from Trump, he is also the natural person to rebut Trumps false claims. He really only has two choices: Shrink into private life entirely or someday meet his fate as the man with the conviction and stature needed to engage with Trump in this battle.

Compiled by The Post Editorial Board

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Joe Rogan saved free speech and other commentary - New York Post

In 1985, at the height of popularity for the faddish baby dolls, the Cabbage Patch Kids, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman debuted a subversive line of trading cards, the Garbage Pail Kids.

Featuring viscerally queasy drawings of, say, a mushroom cloud detonating from the roof of a cheery toddlers skull, or a Raggedy Ann facsimile barfing up dinner into a pot, the Garbage Pail Kids were a sensation among edgy preteens all over the world. They were also swiftly banned in a slew of schools. To this day, Mexico has a law restricting the import and export of Garbage Pail Kids material.

You know how Joe Manchin is a thorn in our side? Spiegelman asked in a phone interview this week. His uncle, A Jamie Manchin, was the state treasurer of West Virginia in the 80s. He said that Garbage Pail Kids should be banned because theyre subverting children. It runs in his family.

It reminds me that things keep changing, but were still dealing with permutations of the same struggles.

The latest permutation came last week, when the McMinn county board of education in Tennessee voted to remove Spiegelmans 1991 Holocaust memoir, Maus, from its middle-school curriculum. Though the board cited the graphic novels use of non-sexual nudity and light profanity in defending its decision, the ban is part of a wave of scholastic censorship in the US, largely led by an agitated conservative movement and targeting books that deal with racism or LGBTQ issues.

But the author of the Pulitzer prizewinning graphic novel, which tells the story of his parents experience as Polish Jews during the Holocaust, traces his own free speech radicalism to a very different inflection point in Americas censorship wars. As a teenager, Spiegelman found himself siding with the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a town with a significant population of Holocaust survivors.

The ACLU lost a lot of members because they defended their right to march, he said. And I just thought that seemed right. Let them march, and if theres any more trouble, stop them. I thought that was a conversation that had to take place.

It shaped me.

Born in Sweden after his parents were liberated from Auschwitz, Spiegelman grew up in Queens, New York, and began cartooning before he reached high school. He was a fixture of the 70s Bay Area underground comix scene, rubbing shoulders with world-renowned provocateurs like Robert Crumb and Gilbert Shelton. The work that birthed from that era was truly brazen depicting drugs, violence and sex, with a thirsty anticipation for backlash.

Spiegelman says that he and his peers drew much of their rage from the rampant censorship campaign that targeted the comics industry in the 1950s a time when, due to federal pressure, publishing houses instituted the Comics Code, which repressed even the teensiest adversarial tone in the work of mainstream cartoonists.

There were literally parents and clergymen gathering comic books from kids and burning them in bonfires, he said. We as cartoonists of that generation loved the salacious, raucous, uninhibited expression of id. We wanted to topple every article of the Comics Code if we could.

He began to publish the deeply personal Maus as a serialized comic in 1980 in Raw, an annual comics anthology he edited with his wife, Franoise Mouly. But Spiegelman maintained a fascination with both high and low culture, leading him to pursue projects like the Garbage Pail Kids.

Spiegelman hasnt exclusively rankled political conservatives. In 1993, in the aftermath of the Crown Heights riots, he drew a cover for the New Yorker that featured a Hasidic man and a Black woman bonded by a passionate kiss. The imagery ruffled feathers, even within traditionally liberal enclaves. Spiegelman recalls one baffling criticism from a member of the New Yorker editorial staff, who believed that his cover depicted a Hasidic man hiring an escort. (That clearly was not the case.)

A decade later, in 2002, Spiegelman struggled to find a domestic home for his 9/11-themed anthology of comics called In the Shadow of No Towers. Eventually he was forced to take it overseas to the German newspaper Die Zeit, due to what Spiegelman believes was the frothing jingoism that gripped the country after the attack.

It was saying the unsayable. Theres one big panel in the second or third installment of In The Shadow of No Towers where Im trying to take a nap at my drawing table. Osama bin Laden is on my left with a scimitar, while George W Bush is on my right with a gun to my head, he says. I think one of the people at the New Yorker said that I was crazy, that I was talking about those two things as equal threats. When that got back to me I said, No, youre right. America is a much larger threat.

Now Spiegelman is gearing up for the same war hes been fighting since he first started drawing cartoons more than 50 years ago. The characters and context have changed, but his core ethics have not. In fact, the more I talked to Spiegelman, the more I got the sense that the Maus censorship has shaken him more than any of his previous brushes against authority. When you consider the many years children have turned to the book to better understand the Holocaust, its not hard to understand why.

Still, the current controversy has also neatly illustrated one of the foundational principles of the publishing industry: nothing drives up interest in a book faster than a misguided prohibition. Maus is topping bestsellers lists across the country, as readers everywhere clamor to see what the fuss is about.

You know how they publish book galleys before books are published? On the back of them it says, Published April 3 and a list of things thats being done to publicize the book? I see a future where it says, Published April 3, banned May 12, Spiegelman said. That would be the end date of anything they need to do to publicize the book.

I hope that dawning reality adds some clarity to the culture war, which is why its reassuring to watch Maus blast off to the top of the sales charts. The conceit that the left consists exclusively of nosy schoolmarms, while the right is united in first amendment patriotism, has surely been rendered counterfeit by now.

This week has been like, Well, whos the snowflake now? said Spiegelman. Lets keep those words in mind.

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Art Spiegelman on Maus and free speech: Whos the snowflake now? - The Guardian