Oklahoma frat fallout: Some speech protected, some punished

[WestVirginiaRebel]

McClatchy:

WASHINGTON — Three times in in recent days, people uttering slurs against African-Americans were quickly punished.

 

Yet such consequences are hardly automatic. Insults aimed at Muslims, Latinos, Jews, women and others are routinely decried but also often defended as free speech. A congressman says something derogatory about immigrants, yet remains a power in politics. An activist-preacher slurs Jews and is later an adviser to a president.

 

Some offensive speech is punished. Some is protected. The line changes, and shifts over time.

 

The latest furor was triggered by a video showing University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity members singing, “You can hang them from a tree but they’ll never sign with me. There’ll never be a n----- at SAE.”

 

A few days later, Univision fired talk show host Rodner Figueroa for saying first lady Michelle Obama looked like a cast member of “Planet of the Apes.” Last week, a Cleveland anchorwoman returned to the air after being suspended for using a term offensive to African-Americans.

 

Where, asked some experts, was their right to speak freely?

 

When terrorists killed French journalists who satirized Muslims, President Barack Obama led the Western chorus defending “a universal belief in the freedom of expression . . . that can’t be silenced because of the senseless violence of the few.”

 

Yet speech often is silenced, or at least punished.

________

 

When some speech is more equal than others.