Tools of the trade

"First Amendment inscription" by Robin Klein - Own work.
Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia

This is how this will play out: The Interview is shelved for Christmas release due to "terroristic threats" and "concern over everyone's safety."

Within three months, it will be released to theaters "due to popular demand" and everyone's 1st Amendment "right to free speech"--but, really, because it's likely to have a better opening weekend in the dead of winter and because more buzz has been created around it. ("The movie that Kim Jung-Un didn't want you to see!")

Really, folks, this is how capitalism works. It's the cockroach of economic systems.

So everyone please stop being such tools of the entertainment trade, fools of the Hollywood machine. Seth Grogen does not care about Americans' right to free speech. Ferchrissakes, he's Canadian for one thing.

For another, I keep remembering how he blasted that probably douchebaggic Macklemore for his alleged anti-Semitic costume at a concert in Seattle a couple of years ago. Someone who supports free speech at any cost would surely support the free speech of a LGBT-loving, 9/11-truthing, possible-Jewish-stereotype-baiting rapper, wouldn't he? After all, free speech . . . .

And for yet another, he's one of the Nerdpack, another hack-tor in the current series of nebbishy guys starring in dumb-guy comedies. His motivation may in part be free speech, but I'm willing to wager that it is also more money and more fame.

Does anyone care about the quality of free speech? I mean, are we really willing to go to bat or to war for "poor" Sony Pictures and a ridiculous movie with a tacky premise--the murder of a sitting head of state?

How would we react if someone made a movie about killing our head of state? The Queen of England? The prime minister of Australia or Canada? The president of Brazil or Nigeria? Or 130 schoolchildren in Pakistan?

Oh, don't worry, I'm not feeling sorry for that Thug-in-Chief of North Korea. Not in the least. But as much as I want to preserve free speech, I have to question the idea of free speech at any cost, of free speech without responsibility. Surely I want new ideas and provocative ideas to be expressed and shared. However, sometimes common sense and better taste might cause one to think before one speaks--or makes a movie or dons a costume or shows one's butt to the universe with a wack opinion about 9/11 or Jews or Muslims or anyone else for that matter.

We obviously need free speech to make us aware of the torture our government agency's practice. But do we need free speech to make a company a lot of money and to raise Seth Rogen's and James Franco's profile? I'm sure I'm seeming and possibly being short-sighted--I can't stand either of them, along with George Clooney as well--and I'm sure I'm just being curmudgeonly. It's what I do.

But, feh, call me when everyone starts to talk seriously about torture, 130 schoolchildren being murdered in Pakistan, hostage-takings in Australia, repression in North Korea, our support of allegedly Communist China but our 50-year non-support of Communist Cuba, and man's ongoing abuse of man, animal, and the planet.

That's free speech I can get fired up about.