re: #159 Anymouse 🌹🏡😷

An example might be the wingnut who was yelling “white power” in a Costco recently, followed by the Twitterati identifying who she was and demanding she be fired.

Someone seeing that has just as much right to complain about it as she did to say it.

What the Harper’s letter argues is those who were offended by the very public display do not have a right to express their displeasure. The employer on receiving these complaints does not have a right to protect his or her business from what might become a First Amendment protected boycott because an employee makes the business look bad.

The employer also has the right to ignore those letters and let the chips fall where they may.

The letter’s thrust is that FOX News’s White Power Barbie and Nazi Fish Stick King can say whatever they want, but people who are offended by that (and people who are targets of it) may not write to advertisers and use the only power they have, the power of their purse, to tell the advertiser that their adverts constitute tacit approval of such speech and as such they’ll shop somewhere else.

The writers want freedom from consequences, not freedom of speech. They aren’t arguing on behalf of a powerless person who is harassed, they are arguing for their own speech to be unassailable.