Note: Instead of writing a brand new argument to answer a right-wing, white boy-whine about what I wrote here recently, I'm revising and extending a criticism I made of one of the MSNBC lawyer-talking heads a number of months back. I believe I linked to the Youtube of Ari Melber's commentary when I first posted this but I'm not going to go searching for it again, right now.
ONE OF THESE THINGS is not like the other, and if The Law pretends it's too stupid to navigate that difference, the worst of those things wins. And ours does pretend that.
Of course I agree with Ari Melber that the Tennessee drag show ban is wrong and should be overturned as an infringement on something, though I think calling what we choose to wear in public or on stage "speech" is, frankly, stupid and quite dangerous. I say that even though I've seen a lot of drag acts that are extremely offensive and some that were innocuous fun and a very few which were clever. Like all kinds of show-biz, it's about 98% crap for 2% good, though drag, like stand up, doesn't reach that high a mark nearly one percent of the time. If earlier Supreme Court "liberals" felt they had to extend rights to dress or undress in bad taste in public (considering what they wear to work, you might not be surprised if some might) they shouldn't have been so stupid as to call that "speech," opening us up to the flood of media lies which were launched by those with money, and so power, to corrupt American democracy into suicide.
Democracy has suffered dearly for Supreme Court "justices" wanting to set up legal landmarks so as to make the world safe for those who didn't want strippers to wear pasties and g-strings in Boston. The danger of calling it "speech" and involving the First Amendment with such issues is that later Supreme Courts used such an distortion of meaning to call dirty campaign cash "speech" thus giving millionaires and billionaires and corporations billions of times more such "speech" and so political power than people without millions and billions of dollars resulting in some of the worst political corruption today. It is remarkable how devoted the Rehnquist and Roberts Courts have been to that distorted "liberal" precedent even as they overturn what is truly important, like Women owning their own bodies, the rights of People of Color to vote. There's a reason for that and that's the use they can make of such "First Amendment" tripe in the likes of Buckley v. Valeo and Citizens United, overturning the clean-elections laws passed in a bi-partisan Congress after the crimes of Nixon and his campaign were exposed. The role of "free speech" in that legal permission to the worst of dirty politics, with the full participation of the "civil liberties" industry, foremost the ACLU is a history that few dare to tell, such truth-telling is not permitted under our freest-speechiest-press. That such media is corporate is certainly entirely relevant to that reality.
The results are today when J.D. Vance, the vice presidential candidate of the Republican-fascist Party and an almost certain president if the elderly, demented, obese, drug guzzling Trump is reinstalled, is Peter Thiel's bitch in pretty much the same way that Trump is Vladimir Putin's bitch through further and ever worse extensions of that line of judicial distortion on behalf of political corruption due to that original seemingly innocuous First Amendment dishonesty about the meaning of words. John Roberts and his Republican-fascist colleagues were warned they were opening up our politics to intervention by foreign dictators and they did it with open eyes knowing it was their party which would benefit from that. All of them are Elon Musk's bitches, through his "free money-speech" attempt to buy the presidency for Republican-fascism and American apartheid.
It would have been less dangerous if the Warren Court came up with some other excuse to allow naughty books to be distributed and dirty dancing on stage to be done. If there's one thing that's clear about past Supreme Court "liberals" it is that they have no clue as to how dishonest and rotten their oligarchy serving brethren are and always have been. If there is one part of the federal government of which we absolutely need a cold and honest telling of the truth about, it is the courts and, most of all, that foremost venue of corruption, wielding the ultimate filibuster against honesty in law and government and equality before the law, the Supreme Court. Liberals are the most in need of a knowledge of that corruption being the reality of its history instead of Anthony Lewis, amber tinted romance. Until then we are their chumps.
I disagree with Melber's contention that what it's about being a mere demonstration of power by Republican-fascists in a state where their hold on power is probably as secure as it can get due to the remaining power of our most dangerous forms of fascism, white supremacy and male supremacy. It has nothing to do with the mere power to enforce the law, I think even the Republican-fascist majority on the Supreme Court might strike it down if it's ever enforced, maybe even the Tennessee Supreme Court would. By the way, it has nothing to do with "hillbillies," There are plenty of poor-white People (not to mention Black People) who live in Appalachia who have a far clearer view of J. D. Vance's self-promoting use of stigmatizing stereotypes of them than prep-Ivy League idiots who control the publishing and media industries and show-biz. What is wrong in those places is what's wrong everywhere, urban as well as rural, too many people being suckered by such crap. Our bigotries are the worst weakness of liberal democracy, the reason that egalitarian democracy is the only secure form of democracy.
What it's about is appealing to Republican-fascist and other anti-LGBTQ+ bigots among voters, it's a piece of legal agitprop to encourage them to give campaign money to and voting for bigots, both those running for office and those others who rope in, mainly, cabloid TV watching elders who probably shouldn't have a credit card and an internet hookup without competent guardianship. It is a stunt-law which has nothing to do with much else. It's to gull them into voting Republican-fascists into office. It's like the idiots in the House who Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson put on important committees wasting time by trying to provoke Democrats into voting against saying the pledge of allegiance. Of course, in that case Democrats could reliably be counted on to vote for saying the meaningless thing. Meaningless because it's certainly never led to a Republican-fascist not giving their allegiance to Putin, billionaires, the fascist dictator of Hungary . . . even as they screw the United States. And for the ACLU and play-lefties to get their pinafores all twisted up over it, which is mostly about fund raising among another class of gullible people. The play-left are the biggest suckers in the world for allowing themselves to get fixated on self-defeating entirely symbolic crap like that instead of what's really important, especially keeping Republican-fascists from power AND OFF THE DAMNED COURTS!
In as perfect an example as any of that obsession and misplaced focus, I even more disagree with Melber's EXTREMELY STUPID AND OFFENSIVE citation in his arguments of allowing Nazis to organize, to campaign, etc. because "The First Amendment." I violently disagree with him because it's not a mere question of "offensive speech" or taking offense at something harmless.
What is far more offensive is comparing cross-dressing to allowing Nazis to organize and getting yet another chance to do what they've done before. And, in the American context, what our own version of that, white supremacy, not only did in the past BUT DOES RIGHT NOW. They have had control of a large percentage of state governments for all of our history and the federal government for most of it. That false comparison results in "NEVER AGAIN" becoming ALWAYS AGAIN. That is the real result of such ACLU style support of Nazi's and white supremacists in spreading their propaganda and trying to corrupt enough Americans to gain power. It's not innocuous BECAUSE THEY ACTUALLY DO GET POWER AND USE IT AGAINST THOSE THEY TARGET. Though affluent, white, straight, male lawyers working in safe places for them like New York and Washington DC probably don't much notice what they do to those they target.
Nazis openly, always, by self-definition intend TO KILL PEOPLE. Let me repeat that so you really notice it, THEY INTEND TO KILL PEOPLE. Our own version of that, white supremacists really do what the history of the United States which proves they are entirely able to do here and now, get power through elections, persuading enough people to do everything from discriminating against people to keeping them from voting to enslaving them TO, YES, KILLING PEOPLE. And to control the laws and manipulate the politics to allow even lynch mobs to get away with that. EVERY PERSON OF COLOR MURDERED BY AMERICAN, ENGLISH SPEAKING WHITE SUPREMACISTS ARE AS DEAD AS ANYONE KILLED BY NAZIS IN GERMANY, AND THE GOVERNMENT AND LEGAL SYSTEM HAS GENERALLY ALLOWED THAT TO CONTINUE. Such power held onto by the enemies of equality and democracy IS ALWAYS DONE THROUGH DEADLY VIOLENCE. The history of the politics of lynch law proves that as certainly as the history of the Nazis in Europe. There's all the difference in the world between Nazis and white supremacists and people who like to cross-dress, whether tastefully and subtly (I've seen a few who you'd never guess until they spoke) or in a parody of Bishop Raymond Burke or Kimberly Gilfoyle, a light-year over the top.
To pretend that we must allow Nazis to do here what we know they did in Europe within just barely living memory and what our native equivalent, white supremacists have done here throughout our history AND TODAY in order that harmless drag performers and cross dressers can do their thing with the cops leaving them to it (I am sure there are cops in Tennessee who enjoy drag shows, even as I'm not exactly a fan just as I'm sure some cops are cross dressers in private*) is something so stupid that I think you need to have had training at an accredited American law school to think that it's impossible to discern and enforce the difference.
Ari Melber isn't naturally stupid enough to believe that Nazis and drag queens are equally innocuous. That stupidity is a product of his legal training, I suspect. Or maybe you have to be a member of the ACLU or the United States Supreme Court to be that stupid. His own report using the Charlottesville Nazi thugs proves he knows they're not harmless.
Laws distinguishing and administering and enforcing far more subtle differences than between people who might want to dress funny and OTHER PEOPLE WHO FUCKING WANT TO KILL PEOPLE, to allow one and not the other to try to get an audience are entirely accepted by them. If it came to a matter of ownership of money or property, judges and "justices" can take the most minute care in adjudication in the matter, seeing the most subtle of differences even those invisible to sight or reason. When it comes to Nazis or the Klan organizing to control the state and put their agenda into effect as opposed to someone who wants to dress funny, no, they claim they couldn't possibly be trusted to make that glaring distinction. Drag queens might lead their audience to take a stroll on the wild side though I'd expect hardly any do, to try it out, Nazis and white supremacists want their audience to vote the like of the Republican-fascist majority in the Tennessee government into office to do far worse than making cross-dressing illegal. If you think that's not a real and present danger, what part of the white-supremacists and worse are running things in most of the states and have control of the House and the Supreme Court now don't you get? If you want other examples, look at how Republican-fascists poisoned People in Flint Michigan, took over local governments where Black People were a majority installing Republican-fascist petty despots in place of elected officials, kept Black People from voting in a myriad of American States in the last election.
To make believe that we have to always, forever, allow our own grotesquely and murderously effective form of fascism, white supremacists and the foreign import of Nazism the chance to gain power and hurt people because a bunch of property-owning white-guys voted into office by property-owning white guys (in many states only Protestant ones) in the 1790s were too clueless to make those kinds of distinctions as they wrote the First Amendment is far more dangerous than any drag show where the worst that can happen is someone might sprain their ankle when their heel breaks. It's as dangerous as the lynch mobs incited by the free speech of white supremacists, as dangerous as those incited by online hate speech to kill People, as dangerous as those who were persuaded to vote for Trump by lies and appeals to their racism. Yes, the lynch mobs were formed through free speech, as under our immoral law hate speech is free speech in the same way that dirty political money is free speech. Free speech is often anything but a moral good under that lack of distinction. The failure to classify lies as NOT being "free speech," the moral atrocity of inventing a "right to lie" is the foundation of our indigenous and murderous forms of fascism and the death of egalitarian democracy.
The lawyers, the judges, the "justices" the media figures who don't want to have to go to the bother to fact-check what they put out even as they don't intend to ever support violence, themselves but who pretend these differences are not real enough, THAT HISTORY OF VIOLENT SPEECH BECOMES MURDER, THAT HISTORY OF LIES DOES TURN INTO THE WORST KINDS OF GOVERNMENT. Such "liberals" and that kind of journalism should be answerable for thier epic non-feasance, their malfeasance, their mis-feasance and, frankly, their knowing dishonesty on that count. I'm especially disgusted with those in allegedly liberal media who never, ever seem to learn from the very reporting they've been doing for years, reporting the results of the kind of "free speech" "free-press" that more than just permits dangerous speech and organizing to happen, it helps it gain political power.
As an LGBTQ+ person of the kind who is the target of the Republican-fascists, I really don't want the support of such "civil libertarians" because their wider agenda is what have led us to where the country is, today. No thanks, Ari, I've seen what comes of your "free speech" and I want the kind that doesn't come with lynchings and stolen elections and a corrupt voting public.
An Updated Post Script to another would-be commentator: I thought about your objection to what I said about those who work on the movies. I've known about nine people who made a career in Hollywood, every one of them have been amoral assholes, back stabbers and liars. And what's more, they'd be the first to tell you that their kind is typical in the movie industry. A lifetime spent in make-believe to make very real money will tend to be like that. To hell with Hollywood.
* I was a lot less shocked than many when the highly positioned, straight, conservative Canadian Air Force Commander, serial straight rapist and murderer Colonel Russell Willaims turned out to have a cross-dressing kink, photographing himself in some of the underwear he used to steal from his victims as trophies. When a good part of your career is based in dress-up, whether in show biz, the military or police, it's not that much of a stretch to get into dress-up in other ways. I would bet that there's a somewhat higher percentage of that in the private lives of judges and "justices." Probably even more so among straight conservative males who maintain a far more rigid concept of gender roles than many liberals.
There is a huge difference between people with a fixed gender identity who enjoy cross-dressing than there is someone who is legitimately trans-sexual, by the way. The state has little to no legitimate interrest in either issue even when it appears in a stupid or even clever stage act, which should have been the basis of a lot of the "First Amendment" legal blather of the past. There is a very long history of the most rigid conservatives frequenting such shows, in person or, now, online. Related to that, Clarence Thomas, as certain a vote on the Court against such stuff as any is a proven consumer of the vilest and crudest of pornography, for example. The whining by him and on his behalf by his fellow hypocrites on the violation of HIS privacy should always be used against them and their like, today. "Liberals" who figure they must exercise privacy rights on behalf of the likes of Clarence Thomas and his fellow Republican-fascists, such as those who have covered up for Lindsay Graham and other Republican-fascists on that basis are their useful idiots. I don't know many gay men other than Republican-fascists who are as stupid as to permit our enemies that kind of privacy even as they violate ours at every turn. All of them are Peter Thiel's bitches, in the end. Every in-the-closet gay man or Lesbian who supports anti-LGBTQ+ equality should be now and forever outted, their hypocrisy and lies exposed. The prim, "privacy" observance against outting them in the media, especially when practiced by straight people is stupid enablement of their lies and hypocrisy at the expense of the privacy of those who aren't guilty of those things. The idea that such behavior is an example of "journalistic ethics" is ludicrous. There is no such thing under our current "First Amendment" orthodoxy.
