Are you joking? “Nice job throwing those obscure bureaucratic rules back in the face of that patriotic sucker … If ever there was a time when the rules were meant to be broken, this was the time … Sometimes common sense and decency must trump the letter of the law” (“Yellow ribbon complaint — code red free speech threat,” ODE, Jan. 26).
That obscure bureaucratic rule you’re referring to is actually the same First Amendment that you claim to so honorably uphold in your paper. Every taxpayer in this state contributed, however incrementally, to the purchase and maintenance of the truck. Should we all get to pick a magnet to put on it? In this instance we protect everybody’s right to free speech by keeping the truck in its original, politically, morally, patriotically silent mode.
I wish as much as anyone that the “patriotic sucker” could have his magnet on the truck. But then we would have to let the unpatriotic sucker put his magnet on the truck too. One day the Ku Klux Klan sucker would show up with his magnet. Everybody would get mad and say that he was out of line, that nobody wanted his magnet on the truck. Yet, we would have to let him, because we had let everybody else.
The alternative the Emerald editorial board proposes with its “rules are meant to be broken” brand of advice is to designate some lucky fellow to be the arbiter of what magnets are acceptable. I’m not sure who is so enlightened as to be capable of that, but the editorial board seems to be feeling up to it. Maybe they know something that constitutional law scholar and University President Dave Frohnmayer doesn’t, but given the board’s sophomoric understanding of the Constitution, journalism, and so-called common sense, I’m hesitant to support that.
The Emerald’s credibility would be enhanced by choosing not to engage in such self righteous diatribes. Better yet, you could handle your business like business, and not resort to misguided First Amendment arguments every time you need to get your funding approved. Get off the soap box, go get a new readership survey and please stick to the news.
Ben Strawn