Carrie Prejean, pageant contestant and anti-equality activist, explains:
On April 19, on that stage, I exercised my freedom of speech, and I was punished for doing so. This should not happen in America. It undermines the constitutional rights for which my grandfather fought for [sic].
Wow! What happened? Was she arrested? Was she fined?
Um … no. All that happened was that she was verbally attacked for her views. Does she really think she has a constitutional right not to be criticised? That she can express whatever bigoted views she wants, but others have no right to call her out for them? Is freedom of speech something that applies only to herself and not to her critics?
On the other hand, some of her critics have been saying inane things too. Olbermann, for example (sorry), tonight said something like “Her grandfather didn’t fight for her right to speak her mind in a beauty contest, he fought for her right not to have her speech interfered with by the government.”
Huh? What did World War II have to do with defending her right not to have her speech interfered with by the government? Didn’t the U.S. government on the contrary use World War II as a pretext to increase such interference? Or does Olbermann mean that Prejean’s grandfather was fighting to prevent Nazi Germany from conquering the U.S. and imposing still harsher censorship? If so, does Olbermann really believe that the U.S. was in serious danger of being conquered during World War II?
