|
Tuesday, April 8, 2003 |
Blacklisted for her publication, blacklisted for my generation
Alderman Ken Golden's pro-Dixie Chicks resolution has drawn the usual right wing, talk radio inspired flack, with many quotes in the paper from "outraged citizens."A second Alderman, Andy Olsen, has now introduced a resolution welcoming "all freedom-exercising Americans" to Madison.
Olsen said liking or disliking the Dixie Chicks isn't the point; it's the right to criticize the president under the First Amendment which should be of utmost concern and which needs to be protected for all Americans.
"The Dixie Chicks are just one of many who have been attacked for what has been said," Olsen said. "We are getting to a point where we aren't an open society."
The opposition has its usual themes: the City Council should stick to local issues; it's a waste of taxpayer money (though there's never a citation of exactly where the money is that's being wasted); things were much better in whatever town the letter-writer came from in Texas or wherever. Hey, if you don't want to have a liberal City Council, you can move: "Madison: Love it or leave it" and all that.
Really, you'd never know from the coverage the local paper gives these people that Madison just got done with an election where, after the primary, the choice was between the ex-Vietnam protesting, Cuba-loving radical and his further-to-the-left opponent. Nor would you know that the right, led by a former Republican congressman, tried last year to cook up a recall election against a strong left wing school board member and failed so miserably that he just stood for reelection unopposed.
Every picture tells a story
Mark Pilgram has a very sharp piece of writing on his site called Things Hannah had no intention of telling Andrew. It's in the form of a list; he's responding to a similar exercise by another blogger.
She secretly smoked for the first six months they were dating, and when she quit, she realized she couldn't share her accomplishment with him, and she swore she would never lie to him again.
