Did you know that having First Amendment rights in the United States comes with the responsibility not to offend dictators from North Korea? Had no idea? Me either.
Last night on CNN "journalist" Sharon Waxman, who has worked at a number of media outlets including the Washington Post, argued that having First Amendment rights means we shouldn't be making fun of North Korean dictators because they might get upset. She was of course referring to the recent and massive hack on Sony pictures by North Korea as retaliation for "The Interview," a comedy about assassinating Kim Jong-Un.
"I also want to point out something else that does not seem to be part of the discussion which is, where are our responsibilities in our exercising of the First Amendment? And I mean both those of us in the media and those of us who are making movies and those of us who are writing about the community that makes movies which is to say what is the thought process behind making a movie in which we decide to depict the assassination of a living foreign leader," Waxman said on air with someone on set in the studio agreeing by saying "good point."
"I think common sense has to prevail when we express our artistic freedoms," Waxman added.
"Living foreign leader"? More like living, foreign, brutal dictator. What's the process behind this thought process? This is America, we say and do what we want. Period. The entire purpose of the First Amendment is to be able to speak out against tyranny. We don't restrict our First Amendment rights to appease a guy who puts thousands of people into starvation, labor camps. It's "common sense" to mock people like Kim Jong-Un, not to act like cowards and cave to his demands.
H/T MKH