Friday, July 10, 2009

John Mellencamp: No Freedom Of Speech For Mean Bloggers

Perfunction reports on John Cougar Mellencamp:
“I don’t think people fought and gave their lives so that some guy can sit in his bedroom and be mean. I don’t think that’s what freedom of speech is,” he continued. “Freedom of speech is really about assembly — for us to collectively have an idea. We want to get our point of view out so we can assemble and I can appoint you to be the spokesman. That’s freedom of speech — to be able to collectively speak for a sector of people. But somehow it’s turned into ‘I can be an asshole whenever I feel like, say whatever I like, be disrespectful to people and not be courteous.’ It’s not good for our society. Not being courteous is not really freedom of speech.
When words loses their meaning people will lose their freedom: a concept not too popular with Mr. Mellencamp. You'll want to read the whole thing.