Get Yer Free Speech Here!
Multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mike Luckovich's cartoons are some of the world's best, and he's done some amazing Obama cartoons, including the "Day One" cartoon pictured, at left, within the column. Click here to see Luckovich's gallery of Obama cartoons. And, now, let's enjoy some Luckovich quotes about free speech: "A good cartoon is designed to make people angry because you're trying to make a point and certain people are going to be upset and offended." "You know, I'm Catholic and the Catholic Church has had numerous scandals in the past, (such as) the pedophilia scandal. And I've hit the Catholic Church repeatedly for that. But I've never gone after the savior Jesus Christ or I would never go after the Prophet Mohammad or any religion's diety. That's just looking for trouble. If you wanted to make a point, you can do it in other ways." "You don't yell fire in a crowded theater. And don't put a turban shaped like a bomb on the Prophet Mohammad's head. That should be the rule. You know, freedom of speech is one thing, but you have to be responsible with freedom of speech, just like anything else."
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Much Ado About Publishing
Connecting the Dots
When I was in high school in Miami Beach, back in the early ‘70s, I had a friend named Laura who had a very unusual collection. She’d created a most inventive way to mark historical moments as they happened.At the precise moment they occurred, Laura would draw a tiny dot on a 3x5 card, then write about the event on the card.
I don’t know if she still does this, I haven’t seen her since a class reunion many years ago, but if Laura has kept up her dot collection, she’s got a hell of a book manuscript on her hands.
The last I heard, Laura was a psychiatrist and living in Chicago, so I thought about her on election night as I watched the coverage on TV and wondered if she might be in that huge crowd at Grant Park when President-Elect Barack Obama gave his history-making speech.
I kept picturing Laura and her crazy dots. Did she draw one at the moment it was announced that Barack Obama had won the election?
Like so many other people, I also kept thinking about Bobby Kennedy. When he was assassinated in 1968, a torch was passed, but it was 40 years before the right person showed up to reach out and take it.
For 40 years, we wandered in some disappointing desert as so many of the rights gained in the ‘60s became targets of those who sought to weaken and ultimately destroy them.
Free speech hung by a thread and book-banning attempts grew stronger, not weaker, as this strange whirlwind kept us spinning in sandy circles for those 40 years amidst the dunes.
In this post 9/11 era, we’ve seen censorship and self-censorship skyrocket as the mainstream press bowed to corporate and government pressure and all but abandoned the real hunt for truth and real investigative reporting. The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was placed on the endangered species list.
Forty years ago, in April 1968, I sat in front of the TV and watched people all over the world cry. Martin Luther King, Jr. was dead.
Then, two months later, I watched it all happen again. This time, Senator Robert F. Kennedy was dead.
Forty years later, on the night of November 4, 2008, I sat in front of the TV and watched people all over the world cry. This time, though, they were crying happy tears. Senator Barack Obama had made history.
Millions of people in the U.S. and around the world exhaled and puffs of sand swirled out. After 40 years in that desert, it felt like the spinning had stopped. Perhaps we’d be able to move consistently forward again.
The dots had been connected.
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Nina L. Diamond is a journalist, essayist, and the author of Voices of Truth: Conversations with Scientists, Thinkers & Healers. Her work has appeared in numerous publications, including Omni, The Los Angeles Times Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, and The Miami Herald.
Ms. Diamond was a writer and performer on Pandemonium, the National Public Radio (NPR) satirical humor program, for its entire run in Miami and select markets nationwide from 1984-1998. As an editor, she works frequently with other authors and journalists on both fiction and non-fiction.