[Peace-discuss] Marianne Williamson on her 2020 campaign & Simon Tam on free speech

[Mildred O'brien]

But Williamson qualifies for the DNC presidential debates on the basis of monetary backing (even if provided by deep-pocketed friends), so she might even get on the ballot (or become a household name and sell more books).  How's that for unprecedented self-promoted PR!

MO'B
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----Original Message-----
From: J.B. Nicholson via Peace-discuss <peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net>
To: Peace Discuss <peace-discuss at anti-war.net>
Cc: J.B. Nicholson <jbn at forestfield.org>
Sent: Thu, May 16, 2019 10:53 pm
Subject: [Peace-discuss] Marianne Williamson on her 2020 campaign & Simon Tam on free speech

I was discussing Marianne Williamson with Carl Estabrook and I wrote:
> Judging by Jimmy Dore's interview with Marianne Williamson[1], she's 
> running a rather vague campaign built around "spirituality" and "a 
> return to core values" (both quotes from her in that interview). She
> can talk at length about problems where she offers either no specific 
> solutions (like war) or a self-contradictory solution (see Medicare for 
> All discussion where she advocates for also allowing private insurance
> that covers the same things as Medicare for All).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SB8RxXxSCY

Good news/bad news update:

Good news (for her): Marianne Williamson got another interview, this time 
on RT on "Politicking" (Larry King's show) -- 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5binZR6IGrc

It's the closest RT comes to corporate news and thus a real low-point for 
RT. But in terms of production value, this show is indistinguishable from 
any corporate interview show. The show is replete with Trump Derangement 
Syndrome guests like comic Margaret Cho who famously said on one episode:

 > I'm glad he [Trump] wasn't president during 9/11. You know, like? George
 > W. Bush, actually you know, we...I miss him. Which I thought I'd never
 > say. I was a really big critic of his but now you know I'm like he's
 > kind of cute.

See this for yourself in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMooJf0FaJo.

Bad news: Just about everything else in that episode:

- Marianne Williamson repeats much of the same vague and time-consuming 
talk about her feelings that she did with Jimmy Dore. Her Politicking 
interview contains very little discussion of what she plans to do as US 
President. She's given time to list policies she likes but there's no 
discussion of how to make them real -- so no discussion of cutting 
"defense" spending. There's no discussion of war and militarism, which 
keeps her campaign safe for the corporate-run Democratic Party. This also 
means that there's little reason to believe her campaign platform because 
it's not clear how we would afford continued militarism as well as 
taxpayer-funded schools, a national jobs program, and the (highly 
overrated) reparations she wants to pay to African Americans and Native 
Americans. Her Politicking segment isn't as long as Jimmy Dore's interview 
(and therefore not as revealing as Dore's interview).



- The show's other guest is Simon Tam, a bass player from the group "The 
Slants". The Slants is made up of people of Asian descent (this detail will 
pay off later) and Tam fought the US Government in a 2017 US Supreme Court 
case (Matal v. Tam) to get a trademark on his band's name. US Patent and 
Trademark Office refused the trademark on the grounds that they, in 
particular because they're all of Asian descent, would cause offense with 
such a trademark. Tam said that the band is reclaiming the slur and they 
weren't offending themselves. Tam also pointed out that other groups of 
people (presumably including people not of Asian descent) had comparable 
slurs in their trademarked names, so why shouldn't they be able to get a 
trademark on "The Slants" in the context of a music group? After all, with 
who is really free to use these slurs and get trademarks based on them? 
This argument won in court because it is making a 1st Amendment argument; 
the Disparagement Clause in the Lanham Act is unconstitutional because it 
violates viewpoint discrimination:

A description of viewpoint discrimination from 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matal_v._Tam#Viewpoint_Discrimination
 > The test for viewpoint discrimination is “[o]ther things being equal,
 > viewpoint discrimination occurs when government allows one message while
 > prohibiting the messages of those who can reasonably be expected to
 > respond.”

This was an interesting case to talk about and really should have led the 
show. Unfortunately Tam contradicted the otherwise principled stand for 
free speech he elucidated elsewhere in the interview when he said:

 > I think it's just this really powerful process, number one, because we
 > should be able to define for ourselves what's best for ourselves. You
 > know, the ability to choose your own identity it is one of power -- it's
 > claiming this fundamental, what I believe, human right of choosing who
 > we would like to be presented to the world, like how we would like to be
 > identified. But what makes it really interesting to me and especially to
 > those who study linguistics is who gets to use these words, who gets to
 > use these labels. When it comes to terms that certain community groups
 > have reclaimed, what makes it really interesting is that those dominant
 > groups have to check in with us. It's so powerful that most people today
 > would just refer to [a] certain notorious racial slur as "the N-word".
 > That's the power of it: that people aren't even willing to say it
 > without checking in with the community -- "Hey, is it okay if I use this
 > term?", "Is it okay if I sing along to this song?" and that is really,
 > really cool to me.

This is a stridently anti-free speech argument which is multiply wrong: 
nobody has the power to grant someone else permission to use slurs, one 
chooses to use slurs regardless of what anyone else says about the use of 
slurs. The same is true of non-slurs. Those that look around for, say, a 
black person they know in order to get permission to say "nigger" versus 
that childish euphemism "the N-word", are demonstrating false humility or 
deference. This attitude also gives rise to framing our free speech rights 
by our skin color, our ethnic heritage, or whatever determines our race. If 
blacks have more permission to utter "nigger" than non-blacks, we're in 
trouble. If freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and 
all, as Billy Bragg reminds us in his version of The Internationale, we 
can't have different free speech rights. One would think that Tam's own 
experience in Matal v. Tam would have taught him that Americans need 
uniform access to free speech unfettered by government restriction, and 
it's not much of a jump to see why outsourcing that restriction power to 
private citizens (ala asking "Hey, is it okay if I use this term?") is no 
wiser.
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