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Saturday, May 20, 2017

Money as Speech

Ira Glasser in the interview cited in my post below on freedom of the press makes some pretty good points.  All my liberal friends (and all my friends are liberal) think that the idea that "money is speech" in the Citizen's United Supreme Court decision, is ridiculous. Glasser says that suppose the government says that you can only spend $100 to travel someplace.  Wouldn't that restrict the right of travel considerably? Freedom of speech is not the freedom to mutter to yourself in a closet, say Glasser, but the right to disseminate a message more broadly.  Otherwise the freedom doesn't travel very far.

My friends also say that it is ridiculous to say that corporations have rights like people do, according to this same decision. But the ACLU is a corporation, as is the New York Times. Passing restrictive campaign finance measures is "handing your enemies the tools to oppress you."  

1 comment:

Thomas said...

"Now language and money circulate using the same medium, a grammar which is digital, horizontal and magnetic, and politically determined. Maybe all language will be eventually administrated as an institutional money: a contained and centrally monitored instrumental value. On the other hand, the digitization of value could mean that language in its vernacular expression can infiltrate and deform capital’s production and limitation of social power. If it is to be the latter, then vernacular language’s magnetism will reorient the polis." Lisa Robertson)