Free Speech for the Dumb
Posted by
Lee on 07/20/04 at 02:17 AM
I haven’t fisked anything Michael Moore has written lately, but this idiocy was just too good to let pass.
Bill Timmins
President
Aladdin Casino and Hotel
Las Vegas, NV
July 20, 2004
Dear Mr. Timmins:
I understand from the news reports I’ve read that, after Linda Ronstadt, one of America’s greatest singers, dedicated a song to me from your stage on Saturday night, you instructed your security guards to remove her from the Aladdin, which they did.
What country do you live in? Last time I checked, Las Vegas is still in the United States. And in the United States, we have something called “The First Amendment.” This constitutional right gives everyone here the right to say whatever they want to say. All Americans hold this right as sacred. Many of our young people put on a uniform and risk their lives to defend it. My film is all about asking the questions that should have been asked before those brave soldiers were sent into harms way.
Are left-wingers really this stupid? I realize that they all pay lip service to the Constitution, except when they’re using it to find the right to an abortion or to justify cradle-to-grave socialism, but is Moore really this ignorant of the First Amendment, or is he counting on the ignorance of his audience? As he does with just about everything else he ever writes or says, Moore grossly overstates the purpose and scope of the First Amendment.
The First Amendment, along with the rest of the Bill of Rights, was proposed by Congress in 1789, to be ratified by the requisite number of states in 1791. As with the remaining Amendments of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment was passed in order to answer protestations that the newly created Constitution did not include sufficient guarantees of civil liberties.
The First Amendment only explicitly disallows any of the rights from being abridged by Congress. Over time, however, the courts held that this extends to the executive and judicial branches. The Fourteenth Amendment went further, making abridging First Amendment rights unconstitutional for state, county, and local governments.
Note that nowhere in the First Amendment does it state that the Aladdin Casino is required to permit its employees to state anything they like on any subject on company time. The First Amendment prohibits the government from infringing on your right to free speech, not private individuals or entities. Linda Ronstadt still has the ability to say whatever she likes, whenever she likes, except when she’s on someone else’s dime. Just like Whoopi Goldberg, she ran her mouth and got fired for it.
Let’s say there’s a woman working as a cashier in a supermarket, and to every person who walks through the register she tells them how abortion is murder and how they should vote for Bush in 2004 to save the life of the unborn. Would this be appropriate workplace behavior? If this cashier was fired for exercising her “free speech,” would Michael Moore be making a big deal out of it on his website? Of course not. Linda Ronstadt ran her big, fat mouth and got tossed out of the casino.
For you to throw Linda Ronstadt off the premises because she dared to say a few words in support of me and my film, is simply stupid and Un-American. Frankly, I have never heard of such a thing happening. I read that you wouldn’t even let her go back up to her room at your hotel! Are you crazy? For crying out loud, it was a song DEDICATION! To “Desperado!” Every American loves that song! Sure, some people didn’t like the dedication, and that’s their right. But neither they nor you have the right to remove her from your building when all she did was exercise her AMERICAN right to speak her mind.
Who loves Desperado, Mike? The “dumbest people on the planet,” a group of people too “ignorant” to “rule the world?” Odd that you seem to think that you have your finger on the pulse of America when you make yourself finthy rich denigrating Americans in front of foreigners at every possible opportunity. But I digress.
Actually, Mikey, they have every right to toss her ass out of the building. It’s private property. Besides, there is more at work here than her support of you.
- The concert was billed as a “Greatest Hits Tour.” When the guests got there she informed them that it wasn’t the Greatest Hits Tour, which undoubtedly pissed off a lot of people who came to hear her greatest hits. (And let’s face it, for a has-been like Linda Ronstadt, what else is there?)
- The concert was, in the words of the journalist reporting on it, “generally lackluster, unenthusiastic performance.”
- After pissing off the audience, she then proceeded to alienate half of them by invoking the name of Michael Moore, who is second only to President Bush as the most polarizing figure in American public life today.
- She finished by ending the concert 20 minutes early.
- A large portion of the audience stormed out, throwing drinks on Ronstadt’s pictures in the lobby.
Now, how is an employee—Ronstadt—who inspires this kind of reaction in the audience good for the Aladdin? How many of those people in the audience were so incensed that they left and went gambling at another casino? How many millions of dollars in lost revenue did she cost them? So how can anyone sit there and claim that they didn’t have the right to throw her out on her ass? As the hotel manager said, “If she wants to talk about her views to a newspaper or in a magazine article, she is free to do so. But in a stage in front of four and a half thousand people is not the place for it.”
Of all the things that go on in Las Vegas, this is what creates the need for serious action? What about the other half of the crowd at the Aladdin who, according to the Las Vegas Sun, cheered her when she made her remarks? Did you throw them out, too?
That’s not the point, idiot. The point is that Linda Ronstadt wasn’t hired to give her political opinions and piss off half the crowd, she was hired to sing and entertain. She failed to do either of these, from the sound of the article.
I think you owe Ms. Ronstadt an apology. And I have an idea how you can make it up to her—and to the millions of Americans you have offended. Invite her back and I’ll join her in singing “America the Beautiful” on your stage. Then I will show “Fahrenheit 9/11” free of charge to all your guests and anyone else in Las Vegas who wants to see it.
I think Ronstadt owes an apology to everyone in the audience who came to hear her sing and be entertained and instead were treated to a mediocre performance and a political tirade, after which the concert was cut short.
Mr. Timmins, as the song “Desperado” says—“Come to your senses!” How can you refuse this offer? I await your reply.
Probably he’ll refuse it the same way that you’ve refused to sit down for an interview with Mike Wilson. Come on, Mikey, you’re a big champion of free speech, why don’t you have the balls to submit to an interview by an unknown filmmaker? How can you refuse that offer?
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