James Taranto wrote a far-too-good-to-excerpt piece…

here about the free speech brawl that he got into while in college. Short version: James Taranto exercised it while working at a student paper; a certain faculty advisor/mentor/publisher went ripsh*t over that; Taranto got suspended; he sued; he won.

Just… read the whole thing, OK? It’s fascinating.  And more than a little sad, and I do mean ‘sorrowful.’ Let me pull out this Kipling quote again:

If Woodhouse knew nothing of journalism, young Ollyett, who had graduated in a hard school, knew a good deal. Our halfpenny evening paper, which we will call The Bun to distinguish her from her prosperous morning sister, The Cake, was not only diseased but corrupt. We found this out when a man brought us the prospectus of a new oil-field and demanded sub-leaders on its prosperity. Ollyett talked pure Brasenose to him for three minutes. Otherwise he spoke and wrote trade-English–a toothsome amalgam of Americanisms and epigrams. But though the slang changes the game never alters, and Ollyett and I and, in the end, some others enjoyed it immensely. It was weeks ere we could see the wood for the trees, but so soon as the staff realised that they had proprietors who backed them right or wrong, and specially when they were wrong (which is the sole secret of journalism), and that their fate did not hang on any passing owner’s passing mood, they did miracles.

If you’re a journalism teacher whose response to political speech that is only personally offensive is to try to ruthlessly suppress it… you’re not actually teaching journalism.

(H/T: Instapundit)

Moe Lane

3 thoughts on “James Taranto wrote a far-too-good-to-excerpt piece…”

  1. Sure, but, again, in canon, The Guardian of Forever seems to be the only access to “True” time travel, to the point it can be considered to protect the time line. Which makes sense, given how easy the show otherwise seemed to make time travel. Lots of things out there with Warp Travel, and a reason to reboot the time line. Heck, why didn’t Spock do so in the current movies? How can you be “late” when a slingshot around a star puts you where you need to be? Because that just puts you in an alternate timeline, which is no help to yours…….

  2. He’s a better man that me. I would have named names of the thugs that threatened him and posted relevant pictures of them as well.

    And I remember a discussion about this incident a few years back. Makes me glad that there are organizations like FIRE in existence today.

  3. Those were the days, back when the ACLU actually stood regularly on the side defending civil liberties.

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