Free Speech - Should Ann Coulter Open Her Venomous Mouth

[El Dingo]

I keep track of protests and events in Oakland/Berkleley because they can affect my drive home.

The demonstratios at Berkeley are bothering me because it used to be the birthplace of the bastion for 'Free Speech'.

It gives the Right-Wing and 24-hour media fodder to condemn the 'intolerant left' and promote their fascist agenda via free press and constructed controversy that results in book sales and cable news viewership.

The thing is, I don't disagree with them. I'm a little pissed off.

Berkeley should be welcoming these speakers and eviscereting them on stage with intellectual, fact driven questions and arguments.

Ann Coulter is an easy target because she's dumb as a doorknob and only wants the spotlight so she can sell more books and not have to get a real job. This 'controversy' has generated years of income for her without her lifting a finger.

My concern is that the new career of being a 'Victim of Liberal Intolerance'  will spread.

A slew of 'talks' will be scheduled and cancelled by Berkeley. Don't get me wrong. I do believe there is the potential for violence at these events.

My problem is that Liberal students are resorting to protests instead of challenging supporters of these people to intellectual, fact-driven post-event forums featuring questions relating to these inflammatory statements.

Unfortunately, intellectual discussion does not result in profits so we will have to endure sensationalism and window-breaking paid-protesters

[cranefly]

That bothers me as well.  She should be allowed to speak.

But I would like to have a monitor in control who can silence her mike and call out logical fallacies or statements that are deemed false, providing sources and even reading the actual facts or prevailing opinion, and proceed in that way, so that her every falsehood leads to an immediate and long rebuttal.

Of course, the right would cry foul, saying the monitor was biased and Coulter didn't get free speech -- and therein lies the rub.

How do you intelligently allow an ignoramus to freely speak to an audience of ignoramuses (not typical Berkeley students but Coulter fans) in your cultured backyard in a way that enlightens anyone?

Poor Berkeley.  A lose-lose situation.

P.S.  All debates and speeches should have a monitor who can interrupt and rebut anything not entirely true.  That's the only way I will ever watch speeches and debates going forward.  Otherwise, it's just a waste of time.