Maher On Don Sterling: Obama Wrong, Kathleen Parker Scary

Maher On Don Sterling: Obama Wrong, Kathleen Parker Scary

HBO’s Bill Maher isn’t right all that often, but on this one he nails just what the Donald Sterling scandal means once you get past your disgust over the horrible things he said about blacks. What about privacy? What about the 4th Amendment? Who is safe when the media will take what is likely an illegal recording of a private conversation and use it to ruin someone?

No one is safe.

And wait till you hear the scary stuff that poured from Kathleen Parker’s poison pen.

You never get everything you want, but I wish Maher would have pointed out how the same mainstream media that is still swooning over the Sterling recording is the same mainstream media that vilified Linda Tripp for recording Monica Lewisnky. The only difference is that the Lewisnky tape damaged Bill Clinton.

Maher’s comments starts at the 2:15 mark:

Now that Americans are getting wise to the dangers of being spied on by the government, they have to start getting more alarmed about spying on each other. Because if the Donald Sterling mess proved anything, it’s that there’s a force out there just as powerful as Big Brother: Big Girlfriend.

Now last week when President Obama was asked about the Sterling drama, he said, “When ignorant folks want to advertise their ignorance, just let them talk.” But Sterling didn’t advertise. He was bugged. And while he might not be worth defending, the 4th Amendment is.

That’s the one that says we have the right to be secure in our person, in our homes, in our property… Well, not if bitching to your girlfriend in your home loses you your property.

In an op-ed in the Washington Post Kathleen Parker offered one way of dealing with the modern world’s ubiquitous invasions of privacy: Give up. She wrote, “If you don’t want your words broadcast in the public square, don’t say them.”  

Really?

Even at home we have to talk like a White House press spokesman?

She then looked on the bright side by saying, “Such potential exposure forces us to more carefully select our words and edit our thoughts.” …

I would listen to a hundred horrific Cliven Bundy rants if that was the price of living in a world where I can also hear interesting and funny people talk without a filter.

Perhaps, most chilling of all, Parker said that, “Speaking one’s mind isn’t really it’s cracked up to be.” Which is quite a statement, since her job is speaking her mind. It’s like the mailman telling you letters are stupid.

So let me get this straight, we should concede that there’s no such thing anymore as a private conversation, so therefore remember to ‘lawyer’ everything you say before you say it, and hey, speaking your mind was overrated anyway so you won’t miss it. Well, I’ll miss it, I’ll miss it a lot. …

And for the record, speaking my mind is everything it’s cracked up to be.

Does anyone really want there to be no place where we can let our hair down and not worry if the bad angel in our head occasionally grabs the mic. ….

Who wants to live in a world where the only place you can speak your mind is in your head. That’s what East Germany was like. That’s why we fought the Cold War, remember? So we’d never have to live in some awful limbo where you never knew who, even among your friends, was an informer. And now we’re doing it to ourselves. Well, don’t. Don’t be part of the problem.  

 

Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC

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