Free speech failure
2008-09-23 08:28
Chris Moerdyk
I am not the greatest fan of American politicians, most of whom, when it comes to profiteering, conniving and good old fashioned devious dealings, sometimes make our guys look like saints by comparison. But, there are two things that I am starting to admire about them.
One is their election advertising which is all about one-upmanship and can become really brutal at times. And the other is that if organisations such as the Republican or Democratic Party Youth Leagues do actually exist, the party grownups seem to have taught them not to be seen and certainly not to be heard.
The latest TV ad from Barack Obama shows his rival, John McCain, making the remark last Monday about the US economy still being "strong". Superimposed over the McCain remark are news headlines showing the collapse of Lehman Brothers Bank, mounting job losses and home seizures. It ends with a shot of a smiling McCain embracing George Bush with the caption: "How can John McCain fix our economy if he doesn't understand it's broken?"
Now, imagine that ad being run in South Africa by one of our opposition parties and featuring some of the really outrageous thing some ANC bigwigs have said?
Like for example, claiming that the justice system in this country is corrupt, biased, racist and thoroughly useless. And then when a high court decision goes in their favour, they suddenly claim to have enormous respect for the judiciary.
Humour failure
Which suggests that the first thing that would happen, within minutes of an opposition election being run on TV, would be that the ANC Youth League would have a complete sense of humour failure, toys would be thrown out of cots and press statements issued about killing not only everyone involved in producing the ad but anyone else who might think it was true or funny.
The penchant for the kids in our political kindergarten, along with Cosatu and others who seem to have something to say about absolutely everything that happens in this country, to want to kill anyone who mildly disagrees with them, is symptomatic of just how immature the South African democracy actually is.
So immature in fact, that almost all of those political TV spots in America and many of those TV sitcoms, such as Boston Legal that challenge US law and society, just would not be tolerated here.
I find it quite ironic that on one hand our Constitution guarantees that we have more freedom of speech that just about any country including the United States and the UK, but political correctness, immaturity and just plain intolerance means that a heck of a lot of things South Africans can legally say are considered racist, treacherous or heinous because our politicians, pseudo - environmentalists and businesses take things so incredibly darn seriously and personally.
The ANC Youth league needs to lighten up and get their act together. So does Cosatu, big business and all those over-sensitive bunny-huggers to get their whimmies in a froth over all sorts of things that are really quite unimportant when you think about them.
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