Freedom of Speech and Abortion.

I haven't posted for a week!!! I was busy doing some proper writing and also entering my novel,
The Storyteller, into a writing competition which meant writing an outline of 300 words, then the first 5000 words of the novel and finally the novel itself.

Now:
I am of the opinion that sports and politics shouldn't mix and living in the UK for so many years we have obviously had a lot of experience; South Africa was banned from international cricket and rugby and then, eventually, the Olympic Games; I wouldn't appear in a TV production which would be sold to South Africa and it cost us Equity members a lot of money.

When apartheid ended, Nelson Mandela said the fact that South Africa was banned from sports helped a lot with apartheid's demise – so which way is right? Who knows?

But back to politics and sport; I really believe they should not be mixed because most of the time sports figures are the biggest arseholes under the sun and they know nothing about anything; case in point is Tim Tebow, famous for being a college footballer, who is doing an anti abortion commercial to be shown during the super bowl on Sunday and should be seen by the many millions watching the event.

Tebow was born in the Philippines the son of Christian Missionaries and he was 'home schooled' by them.

I don't know whether he was a good or bad footballer as I don't have the slightest interest in the game and think it a bit of an oxymoron that the game is called football in the first place when they hardly ever kick the ball but I wonder why they think he is qualified to do such a commercial; I have done a few commercials in my time including one for Brylcreem; I wouldn't have got that commercial if I was bald so what does a home schooled son of missionaries American footballer know about abortions?

Now what do I think of abortion? I am not for it as Mr Tebow's backers would have everybody believe - I am not for abortion and I don't know anybody who is.

However I am pro-choice and I strongly believe in the law as it is in Britain; abortion is freely available on the national health service and it is free.

If you are a married woman you have to have a signature from your husband, in case he would use it as a reason for divorce, and the abortion has to be carried out during the first few months of pregnancy.

There are no maniacs with guns roaming in search of so called abortion doctors and it appears to be an accepted way of life; however that doesn't mean to say that there are no people in Britain who are not pro-choice.

I think I have made my opinion clear on this but let me ask another question; by stopping this commercial, or banning it, what happens to freedom of speech?

Let me switch slightly; over the next few months Gordon Brown, when he thinks the time is right, will call for a general election in Britain; then there will be a three week election campaign.

On the day he calls the election television programmes will be monitored; they will be monitored to show fair play to all the political parties who have a certain amount of candidates standing.

Representatives of the parties will literally have stop watches to see how long each candidate is exposed for and if a news item is about a particular constituency and the news anchor mentions one of the candidates he has to make a mention of the others too.

Political commercials are against the law; they can use billboards but no commercials.

Commercials are replaced by Party Political Broadcasts which are free – when I lived there they appeared on all the main channels at the same time and they would last about 10 minutes or so; which always appeared like a lifetime!!

Another thing that happens there is a ban on political jokes on television; there would be no such thing as impersonators taking off leading politicians of the day – you might say this is against free speech; but what is free speech?

There's no such thing.

We're not allowed to speak when we go to the theatre or the cinema; if you went up the street shouting and cussing you would probably be arrested – so where's free speech?

Somebody was ejected from one of the halls when Tony Blair was making a speech for heckling; isn't that an infringement of freedom of speech?

On television in Britain anything goes; after 9.00 pm (the so called watershed) anything goes as regards so called bad language; words that you are not allowed to say on American television no matter what time it is unless it's on cable.

In Britain, last year, a right wing politician won a seat in the European Parliament and the BBC allowed him to be on Question Time; it cause a controversy but what could they do? They could have banned him, I suppose, but he was very careful on the show not to say anything racial.

The BBC allowed him on in the interests of freedom of speech but you have to ask yourself the question; is he dangerous? Would his appearance on the show and his charisma influence the young?

Fortunately he had no charisma and wasn't very pleasant to look at – but neither was Hitler.

You can look up Tim Tebow to see if he is attractive or not; he just looks like a load of well scrubbed muscle to me and I think his commercial will back fire.

However I think the decision by the supreme court in the Citizens United v. FEC case here a few weeks ago which will allow corporations to spend as much money as they want at the time of an election on hate films is wrong.

It's complicated so here is a smattering from the NYT: Overruling two important precedents about the First Amendment rights of corporations, a bitterly divided Supreme Court on Thursday that the government may not ban political spending by corporations in candidate elections.

The 5-to-4 decision was a vindication, the majority said, of the First Amendment’s most basic free speech principle — that the government has no business regulating political speech. The dissenters said that allowing corporate money to flood the political marketplace would corrupt democracy.

Freedom of Speech – yes if you can match the corporations funds.