Sam Newman at it again!

[PaulP]

As i said, i am not going to protect Newman as a quality individual, but i am 100% supportive of his rights to make foolish and ignorant comments. i am and always have been against booing of players or anything really and i feel like the call to boo a ceremony is extremely distasteful, but .... People had the right to be stupid and (to a degree) ignorant.

Joe Rogan is a perfect example, i detest him, but i still want him to be able to have his podcasts, on the condition the talk doesn't cross into illegal areas.

We faced the same issues during the same sex marriage referendum, anyone who was against it was bigoted or homophobic... There was at least one publicised account of a girl (in Canberra i think) who was fired for posting on her own facebook that it was "okay to vote no" and that because of her religious beliefs she would in fact be voting no.. She didn't harass or belittle any group, but was fired and her boss posted that she would not allow anyone with such hateful opinions to work there (or something to that effect). That is the society we are heading towards and it is a major problem. That Sam Newman can be such a wanker, is just an example that we still have the right to voice non conformist opinions, even if (again) he is actually largely irrelevant and almost never has anything to say worth hearing.

In the case of the Welcome ceremony, i personally don't like it... Does this make me racist or is it only the people that boo it racist?? We have to stop pigeon holing people and listen to what they are saying, then disagree with their arguments.

Another example was Daisy Pearce vocally supporting not having a minute of silence after the queen died at AFLW games.. I thought the decision was atrocious (and should have seen government funding potentially pulled) and Daisy was completely wrong... but whilst Daisy has to have the right to be (imo) wrong, the competition had (and has) obligations it should have met.

I disagree with the way "free speech" is understood in society, and the direction this concept has taken. Free speech is not an excuse for hate speech, it's not an excuse to say whatever you like. Words don't just fall into a black hole after they've been uttered. Words are important, they have consequences. It's not a coincidence that the rise of far right ideologies has occurred at the same time as "free speech" has been trumpeted as some kind of panacea to cure the worlds ills. One follows the other. It's not a coincidence that hate crimes have increased in recent times.