Free speech for whom? When? How often?

Bonobos,

Horowitz daily seems to plumb the depths to which he can sink to be
demented, pathetic, shameless, and loathesome:

  ...> Jim Romenesko's Media News
  ...> <http://www.poynter.org/medianews/index.cfm> Horowitz won't
  ...> pay Princeton paper for ad until it apologizes
  ...> <http://www.nj.com/mercer/times/index.ssf?/mercer/times/04-07-BQQR2Q_B.html>

  ...> Free speech rocks for David Horowitz -- until it gets in the
  ...> way of his slavery reparations ad. He's told Daily
  ...> Princetonian staffers that he's going to stiff them on his
  ...> $1,007.50 ad bill unless they apologize for an editorial
  ...> <http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/2001/04/04/edits/503.shtml>
  ...> that ran the day the reparations ad appeared in the paper.

  ...> Horowitz to paper: "Withdraw your unsubstantiated slander"
  ...> <http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/Content/2001/04/09/edits/519.shtml>

This on the heels of a really bad piece on 60 Minutes Sunday about
reparations. They talked to Randall Robinson almost imperceptibly
longer than to Walt Williams (reactionary black economist at GMU; he
took the Horowitz line, partially, to wit: America has been good for
blacks, indirectly, when you compare African-Americans to
Africans).

And it was Morley Safer piece, which has always seemed to me a sure
sign that the issue wasn't to be taken in the least bit seriously. It
had many other flaws, the two most notable of which were a very
serious muddling of what serious community-based reparations calls are
really after (no, Morley, not cash payments to individual blacks); and
they talked to a Congressman from Ohio, who seemed a well-meaning
twit, instead of to John Conyers. They did talk to Glenn Lowry, at
BU's Institute on Race, who seemed to favor a more broad notion of
reparations, sort of like SA's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. If
I recall correctly he specifically mentioned (or strongly implied)
that dealing with reparations for slavery meant we *had* to deal with
Native American reparations.

I guess the only thing to be grateful for is that it *wasn't* a 12
minute piece on David Horowitz's view of reparations.

It did occur to me during the piece that there is at least one good
secondary effect, potentially, of a strong, successful reparations
movement in the US. I suspect that if the Randall Robinson version
were to take hold, wherein a fund would be created that basically gave
all Americans of African descent (or whatever other rational criteria
determined eligibility) lifelong access to fully subsidized
educational opportunity, (basically think Scandinavian-style universal
education for life), White people would be so completely besides
themselves with jealousy that it 1) would either kill the entire thing
altogether, or 2) create the political traction necessary for *all*
Americans to demand universal, lifelong free education.

Kendall