Forward Lateral

From Boston Legal, Stick It, March 14, 2006.

Crooks and Liars has audio (recommended), Windows video (choppy), and Quicktime video (also choppy.)

ALAN SHORE: When the “Weapons of Mass Destruction thing” turned out not to be true, I expected the American people to rise up! Huh! They didn’t.

Then, when the Abu Ghraib “torture thing” surfaced, and it was revealed that our government participated in “rendition,” a practice where we kidnap people and turn them over to regimes who specialize in torture, I was sure, then, the American people would be heard from. We stood mute.

Then came the news that we jailed thousands of so-called “terrorist suspects” — locked them up, without the right to a trial or even the right to confront their accusers. Certainly, we would never stand for that. We did.

And now, it’s been discovered, the executive branch has been conducting massive, illegal, domestic surveillance on its own citizens — you and me. And I at least consoled myself that finally, finally the American people will have had enough.

Evidently we haven’t. In fact, if the people of this country have spoken, the message is, “We’re okay with it all.” Torture, warrantless search-and-seizures, illegal wiretappings. Prison without a fair trial — or any trial. War on false pretenses. We as a citizenry are, apparently, not offended. There are no demonstrations on college campuses; in fact, there’s no clear indication that young people even seem to notice.

Well, Melissa Hughes noticed. Now, you might think instead of withholding her taxes, she could have protested the old-fashioned way: made a placard and demonstrated at a Presidential or Vice-Presidential appearance. But we’ve lost the right to that as well. The Secret Service can now declare “free speech zones” to contain, control, and, in effect, criminalize protest.

Stop for a second, and try to fathom that: At a Presidential rally, parade, or appearance, if you have on a supportive T-shirt, you can be there. If you’re wearing, or carrying something in protest, you can be removed. This, in the United States of America. This, in the United States of America! Is Melissa Hughes the only one embarrassed?

JUDGE: Mr. Shore, that’s a chair for witnesses only.

ALAN SHORE: These long speeches make me so tired sometimes.

JUDGE: Please get out of the chair.

ALAN SHORE: Actually, I’m sick and tired.

JUDGE: Get out of the chair!

ALAN SHORE: And what I’m most sick and tired of, is how every time somebody disagrees with how the government is running things, he or she is labeled “un-American.”

PROSECUTOR: Evidently it’s speech time.

ALAN SHORE: And speech in this country is free, you hack! Free for me, free for you, free for Melissa Hughes to stand up to her government and say, “Stick it!”

PROSECUTOR: Objection!

ALAN SHORE: I object to Government abusing its power to squash the constitutional freedoms of its citizenry. And, God forbid, anybody challenge it, they’re smeared as being a heretic. Melissa Hughes is an American! Melissa Hughes is an American. Melissa Hughes is an American!

JUDGE: Mr. Shore, unless you have anything new and fresh to say, please sit down. You’ve breached the decorum of my courtroom with all this hooting.

ALAN SHORE: Last night, I went to bed with a book. Not as much fun as a 29-year-old, but, the book contained a speech by Adlai Stevenson. The year was 1952. He said, “The tragedy of our day is the climate of fear in which we live, and fear breeds repression. Too often, sinister threats to the Bill of Rights, to freedom of the mind, are concealed under the patriotic cloak of anti-communism.”

Today, it’s the cloak of anti-terrorism.