Crowdsourcing Severin

I’m guessing here, but I suspect he may be talking about this panel, which included several bigshot first amendment specialists though not, as far as I can tell, any Harvard professors. There’s a link to the audio of the event, too, though I haven’t listened to it.Might be a different event, but can’t find anything about it on the Columbia GSJ site.

Far be it from me to defend Severin, but MacKinnon is currently Roscoe Pound Visiting Professor of Law at Harvard Law School.

Well THERE’S something I never thought I’d see…Severin actually getting his facts straight.Or maybe not…I sense a lack of context here. Why would Harvard have a visiting professor that’s anti-free-speech? Must be some reason behind it…maybe it’s not a good reason, but I have to think there’s a reason.Speaking of free speech on the airwaves, anyone notice the story of Athena Andrikopoulos and how she just won a million-dollar settlement against a couple of Albany shock-jocks who ridiculed her on the air?I have a lot of problems with this. A LOT of problems. Yes, okay, I’ll take Athena’s attorney at his word when he says “It really was beyond cruel and unkind. It was really just horrific things, much of which you couldn’t print” (which is bullcrap, but I digress).But you can’t stand there and tell me that this won’t have repercussions. Distasteful or not, free speech is still free speech…and nothing I’ve seen so far says anything about this woman filing indecency charges via the FCC, or even libel charges. No, she filed based on “mental distress”…which may be true but, you know what? I don’t care about your mental distress.Get used to it – you live in a market-based economy. Don’t like what a radio station is saying? Organize a boycott. Call their sponsors. Complain the to FCC. There’s LOTS of avenues to pursue to get the DJ’s to stop. Hell, didn’t Congress just jack up the FCC fine limit to over $300,000? That’s enough to get a station owner to fire a DJ who’s ratings are weak enough to allow this kind of useless shockjockery.But this smells like they hurt her, and now she’s hurt them back. And in the process, she’s had a chilling effect on radio everywhere. Thanks a lot, Athena. I think I’ll go boycott your restaurant while I’m at it.

The real issue is that Severino has used his debut column to suck up to Don Imus (probably hoping his guest appearances there will become regular events) and by extension, WTKK, which carries Imus.It’s self-serving and provides no benefit to the Herald, which make a key error in hiring him as a columnist. Even if this column is found to be accurate, it’s only a matter of time before he screws up.

Not to be picky or, shall we say, overly academic, but there’s a big difference between a regular, full-time professor and a “visiting professor.” The latter is a temporary resident on campus, for a semester or (at most) a year. It’s almost an honorary position; a far cry from being a member of a University’s faculty. (As a matter of fact, MacKinnon is a professor at the University of Michigan.) Such a distinction would make no difference to Severin, of course. As for her “notoriety,” MacKinnon is a respected feminist scholar. She’s done a lot of valuable, groundbreaking work. Whether you agree with her first-amendment views or not, she deserves a measure of respect. And she’s done plenty to earn a place on the faculty of a respected institution, be it Michigan or Harvard.

We should all be grateful that the Herald has hired a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize….

By virtue of being a law professor at UMichigan, MacKinnon is by definition respected. But her attempt to redefine pornography in the “model ordinance” she drafted along with Andrea Dworkin in the 1908s is straight out of Newspeak, and deserves all the scorn anyone who values free speech can muster.I was in Cambridge when the proposed ordinance was defeated, showing that even much-berated Cantabridgians value free speech over political correctness. Here it is below:15)(a) Pornography is the graphic sexually explicit subordination of women through pictures and/or words that also includes one or more of the following: (i) women are presented dehumanized as sexual objects, things or commodities; or (ii) women are presented as sexual objects who enjoy pain or humiliation; or (iii) women are presented as sexual objects who experience sexual pleasure in being raped; or (iv) women are presented as sexual objects tied up or cut up or mutilated or bruised or physically hurt; or (v) women are presented in postures of sexual submission, servility, or display; or (vi) women’s body parts – including but not limited to vaginas, breasts, or buttocks – are exhibited such that women are reduced to those parts; or (vii) women are presented as whores by nature; or (viii) women are presented as being penetrated by objects or animals; or (ix) women are presented in scenarios of degradation, injury, torture, shown as filthy or inferior, bleeding, bruised or hurt in a context that makes these conditions sexual.One of her main justifications for banning pornogrpahy is that so many of the women who participate in it are coerced into it. To be fair, one could imagine that if MacKinnon were alive in the 1850s, she would have been opposed to slavery. However, her preferred method of eliminating it would have been making cotton farming illegal.Bob in Peabody

But Bill didn’t win his Peabody for his columns! He won it for his work on Inside Edition!Oh wait, IE won it after Bill left.Oh wait, it wasn’t a Peabody at all. That’s right, Bill O’Reilly LIED OUT HIS ASS about winning a Peabody.I’m sure you meant your post as sarcasm, Dan…but I fear too many readers will have forgotten that Al Franken called O’Reilly out on this one.

Dan, O’Reilly’s “column” runs on Sundays in the Herald. Sad, but true.

How about a man who kind of, sort of, won a Pulitzer Prize?http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/09/16/severins_phony_pulitzer/