A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis, serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. © James Conner.
A headline that survives its author. Back in 1983, a barfly argued with a barkeep at a topless bar, then shot him dead and cut off his head. Vincent Musetto wrote a jackhammer headline for the New York Post: HEADLESS BODY IN TOPLESS BAR. Musetto died today in New York, where the New York Times has a wonderful story on his masterpiece:
But what endured in public memory far longer than the crime was the headline, with its verbless audacity, arresting parallel adjectives and forceful trochaic slams. (The corresponding headline in The New York Times that day proclaimed, genteelly, “Owner of a Bar Shot to Death; Suspect Is Held.” Headlessness was not mentioned until the third paragraph; toplessness not at all.)
Yes, Gary Marbut is involved. When 17-year-old Chet Billi’s citizens initiative to let teachers pack iron in the classroom was announced, I found myself wondering whether Montana’s godfather of permissive firearms laws, Gary Marbut, who loses elections for the legislature but has a knack for persuading legislators to bless his proposed laws, was involved. He was. Sam Wilson has the story at the InterLake.
Backdoor bootstrapping a hate speech law. Last week I wrote a short post on law professor Eugene Volokh’s essay on hate speech prosecution in Montana (the David Lenio case). At the end of that week, the libertarian magazine, Reason, also published an article on what more and more appears to be an attempt to establish a de facto hate speech law in Montana by successfully prosecuting Lenio for violating Montana’s criminal defamation law by Tweeting his belief that the Holocaust never occurred. I now find myself wondering just how much pressure, if any, Montana’s human rights community is putting on the Flathead County Attorney to convict Lenio on the criminal defamation charge.
Remember erstwhile Rep. Jerry O’Neil’s bill to permit corporeal punishment in Montana? The bill that earned him the sobriquet “Floggin’ Jerry?” The bill that probably persuaded the good people of Columbia Falls to replace him with Zac Perry? Well, a case in Saudi Arabia provides a chilling look at how horrific a punishment flogging is. Blogger Raif Badawi:
…who has been imprisoned since 2012, was charged with violating Saudi Arabia’s information technology law and insulting Islam through his website “Saudi Arabian Liberals.”
The lashings are to be carried out 50 lashes at a time, 20 weeks in a row. Badawi endured the first 50 of the 1,000 lashes stoically in January, arching his back in pain. (CNN story.)
This is right out of the Middle Ages, when witches were burned at the stake and blasphemers were punished cruelly simply for uttering opinions that offended deeply religious people. In Christendom, most western nations no longer commit such barbarities, although anti-blasphemy statutes probably remain on the books. Ergo, if Lenio is convicted of criminal defamation for denying the Holocaust, for blaspheming Judaism, he won’t be incinerated while wired to a fencepost, or beaten bloody with wet rawhide whips at high noon in Depot Park. He’ll “only” spend time in the slammer or get fined, or both.
David Lenio has the same human rights as the rest of us, among them the right to make utterances about religion that offend others without suffering incarceration or fines for speaking his mind. It’s time for the Flathead County Attorney to honor those rights and have the criminal defamation prosecution against him dismissed.