While novelizing-memorist James Frey suffers the after-effects of the drubbing he took on the altar of the Church of Oprah on January 26, the lady herself has been busy making headlines.

Less than two weeks later, she was Official Mourner Number One at Coretta Scottt King’s funeral. (Apparently, Winfrey was Scott King’s personal benefactor, having bought her a condo.) That was the dignified part of the proceedings, in which Oprah acknowledged that she was living “inside the dream” Martin Luther King, Jr., envisioned for black Americans.

Later, or perhaps it was the next day–it’s hard to keep track, because the celebration of Scott King’s life were drawn out for what seemed like a week–things got a bit out of hand. The six-hour [!] funeral featured all the living presidents, except Gerald Ford whose health seems to be failing. And the main attraction was the roasting-on-the-spit of George W. Bush, who was poked and prodded by pious Democrats, piouser Democrats, promptly defended by an ass-kicking George H.W. Bush, and, finally, lectured by the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the moral-high-ground-holding leader of the Southern Leadership Council.

This past week, I happened to catch Oprah doing more good work in New Orleans, where Anderson Cooper, a favorite in Hepzeeba’s Household, has lately been covering the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina as persistently as he covered its raging fury.

Now, according to Drudge, Mother Oprah is back at her most pedantic: in disapproving-therapist mode. This time the topic is sex addiction:

Not to be confused with Howard Stern, Oprah asked: “So you’ve had men ejaculate in your face?”

When is Oprah scheduled to talk to author Elie Wiesel about his Holocaust memoir Night ?

Just last week, Denmark was being portrayed as a fascist state.

In today’s installment of the Narrative-in-the-Making, even Bob Scheer is castigating the American press for falling down on the job in not fully reporting the cartoon story.

Speech that is not felt by some powerful group to be loathsome is hardly in need of protection. The value of an absolutist opposition to the censorship of speech, as enshrined in the US Constitution’s First Amendment, is that it holds out the prospect that the right to speak will be honored even when the content of those utterances is not. What is disturbing in both the Irving and Muhammad cartoon situations is the stuttering hesitancy of many who claim to be committed to free speech to speak out in opposition to those–be they Muslim clerics or Austrian judges–who seek to limit the free expression of individuals expressing views they detest.

In both instances, the world has been presented with a teaching moment, in which the argument for free thought–that die gedanken sind frei (”thoughts are free”) that the Nazis and every other absolutist dictatorship have excelled in crushing–was not advanced by those who know better. As a result, a world sorely in need of a crash course in the efficacy of free debate received nothing of the sort. Instead, the lesson has been that the suppression of ideas is valid, as long as the suppressors are convinced that they are in the right.

Add Scheer to the list of people who get it.

I got a little steamed earlier today while reading other posters comments on Hit and Run today:

anon:

I can’t speak for what was in Rose’s mind. I can only speak for his actions. On CNN, to illustrate that he was an equal-opportunity offender (in the name of free speech) he held up to the camera a cartoon his paper had published previously: a large bomb with the Star of David inside it. (Insulting enough for you? Or does the cartoon have to insult only Christians to pass your test?)

Then he tried to hold up one of the Mohammed cartoons in full view of the camera. The camera panned away to the interviewer: there was utter disbelief and panic on her face.

Meanwhile, his words were among the most eloquent and under-stated that I have ever heard (on TV) in defense of free speech.

Answer me this: if you think only in reductionist terms, why do you post to the blog of a magazine called “Reason”?

Comment by: hepzeeba at February 23, 2006 03:07 PM