WataugaWatch

"Nothing But the Truth," 2008, written and directed by Rod Lurie, suggested by (though not based on the details of) the Valerie Plame Affair and the subsequent jailing of NYTimes reporter Judith Miller for refusing to divulge her source to a special prosecutor.

The journalist heroine of this movie (played by Kate Beckinsale, who should have been nominated for multiple awards for this role, and should have won them all) is not based on Judith Miller, which is a relief, though the wringer she is put through in this story makes me reevaluate my attitudes toward Miller during the Plame investigation. I did not look on Judith Miller at the time as a heroine of journalism. Maybe I should have.

Some 49 states of our Union now have laws on the books explicitly protecting journalists from the power of the State to compell them to divulge confidential sources of information. Only the federal government (and poor freakin' Wyoming!) has no such shield laws, and it's precisely the power of the federal government that needs constant exposure (I don't care who's president). The power of our federal government to chill the flow of information, to stifle free speech with intimidation, with the prosecution of good people (journalists, truth-seekers, whistle-blowers) under the guise of "national security" ... that's the great theme of "Nothing But the Truth." (Incidentally, the title of this otherwise near-perfect movie totally bothers me. "Nothing But the Truth" sounds like either a standard gee-aren't-lawyers-sexy courtroom drama or a dumb romantic comedy about Jim Carrey's inability to lie. Oh well, you can't have everything ... like a smashingly good title that's both memorable and captures the gist.)

Great actors in this film, along with Beckinsale (who is seriously just ... too much), including...

Vera Famiga, of the killer blue eyes, who was so radiant as the therapist in "The Departed," as the outed CIA spy

Matt Dillon (of all people!), playing triumphantly against type as the super-smart, sharklike special prosecutor

David Schwimmer (yes, of "Friends" fame), proving he's a subtle and serious actor in a terrifically difficult part as the journalist's not-up-to-the-challenge husband

Alan Alda as the complex defense attorney and First Amendment crusader

Angela Bassett as the editor in chief of the prestigious Washington newspaper whose star reporter gets the biggest story of her career and goes to jail for it

I understand that "Nothing But the Truth" got no theatrical release (or very little) and went straight to DVD, usually a sign that the movie's no good, or deeply flawed. Apparently, distributors thought there would be no appetite among the American movie audience for a serious, taut drama on such topics as freedom of the press and a willingness to go to the wall over principle. Maybe those distributors were right.

Or maybe it was the title.

Labels: free speech, movies

Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., has revoked its recognition of the College Democrats because the club endorses Democratic candidates, who are (obviously) baby-killers and devil-worshippers.

The club's president received the news via e-mail from Liberty University's vice president of student affairs. The club, which was officially sanctioned just last October, was ordered to stop using the university's name, to hold no meetings on campus, and to stop advertising events.

That same VP for student affairs then told the local Lynchburg newspaper, "We are in no way attempting to stifle free speech."

BWAA-HA-HA-HA.

Labels: free speech, Liberty University

Today is the 400th anniversary of the birth of John Milton, famous as a "Great English Poet" (that no one reads anymore), less famous as a Puritan revolutionary. When I was in school, we were driven with whips through a few "books" of "Paradise Lost" and were never let in on the secret that John Milton was a radical for personal freedom in his day, a fact that might have endeared him a little more to our teenaged hearts if not made his poetry less intimidating.

In his day he was a radical "Republican," meaning he fiercely opposed the rule of king and bishops of the Church of England, supported the right of every man to have a say in his government. He wrote a defense of the beheading of King Charles I. He also wrote extensively as an advocate for legal "divorce on demand," a most unpopular position to take at the time. But for today, to celebrate his birth, we'll take a quotation from his great attack on censorship, Areopagitica (which means, literally, "Mars hill"):

As good almost kill a man as kill a good book: who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were, in the eye.

Why did he name his essay on free speech "Mars Hill"? Because that was the great rock in ancient Athens where any man was supposedly free to speak whatever was in his heart, yet the Athenians arrested St. Paul on that spot for telling the people they were imprisoned by superstition (see Acts 17:19-22).

John Milton, you rock!

Labels: free speech, John Milton

Following the spray-painting on the NC State University campus of the n-word and the recommendation that President-Elect Obama should be shot in the head, UNC system Chancellor Erskine Bowles has appointed a commission to look into banning "hate speech" from all constituent institutions.

That's a bad idea.

If the student prank at NC State constitutes an actual threat of violence under federal law, let it be prosecuted. Actual threats, in light of this nation's recent history of political assassinations, have to be taken seriously. But to attempt to control every stupid thing that an undergraduate might say -- or spray paint -- in the heat of self-importance, we'll soon discover an inexhaustible supply of stupid things said by self-important undergraduates.

It would also be a suppression of free speech not supported by the First Amendment of the Constitution. Not a road we should be going down, when mere exposure to public opinion often renders the most effective punishment to hormonally imbalanced teenagers with an insatiable need to strut.

Labels: free speech, North Carolina State University