Music

• In the wake of the terrorist attacks on September 11th, many radio stations are voluntarily pulling a number of songs from their playlists including John Lennon's Imagine and Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World.  Although this is not an example of legal constraints on expression, it does show social pressure against certain expression at work.  Read this Fox News Report from September 19th on this topic.

• Gene Weingarten writes about the state of late-night humour post-September 11th in Not Funny: The Rules of Humor Changed on Sept. 11 for the Washington Post.  This piece is interesting in light of Plato's argument in The Republic that laughing at the gods should not be permitted because this might cause inappropriate attitudes of disrespect.
• Arianna Huffington relates the reaction to Bill Maher's first night back after the terrorist attacks on Politically Incorrect in Land of the Free?  Under threat of cancellation from ABC, Maher is defended here by Huffington on freedom of expression grounds.

• Founder and editor in chief of Salon.com, David Talbot, argued on September 29th, 2001, in Democracy Held Hostage, that social pressure against dissenting opinions in this time of crisis strikes at the core of freedoms which underpin the American system of government. Look for the reference to Walter Lippmann!

Acknowledgements are due to David Park, the originator of the Comm 322 website.