Rowan Atkinson on the right to offend. The full ten minutes Archived Message
Posted by George Brennan on May 4, 2019, 12:29 pm, in reply to "A refreshing change; a Celeb talks sense on Free Speech"
Atkinson was speaking in 2012 with regard to a change in the the law. It is standard JS Mill to which few will take acceptation. A legal right to offend already broadly exists, and so it should. When Boris Johnson offended powerless minorities nobody thought of taking him to court. The answer to his offensive speech is precisely "more speech" that is to say a chorus of ridicule and contempt, which is what BJ received and deserved. Rowan Atkinson did not join in that chorus. In effect he defended Boris Johnson's moral right to offend powerless minorities, blurring the issue with a judgment that the letter box thing was a good joke. {It can be a good joke, and actually was a good joke when used by Iranian feminists. But BJ was not an Iranian feminist) gb
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