In the United States of America, the First Amendment to the Constitution is sacred - the free press honors no commandment above it (excepting, perhaps, the Second Amendment in the case of Soldier of Fortune"" and Guns and Ammo Magazine).
As the dust settles on Moveon.org's ""General Betray Us"" advert in the New York Times and the Rocky Mountain Collegian's ""Fuck Bush"" editorial, I'm wondering whether I'll need to find a new occupation; the season's premiere free speech battles have polarized millions of people, but I'm left feeling ambivalent about the breadth of protection the amendment provides.
My doubts aren't the result of a radical anti-free speech agenda, just a matter of taste. Case in point: the Moveon.org ad. As political speech that a great number of people (nearly three-quarters of the Senate) seemed to find offensive, the advertisement is exactly the kind of thing the First Amendment is meant to protect, since truly offensive speech serves the valuable function of encouraging debate.
However, Moveon's decision to print a bad pun several inches high across a full page is not so protected because speech that is merely annoying does not have this same value. Furthermore, in the United States the use of puns is strictly reserved for non-political speech (i.e., the titles of feature columns), and is also subject to the so-called ""Rule of 'Frasier
