THE FIRST AMENDMENT AND HOW IT NEEDS TO GET ITS GROOVE BACK

Normally, this is a comedy blog, but I sometimes I digress for a few to chronicle my rockstar-like travels.

So, since I digress on occasion, I don’t feel so bad for getting slightly preachy once and a while. Those of you who aren’t into it, or aren’t into freedom of speech, turn the channel now. I think a FCC-censored South Park is on somewhere.

I'm going to give a rare dose of opinion for a sec. Gather round, free-thinkers: a middle-aged man is talking.

I’m going to talk about freedom for a second. Not George Bush’s Freedom. His Freedom is spelled with a capital “F”… and co-incidentially, there’s another word that starts with a capital “F” that constitutes what he’s doing to our country (HINT: it rhymes with “pucking”).

Bush crams that particular philosophy down the world’s throat enough. I’m talking about real freedom. Little "f". The real thing.

The above pic, taken in Philly outside of Independence Hall by well-known shutterbug Ernst Stavo Galgoci, is probably my favorite picture of me anyone has ever taken. And don’t think I don’t love pictures of me. Because you know I do.

I’ve just returned from two foreign countries: Canada and southern Georgia. And when one visits other countries like these, one can tend to appreciate home much more.

My home is America. Specifically, Florida. (Sure, Florida looks like America’s Wang. Love it or leave it, pal. I like it here)

And one of the reasons I love America is right here in this photo: The First Amendment.

It is one of the true things that makes real freedom great. It is a founding principal of freedom. It is also something some folk would either like us to forget or abolish altogether.

I am very concerned of those in our country that forget all about this important ideal in order to cram their beliefs down our gullet for whatever particular agenda they might have.

There are those who would impose their beliefs upon you.

There are those would effectively silence your beliefs.

There are others who would decimate your First Amendment rights and don’t even have an agenda: they're just assholes.

And the ones who piss me off the most are the ones who have no sense of humor. Those ones are never in short supply.

FREE SPEECH, man. That’s what the First Amendment is all about.

There’s nothing better. This isn’t Tibet, man. This is Florida. And, like your wang is an extension of you, so too is this an extension of America.

I don’t have to like Bubba The Love Sponge (though I do) to be concerned that he gets yanked off the air and fined a gazillion dollars because one cat got offended. I can be concerned that network TV censors the “violence” from Looney Tunes cartoons to the point that there’s hardly any cartoon left. I can hate hip-hop music without having to censor it. It’s gonna die eventually. Even black people are starting to hate it.

I can see that censorship has reached a ridiculous and highly comedic level, when a network television broadcast of “The Big Lebowski” (and what is the network doing broadcasting a movie that uses the F-bomb more than 300 times anyway?) takes John Goodman’s incredibly classic and somewhat continuous “This is what you get when you fuck a stranger in the ass” line and converts it to “This is what you get when you find a stranger in the Alps”.

Huh?

I’m not in to offending everyone (believe it or not). I’m into turning the channel if it sucks. Does that make me a liberal? I dunno. I'd like to think it just makes me one more retard with a low attention span.

What was I typing about? Oh, yeah.

When I was in Toronto, I was shocked one morning. I opened the Toronto Globe And Mail newspaper (Which has my vote as “Most boring newspaper EVER”.) and saw this headline:

“FUCKED UP SUES ROLLING STONE”

Now, I was very confused. One, because I couldn’t believe I was seeing the f-bomb in a headline in a major Canadian newspaper. Two, because I knew what all those words meant, yet I couldn’t fathom the meaning of them all together in a sentence.

Turns out it was a Toronto-based rock band called Fucked Up suing Rolling Stone for an article that they wrote about the band that they found to be inflammatory.

But man, I was blown away by seeing that in the newspaper. Could it be that Canadians are…more mature than us? What a horrible and sobering thought. And with this kind of mentality… would they ever know what it was like to find a stranger in the Alps? Well, Dude, we just don’t know.

The other day the pretty girl picketing the abortion clinic down the street from where I live asked me if I would pray for the end to abortion.

I smiled and winked at her and told her I would rather pray for the end of stupidity.

Enlarge the photo. Read every line of the First Amendment. Remember it. Know it. Live it. And if you don’t like it, change the channel. Oh, and you can admire my chisled features while you're at it, too.

And if you want, you can pray for stupidity to end too. Because there are those out there that, no matter what you like or don't like, would regulate what you think. Would regulate what you discuss. Would regulate who you love. Would regulate your life.

I'm not into that, man. I'm into people being real, but respectful. They don't have to agree. Just respect. The Golden Rule. Treating as you want to be treated. That's humanity. That's proper. That's life.

That's what you get when you find a stranger in the Alps.