Net195 🌺🇻🇦👑 #0%NaNaukę

During oral args at SCOTUS in Citizens United, the FEC explicitly admitted that it (the FEC) was arguing that it should have the power to ban books that even tenuously relate to elections, bc it said that it’d give “real” media corps a pass; the small nonprofit Citizens United was explicitly banned by the FEC from airing a documentary that it made that was critical of Kerry in 2004 bc it was deemed by the FEC to not be a “real” film company (the documentary was explicitly a response to Michael Moore’s anti-W Fahrenheit 9/11 documentary, which the FEC explicitly refused to ban during the same period, because that was produced by a “real” film company); so Citizens United followed the FEC’s officially dictated steps to become a “real” film company & was then banned again by the FEC from airing a documentary it made that was critical of Hillary in 2008 bc that was deemed “advocacy” rather than art. Even leaving aside that getting politics out of money would obviously be better than getting money out of politics, this is important bc it’s the first real turn against the 20th Century’s bizarre steps toward reinterpreting (jurisprudentially, legislatively, administratively, culturally, normatively, morally, epistemically, etc) the 1st Amendment & related ideas as being a privilege of an official media caste rather than a freedom of a given technology or craft. “Freedom of the Press” was until FDR or esp until the 1960s consistently understood as protecting & promoting the press as a technology or practice rather than protecting & promoting journalists, academics, moderators, & entertainers as occupations. It’s only thanks to conservatives on the court that we’re beating back the petty nobility of journo apparatchiks etc. & it’s obvious why this liberation from their exclusive privileges is deemed by them to be an assault on freedoms of speech/press/association, but not civil rights laws which mandate inclusion of & support for titled groups (& censorship of their enemies via eg “hostile environment” claims).