NationStates Jolt Archive

A French Court of law fined former actress turned author Bridgette Bardoe for specific comments she made about muslims and gays in her latest book. Despite the vitrolic tone of the comments, I am shocked that French law does not protect freedom of speech to it's utmost extent.

http://www.msnbc.com/id/5181642/

Do you listen to fuzzy turds eating themselves

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=8425


this article is the only one I can easily find about the case. From this article it is interesting that what she guilty of was not of saying bad things about Muslims, but instead of expressing a personal opinion. Europe has never had much respect for free speech or much tolerance of minority opinions, but this is more restrictive. Apparently the French believe it is crime merely to have politically incorrect thoughts.

http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=58&story_id=8425


this article is the only one I can easily find about the case. From this article it is interesting that what she guilty of was not of saying bad things about Muslims, but instead of expressing a personal opinion. Europe has never had much respect for free speech or much tolerance of minority opinions, but this is more restrictive. Apparently the French believe it is crime merely to have politically incorrect thoughts.


Thank god I live in America.

She was fined, not thrown in prison.

I would find out what she actually said. But your link doesnt seem to work.

In America we reserve the right to be racist bastards, Hell, here even blacks, latinos, muslims and Wikiwiki's from the Island of JuJu can be racist.
Of course, some people abuse the system...
But hey, how many man-made things work %100 of the time?

In America we reserve the right to be racist bastards, Hell, here even blacks, latinos, muslims and Wikiwiki's from the Island of JuJu can be racist.
Of course, some people abuse the system...
But hey, how many man-made things work %100 of the time?


Not everybody, Whites can never be racist. :)

In America we reserve the right to be racist bastards, Hell, here even blacks, latinos, muslims and Wikiwiki's from the Island of JuJu can be racist.
Of course, some people abuse the system...
But hey, how many man-made things work %100 of the time?


Not everybody, Whites can never be racist. :)

That's because we already got ours in, now we've moved onto the second stage, guilt. :(

Everybody is racist...
Some people are just less racist than others.
Its kinda like Communist :D

She was fined, not thrown in prison.

I would find out what she actually said. But your link doesnt seem to work.From the article I found the most incriminating passage was ""I am against the Islamisation of France! This obligatory allegiance, this forced submission disgusts me." I must throw in the caveat that I have not read the book, nor the court's decision and haven't followed the case so I am adressing the apperance from the news article I linked to (which works fine for me).

No but she should have recieved jail time, as allowed under the law she was convicted of violating. for she is a repeat offender. She already has a convivtion for inciting racial violence, for having the audacity to say that she thought it would be more humane for Muslims to stun sheep before slaughtering them.

I never did understand America's tolerance of racism. Maybe it's a left-over from slavery or something. :?

*points to line reading 'We, the Peeople, reserve the right to be racist bastards"*
If people can be intolerant of religion, they can go right ahead and judge people based on the color of their skin. Quite a few of them grew up when everybody they knew said 'Oh, sure, its FINE to be an utter jerk off to people THIS color 'cause their freaks and sub-human!', and while that doesnt make it RIGHT, it is a rather mitigating circumstance.
Sure, some of them might have been 'natural' racists, but I would say that most of them got it from teir environment.
For most of their life, they were told racism is OK, and now they arent going to let a bunch of young bloody Congresmen boss them, see?
As for the remenants of the KKK and other racist organizations, their members are obviously lunatics, and anyway, theyre exercising the same right as any number of left-wing'ed groups.
Freedom of Speech ;)

She was fined, not thrown in prison.

I would find out what she actually said. But your link doesnt seem to work.From the article I found the most incriminating passage was ""I am against the Islamisation of France! This obligatory allegiance, this forced submission disgusts me." I must throw in the caveat that I have not read the book, nor the court's decision and haven't followed the case so I am adressing the apperance from the news article I linked to (which works fine for me).

No but she should have recieved jail time, as allowed under the law she was convicted of violating. for she is a repeat offender. She already has a convivtion for inciting racial violence, for having the audacity to say that she thought it would be more humane for Muslims to stun sheep before slaughtering them.

I understand that what she did under French law was wrong. I just did not realize that French law criminalized certain speech. I'm an attorney and I am quite familiar with 1st Amendment law. Some speech is criminalized in the US. But it is a very narrow category. I am not familiar with the case of Bardot, however, I did read some of the quotes from her book. They are ignorant, hateful, sentiments. But under US 1st Amendment jurisprudence, perfectly legal and within one's right to say.

I never did understand America's tolerance of racism. Maybe it's a left-over from slavery or something. :?

It might be....

Then again, if you can truely have Freedom of Speech then it has to include the abilty to say stupid hateful things.

Now Racist acts are not tollerated.

I understand that what she did under French law was wrong. I just did not realize that French law criminalized certain speech. I'm an attorney and I am quite familiar with 1st Amendment law. Some speech is criminalized in the US. But it is a very narrow category. I am not familiar with the case of Bardot, however, I did read some of the quotes from her book. They are ignorant, hateful, sentiments. But under US 1st Amendment jurisprudence, perfectly legal and within one's right to say.I don't know about most of the book, but from the excerpts I have seen they were as you say "ignorant, hateful, sentiments", but exactly that, sentiments. All the excerts I have seen consist of Bardot writing about how she feels about Muslims, not statements of facts about Muslims, a rather important distinction. This falls dangerously close to, if not actually at the level of, Orwellian thought crime.

Freedom of speech is illusionary.

We have the right to say what we want, so long as we don't offend anyone, as soon as we start offending people the gloves come off and fights begin... as evidenced by the vicious pseudo-debates that take place on these very forums everyday.