Taking Us For A Ride

Dahlia Lithwick's cheerleading for Stephen Colbert's crusade against the Citizens United comes as no surprise.  Both Colbert and Lithwick have a prominent perch from which to speak their minds, and they're incensed that others who have something to say are allowed a sliver of the same attention.

So to mock the system, Colbert formed a Super PAC and raised hundreds of thousands of dollars.  Of course, it's not very effective satire when most of his money comes from non-corporate sources, and thus, as has been noted, almost everything he's doing was legal before Citizens United.

But the ultimate joke is after all Colbert's done, at best his PAC could produce and air a few minutes of commercials, when he already enjoys 30 minutes of TV time five days a week all year around.

Many of the comments to Lithwick's piece keep asking how can a corporation have free speech?  Well, it's just a group of people, and people regularly pool their money to get out their message--why should those who organize as corporations be the one group that loses this basic right?

One commenter asked if a car could also have freedom of speech?  It's supposed to be a rhetorical question showing the absurdity of corporate free speech, but let's look into this.  Imagine if Congress passed a law saying "you as an individual are perfectly free to make political speeches at any organization you like, but it's unfair that those with more money can travel more easily to do this, so from now on, you can drive to the speech, but you can't spend more than $5 on gas to get there." Even though legislators could defend this on the grounds that they're not regulating speech, they're only regulating money, I believe the Supreme Court would overturn it as an impediment on speech.  And then Dahlia Lithwick and her fans could be outraged yet again: "This is ridiculous--now a car has freedom of speech?!"