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February 07, 1990
Rocky Mountain News Editorial Roundup
Making Points Bloody interesting decision
We never thought that stripping was a form of free
speech, though some First Amendment purists think otherwise. Nor would we agree
that begging on subway platforms is anything other than begging, although a New
York judge recently ruled that begging is a right protected by the Constitution.
No surprise, then, that pouring fake blood on a statue of Christopher Columbus
doesn't strike us as a free speech issue either. It seems more like petty
vandalism.
That's not the way County Judge Jacqueline St. Joan sees
it, however, and so she dropped charges against Indian activist Russell means,
who doused Denver's Columbus statue during a protest last October. His point:
that Columbus was a bad guy, part of a society which killed Indians. Columbus
defenders might protest that the Caribbean Indians he encountered were not known
for pacific behavior around strangers but that's beside the point.
The point, or so it seems to us, is whether it's okay to
throw fake blood on a work of art. We don't think so, even if the stuff was
easily hosed off.
Now if Means had thrown fake blood on a statue of his
own making, that would be something else. The right to burn the flag, after all,
only extends to the flag you own. And certainly, nobody minds if Means exercises
more conventional forms of free speech-such as exhortation, hair tearing, or
even all-out hectoring. But pouring gunk all over public monuments goes beyond
speaking or burning your own flag and into the kind of behavior that should be
rewarded with some mandatory community service
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