Guess who reported us as "Spam"?

Internet providers take spam seriously.  If enough people report a website as spam, there is a good possibility that you can shut them down -- robbing them of their freedom of speech.

Writers generally support free and open communication of all kinds.  They are possessed with a native  curiosity, an open-mindedness and interest in what others are about.  Pundits are something different.  They are the "marketing reps" of media.

Yesterday, we published a piece in defense of Germaine Greer being permitted her opinion on a controversial subject.  A young New York Times affiliated pundit reported it as "spammy content".  Whatever that means. 

We make no assumptions about why he did what he did, but offer his Wikipedia page for inspection:

Joshua A. "Josh" Barro is an American opinion journalist currently contributing to The New York Times ' "The Upshot" venture, which focuses on politics and public policy. He identifies as neoliberal and Republican.   

Barro previously worked as a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, as a real estate banker for Wells Fargo, as the lead writer for the Ticker, an economics and politics blog hosted by Bloomberg L.P., and as the politics editor at Business Insider. 

He appears regularly on Bloomberg Television and appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher on HBO and on All In with Chris Hayes on MSNBC. In early 2013, he was a prominent supporter of a potential trillion dollar coin, but by late 2013, he had changed his mind. Time named Barro's Twitter feed one of "The 140 Best Twitter Feeds of 2013," one of ten in the Politics category.[12] In 2012, Forbes selected him as one of the "30 Under 30" media "brightest stars under the age of 30," and David Brooks listed him as part of the "vibrant and increasingly influential center-right conversation." A former aide of Barack Obama included Barro on a short list of President Obama's favorite columnists.  He is currently the host and moderator of KCRW's Left, Right & Center.

Barro describes himself as Republican but opposes many policies of the current Republican Party.  He supports elitism, tweeting, "Elites are usually elite for good reason, and tend to have better judgment than the average person. #confessyourunpopularopinion".

Barro lives in Queens, New York, is gay, and supports same-sex marriage. Barro is also an atheist.  

Opinions make people uncomfortable.  The defense of the right to voice an opinion -- and the right of all of us to hear it -- makes some people angry. 

The enemies of freedom are many.

The creeping threat to freedom of opinion

By Rubashov

You have a choice.  In many of the "Western democracies," you can voice an opinion outside the orthodoxy.  But you will be punished. Prizes and honors will be withdrawn.  Self-righteous hatred will flow your way.  You will need "security" for your person, if you chose to go in public.  And because of this, many self-censor.

But not Germaine Greer.

Germaine Greer (born 29 January 1939) is an Australian-born writer, regarded as one of the major voices of the second-wave feminist movement in the latter half of the 20th century.  She lives in the United Kingdom, where she has held academic positions at the University of Warwick and Newnham College, Cambridge.

Greer's ideas have created controversy ever since her first book, The Female Eunuch (1970), became an international best-seller, bringing her both adulation and opposition. She is the author of several books about women, feminism, literature, art and the environment, including Sex and Destiny: The Politics of Human Fertility (1984), The Change: Women, Ageing and the Menopause (1991), The Whole Woman (1999), Shakespeare's Wife (2007) and White Beech: The Rainforest Years (2013).

Greer is a liberation rather than equality feminist.  Her goal is not equality with men, which she sees as assimilation and settling to live the lives of "unfree men." "Women's liberation," she wrote in The Whole Woman (1999), "did not see the female's potential in terms of the male's actual." She argues that women's liberation means embracing sex differences in a positive fashion – a struggle for the freedom of women to "define their own values, order their own priorities and decide their own fate."  (Courtesy of Wikipedia)

Ms. Greer is fashion's latest Emmanuel Goldstein.  A former leader who will not conform to fashion's "values" -- who continues to be an honest free thinker.  And so she has become the Enemy of Fashion and the object of its Two Minutes Hate.

See them, hear them... are you one of them?

Ah... listen to them, listen to the children of fashion... are you one of them?

A test for you then.  Hear Germaine Greer's opinions in her own voice.  Can you listen without feeling the very fashionable desire to hate? 

Try, try to remember that these are only words.  Ideas.  Opinions.  Try to contain your rage, the urge to stomp on this woman -- to gag her -- to take away her voice, her being and the means of its expression.  And then ponder this:  When did dissenting from fashion become so much like mocking the Prophet?