When the First Amendment No Longer Applies-

One of the advantages of not making any money from this blog is the freedom to not have to comment on every damn thing that happens, like Bush's idiotic press conference---as if Bush giving an idiotic press conference could be NEWS--or even Tony Blair's current unpleasantness.

But freedom is as freedom does, and apparently, it ain't doing much in the big world.

Here's this innocuous story about Apple Computers in a snit over a book on its CEO Steve Jobs, the Aged Boy Genuis (Second Class), to the extent of not only pulling that book off the shelves of its retail stories (gee, they have retail stores?) but all the books by that publisher. ALL of them. Including those computers for dummies books.

So are the dummies revolting? It's hard to tell. Here's the story I read in the SF Chronicle:

Apple yanks book on Jobs / Company bans all of publisher's books because of the one

Apple of course is the company that relaunched itself with TV ads showing them smashing the dictatorship of (presumably) Aged Boy Genius (First Class,) and standing tall for FREEDOM!
That's got to be the lead for this story, right? But possibly no one at the paper was born yet when that commercial ran.

So there's the author quoted in the second graph. Is he OUTRAGED? Is he screaming about freedom and the chilling effect, corporations acting like Orwellian governments and Steve Jobs like a tin dictator? Sure, he's got to be tickled pink, he couldn't buy the publicity he'll get, but...isn't there something else at stake here? Let's hear this clarion call, this defense of the author's right to write...

"I have a lot of admiration for the guy." That's the quote. The author is puzzled because the biography, though unauthorized, is admiring. His feelings are hurt, I guess. Maybe because Steve's feelings are hurt. Can this obsequious-sounding, awfully toady looking relationship be saved?

Well, then the publisher must be up in arms, issuing withering press releases denouncing this abuse of corporate power, this attempt at intimidation and censorship. Dispatching fleets of lawyers, readying their Supreme Court briefs. Surely.

The publisher acknowledged getting "a call" from Apple objecting to the book. So did they tell them, tough harddrive buddy, this is America, nobody gets to tell us what to print? Not exactly. They offered to "consider changes."

But having deballed their author, they weren't silly enough to give in to Apple's sole demand, which was to not publish the book. They couldn't pay for this publicity, etc. Still, when it came to this act of ridding the Apple shelves of ALL their books, they stepped up with this bold pronouncement: "We think it's an unfortunate situation."

It takes another ten paragraphs of the story before the author allows that this might be "chilling." In between, Apple is criticized not for being a corporate bully but for a stupid public relations move (by a "branding expert"), and a professor of marketing, who allows that while corporations should defend themselves, they "have to be careful not to appear too heavy-handed."

Yes, that's sound advice. It's okay to be heavy-handed, as long as you don't appear to be, too much.

Perhaps it's time for the Dash brothers to send over a book proposal to the publisher (who doesn't deserve to be named). We'll call it FIRST AMENDMENT FREEDOMS FOR DUMMIES.

They won't even have to publish it. They just have to read it.