Source: Bigstock

Here’s a wacky anecdote for ya.

April 30, 1998, 3:30 p.m. My girlfriend Sarah and I had just gotten back from lunch at Red Lobster (I’m not black, neither was she. But damn we loved fried fish), and she had to speed off to an audition for boobie bimbo No. 2 in Attack of the Zombie Drywallers. So I’m home alone and I turn on the TV (for you Zoomers, that was a thing in the ’90s), and I see the news anchors on the local NBC affiliate, faces pale as ghosts.

“Oh dear God, we’re sorry. Please…we’re sorry for what you just saw.”

What the fuck, I thought. Did Tom Brokaw fart or something?

No, it was too early for Brokaw. Plus, he wore insulating diapers to muffle his legendary flatulence.

I change the channel to the CBS affiliate.

“We extend our most sincere apologies to our viewers. Please forgive us.”

Holy shit, what just happened? What’d I miss?

I turn to the ABC affiliate.

“To the children who witnessed it, parents can call the station to be connected with counselors.”

It was killing me! Something really bad had just gone down, live on every channel, and I had no idea what.

Here’s what: A homo-neurotic named Daniel Jones, who’d been diagnosed with terminal cancer and then a week later with full-blown AIDS—because God loves piling it on thick—had used his pickup truck to block the interchange between the 110 and 105 freeways. He draped a sign about “free love” and “evil HMOs” over the freeway edge—at this point every local news station was there with their choppers—and as soon as Jones saw that he had the eyes of the city on him, he poured gasoline on himself and lit a match.

Amazingly, a dude who had butt sex in the time of AIDS and was surprised he got sick was shocked that pouring gasoline on himself and lighting a match hurt like a mutherfucker.

If only the guy’d been protesting Israel, he’d have had the gumption to stand and burn.

But not Jones. He ripped off his burning clothes and returned to his truck to retrieve a double-barreled shotgun. As the news copters circled overhead, broadcasting live, Jones put the gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.

And since he’d shed his pants, when he blew off the top of his head, simultaneously a tsunami of poop shot out of his ass and splattered the concrete (yes, humans evacuate when they die, especially if their anal muscles have been relaxed by years of gay sex).

Most of the local stations had interrupted their after-school cartoons to broadcast the live event. The local Fox affiliate, for example, had been running The Amazing Spider-Man before cutting in with the Jones footage.

So for thousands of L.A. kids, this was their afternoon:

Spider-Man: “Hey, Doc Ock—your freeze ray can’t withstand the might of my Spidey web!”

Doc Ock: “We’ll see about THAT, Spider Man—this city will be MINE!”

Cut to a dude blowing his head off, littering a freeway with brains and feces.

Spider-Man: “Jesus Christ!”

Doc Ock: “Dude!”

Spider-Man: “I’m fucking traumatized…”

Doc Ock: “Hold me, Spider-Man…I’m literally shaking.”

Frustrated by not having seen the event, I called my buddy who sold “death film” videos (if there was footage of real-life death, he’d have it), and I said, “I gotta see that freeway poopshoot thing.” And he was like, “No prob; I’ll send you a VHS.”

And you know what? That was totally legal.

A few weeks ago I mentioned how in 2010 SCOTUS ruled (8 to 1, Alito being the only dissenter) that disseminating fetish videos of puppies being killed (videos sold to pervs who masturbate to animal cruelty) is legal. And I was surprised by the fact that many of you didn’t recall the case. I was even more surprised that several of you expressed outrage over it.

But sure it’s legal. Selling videos of Daniel Jones blowing his skull apart while fudging a freeway is legal as well.

Why would video of human death be legal, but video of animal death not be legal?

What you’re responding to in your discomfort over the SCOTUS decision isn’t so much the material but what perverted humans were doing with the material. The material was encouraging sickness, aiding sickness.

SCOTUS’ reasoning was logical, if uncomfortable. The possession of videos of death is protected speech. SCOTUS rejected the argument that video of death should be treated like kiddie porn, in which simple possession is prohibited. Willful complicity in death is illegal, of course. But just owning footage of death? Totally legal. That applies to deaths that have legit news value, like Bergen-Belsen, JFK, Oswald, Bill Stewart, Luis Colosio, and the 9/11 jumpers, deaths that are more of a novelty than a historical event (Daniel Jones), and deaths that people masturbate to, like puppies being killed.

Upsetting, huh? But again, SCOTUS was right; you can’t restrict speech based on what pervs might do with it. Use it for a history book? Write a term paper on it? Furiously fap to it? We can’t regulate speech because a handful of sick individuals respond to said speech in a sick way.

Yet…most of you will still feel a revulsion knowing that there’s an entire network of creeps who jack off to videos of puppy death.

It’s likely that some of you who are like, “Okay, disseminating and owning puppy-kill videos may be legal, but I’d never want to spread that filth and I’d surely never champion someone who does,” are also like, “Good on Elon Musk! His widespread dissemination of Holocaust denial and Jew-hatred shows what a hero of free speech he is! Why, by God, I may not agree with Holocaust deniers, but I’ll fight to the death for their right to yada-yada-yada.”

But we’re not talking First Amendment here. This is not the government. We’re talking about a private entity—Twitter (or, as the plate-lipped albino renamed it, “X”). If you’re really an “I don’t agree but I’ll fight to the death” guy, why champion Holocaust deniers, and those who disseminate Holocaust denial, without doing the same for puppy-torture fappers, and those who disseminate puppy-torture fapping videos?

Congress has never tried to outlaw Holocaust denial, but it did try to outlaw puppy torture videos.

Wouldn’t a true “free-speech patriot” make defending that content a priority?

So where’s “free-speech Elon” on this? Why isn’t he retweeting and boosting puppy death vids the way he’s doing with Holocaust denial? It’s court-protected free speech!

Where are the “but I’ll fight to the death yabba-dabba-doo” blatherers?

Okay, let’s cut to the chase, why don’t we? There’s always a connection between the speech that “fight to the death rama-lama-ding-dong” showboaters boost, and the speech they think has value. You might suggest that the speech of Elon’s beloved Holocaust-denying Nazi Lucas Gage has more value than a video of a puppy being set on fire, because at least Gage’s words are political in nature.

“Oh, I don’t agree with him, but I’ll fight to the death skibbidibeebop.”

But the majority ruling in the animal cruelty video case specifically made the point that you can’t regulate speech based on a values test. A poop joke is as protected as an economic treatise.

Value doesn’t matter. It simply doesn’t, under the law.

Be honest: At heart, you don’t want to encourage puppy torture. You know this about yourself. And I’m certain that Elon doesn’t want to encourage puppy torture either. And he knows, and you know, that flooding Twitter with puppy torture videos would embolden a terrible subset of pervs.

That this gives you pause is good. Just because SCOTUS ruled that something’s protected doesn’t mean it deserves to be boosted.

Elon’s coddled buddy Gage (this is the guy baseball legend Curt Schilling retweeted) declared, “slay the Jews.” Does “slay the Jews” have more “value” than “slay the puppies”?

C’mon, “value testers.” Answer the question. You don’t want to encourage sickos who fap to videos of slain puppies (i.e., you’re concerned with actions that result from the speech), but you’re not concerned with the potential actions of those “turned on” by “slay the Jews”?

That friend I mentioned earlier, the guy I called in 1998 to get the footage of the fudge-fountain freeway suicide?

Nick Bougas. Yes, “A. Wyatt Mann,” the artist responsible for the “happy merchant” Jew caricature. I’ve known Nick thirty years. He’s a purposely transgressive artist and a damn good one; sorry, groyper retards—your meme god is good friends with Jews.

But whereas Musk ferociously protects the use of Nick’s racially offensive cartoons, he neither allows nor boosts the kind of “real death” videos that Nick was doing in the ’90s, even though such videos are equally protected speech.

Again, here’s where we have to look in the mirror. Why do some of us see one of Nick’s “transgressions” as more worthy of boosting than the other?

The purposely ugly Jewish caricatures?

“I’ll fight to the death!”

His videos of people getting their heads exploded?

“There’s no value in that! I shall not fight to the death, sir! I say, I say, I shall not!”

The point I’m making is, as a guy with rather moderate views if I may say so myself, yet a guy oddly tarred as some kind of toxic beast, I find free-speech showboating severely irritating. Yes, it’s all protected by the First Amendment. As it should be. Also yes, your showboating is hypocritical because you’ll champion the worst-of-the-worst historical falsifiers because it makes you feel good about yourself, but when asked why you won’t champion dog-death fetish videos—protected speech, according to SCOTUS—you’ll be like, “Well, I don’t want to encourage that!”

Sure, I’m writing with a personal bias. Routinely defamed as a Holocaust denier, I’m literally banned from everywhere (once Amazon says it won’t carry your books, good luck finding a publisher). And I get little support because the “fight to the death” assholes prefer showboating by defending actual Holocaust deniers. There’s not much showboat potential in coming to my aid.

So I like calling ’em out.

Tweet a puppy torture video!

Hey Elon, tweet a puppy torture video!

Fight to the death, death-fighters!

Either be discerning (aha! A callback to last week’s column) and spend your time supporting speech with actual value, or boost all First Amendment-protected speech, and that includes videos of puppies set on fire. Either “value” matters (not in terms of legal protection, but your support), or it doesn’t.

But of course, being discerning takes effort. So much easier to just recite a “fight to the death” cliché and strut away like a cock.

Well, I’m not gonna let you off the hook that easy.

Tweet a puppy torture video.

Looks like the brave speech warriors just farted and flew out the window.

Wait, sorry—that was Brokaw.