12-17-2008, 03:16 PM
davester wrote:
The US legal definition is extremely broad and I'm not a lawyer so don't care...
...in many cases, exercising free speech by yelling at someone is "assault", in which case your original statement "assault is not freedom of speech" falls apart.
Wrong. Show me a case where merely yelling at someone was assault and where the case had a successful conviction. Even if you can provide one, you can't provide "many." The only time yelling at someone could be assault is if what was yelled was a violent threat. And to get a successful conviction, you'd also likely need to be able to show that the violent threat was able to be immediately followed through with. So my original statement does not fall apart. An example of yelling being assault would need to be something along the lines of a guy yelling that he was going to beat your head with a hammer, and he would need to be actually holding said hammer and be near enough to you that it's a possibility he could actually do it. Whereas, simply yelling "I hate you and wish you were dead" is not assault.
Hurling an object at someone with the intent to injure is assault. I understand the insult, and I did read the article and other background to the story. You can't tell me that, even with the primary intent to insult, that it can't be expected that throwing objects at peoples' heads wouldn't cause injury. And if you were more familiar with the insult, you'd know that the insult is specifically about the bottom of a shoe making contact with a person's head. The reporter's target was in fact Bush's head. If we didn't believe that something thrown at our heads would injure us, we wouldn't instinctively duck.
Cultural relativism is no excuse for throwing objects at peoples' heads or otherwise doing harm. Beheading infidels is also a form of protected free speech otherwise. Yes, that is an extreme example, but you opened that can of worm by saying the simple yelling is assault. Or course, it isn't.
I agree that Bush played it cool and was wise to dismiss it. This was the best course of action for him. It would have looked very bad if he had made a big deal of it.