Mark Middleton’s Blog

Freedom either is or it isn’t

There’s two parts to freedom

1. What I do, I own.
2. What you do, you own.

There’s absolutely nothing that “you do to me” or “I do to you”. Freedom is either entirely free, or it’s not freedom. When I want my “freedom of speech” or my “freedom of diversity”, if it’s just for me, it’s not freedom. I’m no Paris Hilton fan, she’s doing her thing, I’m doing mine - and the two don’t cross their paths very much. But recently, she’s been under attack for some comments she made on a video some time ago.

If I ask for people to give me space and total freedom to say what I think, be who I want to be and express myself my way - I can’t then turn on somebody when they have something that they want to express - even it offends me. Paris might be a bitch, have horrible things to say and she might even be a racist, homophobic freak (she might be… I don’t know what’s going on inside her heart… only she does - and whether she is or isn’t is not any of my business.)

According to the article,

“Hilton has an obligation to go on the record, explain herself, and publicly apologize to the LGBT and African American communities and all those offended by these slurs.”

Bullshit.

The only harm she has done is to herself, not me. I’m me, she is not me. If I take offense to something somebody else says - it’s an offense that is going on inside of me… I’m not a victim of Paris Hilton.

“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.” - Hermann Hesse

We continually ask for equal rights, but it seems like what the message we are delivering is - “I want my right to be me, but if somebody else offends me, I want them to change to be what I think they should be”… how is that equal?

(now replace “Paris Hilton” with “Isaiah Washington” above, and repost this)

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