Back in my
college days, there was a
sophomore who had a
letter appear in every weekly issue of the
campus newspaper. He apparently wrote
tons of
letters to the editor -- half of which were
indignant accusations of
censorship because the paper didn't print one of his letters ("You sent three letters this week," the editor would note, "and we do have other stuff to
print") or didn't print the entire
text of his letters ("It went on for five pages, single-spaced," came the reply, "How are we supposed to have room for all that?"
His letters were also quite
controversial -- he was
loudly opposed to
abortion, non-
Baptists (his famous "
Methodists are going to
hell because they don't
dunk" letter),
Disney cartoons (he said they promoted
occultism,
one-worldism,
pansexuality, and
Islam),
women's rights ("If
God had meant
women to have
equality with
men, He would have given them
penises." Yes, he really said that in one letter. Yes, the whole campus was
flabbergasted), and letting the
football players eat in the
cafeteria (He said they ate all the
sausage pizza). Of course, many
students and
faculty wrote letters of their own to
disagree with or
refute his letters, prompting him to write more letters to the paper, accusing both the
newspaper and the other letter-writers of depriving him of his
right to free speech by the simple act of using their right to
free speech to
disagree with him.
Up to this point, he was just a
weirdo who wrote lots of letters, but during the spring semester, he upped the
ante when he started handing out
leaflets in front of the cafeteria. Nobody really cared that much -- most people I knew read them for
giggles -- but one day, he handed one of his leaflets to a girl who was going into the cafeteria. She took it,
crumpled it in one hand, dropped it on the ground in front of him, and walked off. That was, apparently,
too much. He
tackled her as she was picking up her tray, knocked her to the floor, and hit her twice (minor damage -- a couple of
bruises on her arm). Her
boyfriend, who was standing right next to her, one of his
friends, and the
cafeteria manager grabbed the guy and wrestled him to the floor. Then he started yelling, "
Censorship!
Censorship!
Censorship!" And he kept it up until the
campus police got there and
arrested him.
As it turned out, he was
lucky, because the girl decided she didn't want to press charges, and the cafeteria manager contented himself with
banning him from the cafeteria. However, the
newspaper editor was in the cafeteria when the incident happened, and she made no
secret of the fact that she planned to write the whole thing up as a
story for the paper. The letter-writer
raved and
threatened, but the
editor told him to get bent. So on the day the paper was published, the letter-writer took a quick morning tour around the campus, picking up every
stack of papers he could and
stowing them in his car. His plan to
suppress the
media didn't last long -- he got picked up by the
campus cops after his third stop. His
defense was, again, that arresting him for
theft violated his right to free speech. The newspaper editor
gleefully had him charged, and his
court-appointed lawyer told him to quit flapping his gums and take the
plea offered by the
DA. We didn't hear from him again -- I never found out whether the
university had him kicked out or if he just split town in
disgrace...
