Pribek

There’s a story going around about Brigitte Bardot.

Wait…let me preface with this.

On the left there is, Brigitte Bardot, how she looks today. She is 73 years old. On the right, is more like the way us geezers think of Brigitte Bardot. There is a problem that occurs when you look real good when you are young; people remember.

Anyway, Brigitte Bardot is in the news.

French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of “inciting racial hatred” over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

Prosecutors asked that the Paris court hand the 73-year-old former sex symbol a two-month suspended prison sentence and fine her 15,000 euros ($23,760) for saying the Muslim community was “destroying our country and imposing its acts”.

What’s worse than being a “former sex symbol”?

How does anything get done in France? I mean, it always throws me back when I see a government attempting to regulate speech. But, fining someone $24K for saying that Muslims are, “destroying our country and imposing its acts”; How is that helpful? Is it meant as a warning; “Don’t say those kinds of things”. If it is, it isn’t working because this is the 5th time around for Ms. Bardot. She has been charged with “inciting racial hatred” more times than Lindsay Lohan has been to re-hab.

Well, that’s the charge, I guess; “inciting racial hatred”. I guess they are trying to stop people from inciting.

Stuff like this is pointless. Trying to impose penalties on people so they won’t say certain things doesn’t work.

It doesn’t work because, you can’t regulate thought. There is no way you can impose a law that will stop people from thinking any certain way. What you can do, is put fear in to people so they won’t talk about it. You can silence the mouth but, not the mind.

What would you rather have, a few people running around saying things or, a bunch of people thinking those same things but, not saying anything about it?

Me, I’m for a system of “let any whack job say whatever the hell they want”. See, because I’d rather be able to identify the whack jobs. I don’t feel comfortable with a bunch of silent whack jobs running around plotting and scheming.

So, I’m not for the French system of fining former sex symbols. But, I’m not real enthused about how we handle this stuff over here either.

What we do here, when somebody says some crazy shit is, we make them apologize then, we try to ruin their lives and take down those around them.

It’s a different approach but, it leads down the same road.