"It would be a horrid shame to see President Sarkozy’s son intermix."

As commenters have pointed out here and at Roger Cohen's piece, free speech is not some kind of tenure for racist entertainers. It's about limiting the government's right to intervene, not about a constitutional right (extending, strangely, to France--don't they get to have their own laws?) of bigots to be paid large sums of money to broadcast what they really think.

Now that that's settled, it's worth revisiting what, exactly, Cohen thinks constitutes freedom of speech, if it's something other than the First Amendment, and if it, whatever it is, does not protect Imus. Given his heroic non-deleting of comments to his article, it appears free speech means the freedom to have your say about the Jews before a wide audience.

So, a look at those comments, beginning with the most bizarre...

"I am really offended by this article. Paris is based upon a Catholic faith, as are numerous cities in America. It’s very disturbing to see outside religions mix, particularly when it comes to history and prominent families. It would be a horrid shame to see President Sarkozy’s son intermix. He can love whomever he wishes, but for God’s sake, do not change the purity of religious basis in France. Remember WW2. Please remember that the Jews financed and provoked every war in history. This information is according to numerous men that fought in WW2. It’s not a matter of being anti-semitic, it is a matter of preserving other religions and higher moral standards in which many people believe and live by everyday."

Wow, every war in history! Even in places without any Jews! This comment appears just a bit ignorant of the history of French secularism, not to mention of Sarkozy's own lineage, but I'm not totally sure the comment itself isn't a joke. So, moving on, this time from a longer comment about how anti-Semitism is justified because Jews are so Jewy...

"An unregulated wall street (read cdo s and sivs and morgage sausage) is bringing this country to it’s knees. Read the names. The Jewish neocons at DOD and the WH, particularly the vice president’s office…and AIPAC in congress got their war. Has no one noticed?"

OMG yes! Indeed, this commenter is the first person ever to notice that the Jews control everything. So it's a good thing he pointed that out. The "read the names" comment brings us back, of course, to the name of the columnist. I don't know if he's Jewish, but sounds like the commenters have it figured out. Now, onto a comment that hits upon a theme in a bunch of them...

"Jews today do not suffer from anti-Semitism, at least not the anti-Semitism that sent them to the gas chambers in Europe."

Right, this is true: if bigotry fails to lead to a sufficiently gruesome genocide, it's not bigotry at all. I mean, I could live with the anti-Semitism that leads to execution-style shootings, or the anti-Semitism that leads to torture in a warehouse, but the variant that leads to gassing, that I will not stand for! As always, denials that anti-Semitism still exists sit alongside some of the most openly anti-Semitic comments. Why? Because the anti-Semitism of today never lives up to the sort we saw images of on our school trip to a Holocaust museum.

There were some other good ones, including, "In the USA, the Jews own and control most of the media. I see now the Jews trying to do same thing here in Europe," and, "I suggest that all Zionists move from Europe to Israel. We don’t need your poison here." The latter is interesting, since ostensibly the anti-Zionists care about the plight of the Palestinians, and thus would want fewer Zionists in Israel. Or might "Zionists" be code for something else? There was also some man from Germany, with one of those names (a German one) exercising his freedom of speech admirably.

The Zionist left is struggling to grapple with the fact that the way to show your courage on the left (or on the isolationist right) these days (as always) is by daring to speak out against the cabal. What strength it must take, given that the Jews control everything, to shout from the rooftops how much you hate them! It's like some kind of triumph of the will.