Jim Moran’s latest desires for censorship involve private advertising, once again [1]. “Sick & Sicker,” a documentary chronicling the consequences of the Affordable Care Act, has purchased advertising space in a Clarendon WMATA station. Their ad includes the words “Barack Obama wants politicians and bureaucrats to control America’s entire medical system. Go to hell Barack.”
This exhortation was apparently too much for Mr. Moran, calling it “deeply disrespectful of the President of the United States and does not belong” in Washington, DC. He also told the General Manager of WMATA, “minimum standards of decency must be maintained through a vetting process….surely this ad does not meet those standards.”
When WMATA refused to take down the advertisement, citing free speech rights, Moran doubled down: “If their current advertising guidelines do not prohibit profane advertisements on taxpayer-funded property, then WMATA should take the initiative and update them. Profanity has no place in the public forum.”
Forgetting for a moment that the word, “hell,” and even the phrase “go to hell,” does not meet even the FCC’s definition of profanity, let us remember that Representative Moran, while speaking to a crowd of 450 people (and while being funded with taxpayer money), told his constituents [2], “When I become chairman [of a House appropriations subcommittee], I’m going to earmark the shit out of it.”
So apparently, “hell” fits into Moran’s own special little definition of profanity. Sounds to me like he is trying to legislate his own version of morality.
(It couldn’t be that he’s just trying to silence opposition, could it?)
