Description

This second volume covers Barry Lynn’s efforts as an ACLU lawyer to defend the First Amendment “free speech” rights of everyone from promoters of controversial products including tobacco and condoms to flag burners and rockstars. His discussion of his efforts to discredit the Reagan era “Commission on Pornography” is full of anecdotes about observing the Commission as it travelled the country, even spending an evening in Houston’s seediest “porn stores.” Commission member and architect of the Religious Right, Dr, James Dobson, told him “you destroyed all the good work we tried to accomplish”. Lynn’s view of speech is that “everyone wants the government to ban something but if they all succeeded we would end up reading magazines with blank pages and watching only static on television screens”. Award-winning comedian Lewis Black has said the book “brilliantly expresses his ideas with wit, humor and panache.”