recent Lerner Broohaha

[Stephen E Philion]

I must be missing something with all this rhetoric about 'right to
speak'. What if IAC found a rabbi who spoke to the Israeli-palestinian
issue from a perspective that did not agree with Lerner's. Would not
having Lerner on stage to speak then also be considered 'taking away
his right to speak'?
I've organized rallies before, the people I worked with on the rally
never entertained having people speak who might take the opportunity to
criticise those of us who had done the bulk of the organising, I'm not
really clear what the big deal is with Lerner's not being given a
podium to speak. Who next? Todd Gitlin? Leo Casey? What if Norman
Finkelstein or Lenni Brenner or Adam Shapiro were invited to speak, 
would Lerner still be denied his 'right to speak'?

The rhetoric of 'right to speak' is really odd given that Lerner will
be interviewed by the mainstream media, which will give him numerous
platforms to criticise the anti-war march organisers, he will get to be
on shows like the Oreilly Factor if he so wishes, write editorials in
the NYT trashing the anti-war mov't organisers a la Todd Gitlin, etc.
If I were one of the organisers anticipating the sure to come trashing
of the organisers before and after the protest, I'd wanna be sure that
the people on the podium weren't about to trash us. I try to imagine a
rally sponsored by Lerner that would invite persons like Finkelstein or
Chomsky...somehow I can't quite fathom it. I'm utterly bemused by the
uproar being made in this instance.
Steve