The recent fuss over a Camp Pendleton Marine who received local and national attention for maintaining a quasi-political Facebook page reminded me that freedom of speech isn’t really free. If you think you can say anything you want in this country and not have to pay, think again. And if you don’t believe me, try the following social experiments:
Tell your boss what you really think of his idea to cut office staff by half and double your workload without an increase in salary.
If you’re a man, the next time you’re involved in a heated discussion with a female, ask if her irrational behavior is because of her period.
If you’re a female and your boyfriend or husband asks you if you think his hairline is receding, his stomach is bigger and the hair on his ears is bushier, tell him not when you compare him to a pot-bellied pig.
Attend a City Council meeting and tell an individual exercising their freedom of speech during public comment – or a pontificating council person speaking from the dais – to “Shuuuuutttt uppppp, for the love of God shuuuuttttt uppppp!”
Speaking your mind, while it has its rewards, comes at a price.
You may be escorted outside and away from council chambers free to address the public from the nearby parking lot.
Your boss may suddenly realize you’re not a team player and find that your coworker, who has a mortgage, a kid in college and a sick spouse, is a greater, far more loyal asset to the company than you.
Your wife and or girlfriend may answer your most indelicate of questions by inviting you to do things to yourself and to sleep on the couch for an undetermined amount of time.
Your husband, faced with the knowledge that he’s no longer the movie screen stud he always imagined himself to be will sullenly pout and insist that nothing is wrong while he ignores you the entire weekend.
As most adults know, there are answers and then there is the truth. And while we’d really like to speak our mind, we censor ourselves because we realize there is a price to pay for saying the wrong thing to the wrong person at the wrong time.
And while most of those social affronts will not land you in jail, they could land you in the unemployment line, on the couch or on the outside looking in.
So the next time someone tells you they have a right to free speech, remind them that in one way or another they will pay.
Boy, will they pay.
