Super Bowl Sunday is a great day for sports, a huge day for advertising, and a lousy day for the First Amendment.
It's the one day of the year that every interest group and every advocacy group has its thought police on duty (see this from USA Today) looking for any ad that might be "offensive" to them. It's the day that advertisers and agencies fold like single-ply toilet paper when some spokesman for some cause issues a press release about their "offensive" spot.
Am I in favor of offending people? No.
But I am in favor of free speech. And the whole idea of the First Amendment is to protect your right and mine to offend whomever the hell we want whenever the hell we want to.
It's a right that is quickly disappearing.
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