Subj: Your column today in SF Chronicle
Date: 99-07-29 15:19:29 EDT
From: LouisWJ
To: [email protected] (Adair Lara)

And so something has been taken from you.  Indeed.  Others in our society are depriving you of your right to focus your attention wherever you please.  Is this society's intention?  No!

You should know, if you don't already, that free speech junkies (that includes court figures) contend First Amendment free speech gives some persons the "right" to surround you and incessantly imbed "messages" (commercial, political or whatever) into your brain cells, and this "right" comes to them under the guise of free speech.  The human rights of the unwilling listener or viewer are not considered at all.

I suggest you phone a college law professor or two asking where in the Constitution is there established a right of one citizen to intrude on the sensibilities of another (In actuality there is no such right or freedom.  The Constitution gives rights against the government, not against one's fellow beings).

NO CONSTITUTIONAL LAW SCHOLAR CAN SHOW ANY INTENTION ON THE PART OF THE NATION'S FOUNDERS TO PRESCRIBE AS TO CONDUCT OF ONE CITIZEN AS REGARDS ANOTHER.   This was left to the common law.

There is nowhere in civilized society a "right" to another's attention.  Yet, because of the idiotic interpretation of the free speech clause, your attention is monopolized (billboards, newspaper and magazine ads, mail box junk, radio and TV).  It's called commercial free speech.

A truly civilized person will politely first ask, "May I have your attention?"
 

Louis Worth Jones
 
 
 

1999