Empty Threats

"If you can't take the heat, stay out of the kitchen." -- Harry Truman

   Few things are more foolish than empty threats made in total ignorance of the subject or topic threatened, unless the threatener does, in fact, know the background and assumes listeners will accept what he says. That, however, is a major threat to democracy.
   The current president of the United States has threatened litigation against the TV satire show "Saturday Night Live" because he does not like being mocked.
   And he has called on the Federal Communications Commission to cancel the licenses of CNN and MSNBC because he does not like their coverage of what he says and does.
   The only problem with these threats is that they both clash with the right of free speech and the free press, guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
   Moreover, CNN and MSNBC, as cable-based networks, do not have broadcast licenses so there is nothing to cancel. Individual broadcast stations do have licenses, but networks do not. Neither do cable operations, so the FCC has little, if any, jurisdiction over their operations. The FCC does allocate broadcast frequencies and assign operations to specific places on the span of frequencies, but controlling what is said and done by the companies would amount to government censorship, which is forbidden by the Constitution.
   Likewise, satire has been a highly protected weapon of writers, commentators and entertainers for centuries. To threaten to shut down a news or entertainment operation simply because a government entity or official does not like what is being said is a tactic used by dictatorship to suppress opposition.
   So either the current president does not know the law, traditions or constitutional guarantees or he assumes the rest of the general public is ignorant of American values and will do what he says simply because he says it.
   Therefore, we are dealing with a president who is either ignorant, or chooses to treat the American citizenry as if we are.
   Meanwhile, the American news and entertainment media watch and report on what the senior political leader says and does, putting them into the context of law, reality, and constitutional guarantees.