Freedom is as freedom does, and apparently, it ain't doing much in the big world.
The gutless media has a source, and here's an otherwise innocuous little story that suggests what it is. Apple Computers is in a snit over a book on its CEO Steve Jobs, the Aged Boy Genuis (#2), to the extent of not only pulling that book off the shelves of its retail stories (gee, they have retail stores?) but all the books by that publisher. ALL of them. Including those computers for dummies books.
So are the dummies revolting? Not exactly. Here's the story I read in the SF Chronicle:
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/04/27/BUGNBCFOHP1.DTL
Apple of course is the company that relaunched itself with TV ads showing them smashing the dictatorship of (presumably) Aged Boy Genius (#1) and standing tall for FREEDOM! That's got to be the lead for this story, right? But possibly no one at the paper was born yet when that commercial ran.
So there's the author quoted in the second graph. Is he OUTRAGED? Is he screaming about freedom and oppression, about corporations acting like Orwellian governments and Steve Jobs like a tin dictator? Let's hear this clarion call, this defense of the author's right to write...
"I have a lot of admiration for the guy." That's the quote. The author is puzzled because the biography, though unauthorized, is admiring. His feelings are hurt, I guess. Maybe because Steve's feelings are hurt. Can this obsequious-sounding, awfully toady looking relationship be saved?
Well, then the publisher must be up in arms, issuing withering press releases denouncing this abuse of corporate power, this attempt at intimidation and censorship. Dispatching fleets of lawyers, readying their Supreme Court briefs. Surely.
The publisher acknowledged getting "a call" from Apple objecting to the book. So did they tell them, tough harddrive buddy, this is America, nobody gets to tell us what to print? Not exactly. They offered to "consider changes."
The publisher letting the subject dictate what the book says about him? But turning their author into a literary eunuch wasn't good enough for Apple. The only change they wanted was for the publisher not to publish the book! The publisher wasn't silly enough to do that. They couldn't buy the publicity they'll get from this, but...isn't there something else at stake here?
So when it came to this act of ridding the Apple shelves of ALL their books, the publisher forthrightly stepped up with this bold pronouncement: "We think it's an unfortunate situation."
Okay, so the people concerned are being a little cautious at first. What about the outside experts the reporter talks to---they must be outraged at this precedent. Why, if Apple can get away with this attempted intimidation of a large publisher, what about the lone voices of dissent, the really independent evaluations?
What about somebody misquoting Thomas Jefferson that "The price of liberty is eternal vigiliance?" (The real quotes are actually better. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty-power is ever stealing from the many to the few..": Wendell Philips, speech against slavery to the Massachusetts legislature in 1852. "It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.-John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790.)
Oh, I forgot---this is a Business story. So the criticism comes from a "branding expert" who says this was a stupid public relations move. And a professor of marketing, who allows that while corporations should defend themselves, they "have to be careful not to appear too heavy-handed."
Yes, that's sound advice. It's okay to be heavy-handed, as long as you don't appear to be, too much.
Finally in the tenth paragraph, the author allows that this is "chilling." Perhaps it's time to send over a book proposal to this publisher (who doesn't deserve to be named). Let's call it FIRST AMENDMENT FREEDOMS FOR DUMMIES.
They won't even have to publish it. They just have to read it.