Would you really say that a society where no one is ever held accountable for what they say is the alternative to what happened to Sacco? Imagine if someone wi

Would you really say that a society where no one is ever held accountable for what they say is the alternative to what happened to Sacco? Imagine if someone with a lot of twitter followers interpreted the statement you just made here as a veiled death threat, unleashing a raging mob against you, ultimately leading the utter destruction of your life as you knew it. Would you say that you were being held accountable for what you just said and that any society that did not do that to you had to be one where no one was being held accountable for anything they say? Demanding that people should be held accountable for what they say is so generic that it allows for any kind of reaction to just about anything anyone could ever say. The islamists who killed the Charlie Hebdo caroonists could have said the exact same thing. Proportionality is important. Also, Sacco's case clearly shows that there are always lots of people out there who are waiting for an opportunity to bully others, regardless of how contrived and intellectually disingenuous the pretext may be. Portraying a joke about racism or race relations as a racist joke is just daft. I can't believe that many people honestly felt that Sacco was being racist. They just wanted to bully someone.