Objectify This

NPR ran not one but two recent pieces about a pending Supreme Court case. It’s about Hillary: The Movie, which is a politically motivated defamation of the nation’s first female candidate which would have aired the night before the Democratic primary on Pay-Per-View TV.

Because the group that made the movie, Citizens United, is a for-profit corporation, they’re not necessarily entitled to such overtly political actions.

According to Tara Molloy, associate legal counsel for the Campaign Legal Center, who participated in NPR’s discussion of the case on their show On Point, free speech as a right does not pertain to for-profit corporations in the same way it does to individuals. In the discussion, she cited the fact that corporations annually make about $1 billion dollars in profit, while even Obama’s groundbreaking campaign raised only $47 million dollars. It’s easy to see that if we allow corporations to make huge donations, they’re going to be able to ‘outvote’ the public with their wallets.

On On Point, Allison Hayward, assistant professor of law at George Mason University, disagreed. She argues that as a form of entertainment, Hillary: The Movie should be protected as part of free speech.

Personally, I just don’t buy that: it seems crazy to argue that corporations should have the rights of people. They are not people, and they don’t necessarily represent the people who buy things from them or work for them. Those people can represent themselves at the voting booth. It’s time to kick the elephant out of the room.