Snowflake Josh Hawley Seems To Think The 1st Amendment Means Simon & Schuster Has To Give Him A Book Contract

from the not-how-any-of-it-works dept

As a reminder, Josh Hawley is a sedition supporter who should never be near any position of power ever again. In response to his ongoing support for overturning the will of the people, book publishing giant Simon & Schuster made the totally reasonable call that it would refuse to publish the book he was preparing called (hilariously) "The Tyranny of Big Tech." Make no mistake about it: this was Hawley's campaign book to push for the nomination in 2024. The key authoritarian strongman move is to claim that someone else is the tyrant and that you're hear to "save" them. That's Josh Hawley's entire play over the last couple of years: "big tech" is the "tyrant" that he's here to "free" you from, through idiotically bad laws. But it's all a game to him.

Simon & Schuster's statement was pretty straightforward:

After witnessing the disturbing, deadly insurrection that took place on Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Simon & Schuster has decided to cancel the publication of Senator Josh Hawley's forthcoming book, THE TYRANNY OF BIG TECH. We did not come to this decision lightly. As a publisher it will always be our mission to amplify a variety of voices and viewpoints; at the same time we take seriously our larger public responsibility as citizens, and cannot support Senator Hawley after his role in what became a dangerous threat to our democracy and freedom.

Right after that came out, I joked that Hawley -- as per his nonsense attacks on social media -- would claim that this was "unfair censorship" and introduce a new law requiring Simon & Schuster to publish his book. That joke turned out to be closer to reality than even I expected. An hour or so later, little whiny snowflake Josh Hawley, a self-proclaimed Constitutional lawyer, who has a law degree from Yale Law School and clerked at the Supreme Court, claimed that Simon & Schuster not publishing his book was somehow an attack on the 1st Amendment.

The statement reads:

My statement on the woke mob at Simon & Schuster:

This could not be more Orwellian. Simon & Schuster is canceling my contract because I was representing my constituents, leading a debate on the Senate floor on voter integrity, which they have now decided to redefine as sedition. Let me be clear, this is not just a contract dispute. It's a direct assault on the First Amendment. Only approved speech can now be published. This is the Left looking to cancel everyone they don't approve of. I will fight this cancel culture with everything I have. We'll see you in court.

Every single thing that Hawley says in this is utter bullshit. It's almost embarrassing. First of all, anyone who thinks that one of the world's biggest publishing houses is a "woke mob" is delusional. But, it's even worse to use the word "mob" the day after you helped inspire an actual mob to storm the Capitol building in order to overthrow the results of an election.

Hawley has no legal claim here at all. The 1st Amendment doesn't govern this at all. He has every right to speak his mind, but he has no right to force a giant publishing house to give him a massive book contract to help his nascent Presidential campaign. If he wants to publish such a book, I hear Amazon has pretty good self-publishing tools that would allow him to do so. As to a bunch of other self-publishing platforms. Isn't technology amazing?

And, since Hawley wants to be "clear" the only Orwellian here is Hawley himself -- trying to spread his populist authoritarianism by redefining what words mean to suit his own naked greed and ambition.

But, really, all of this is just consequences for your own actions, Josh. You know, the kind of thing you used to pretend was what "conservatives" believed in.

Filed Under: 1st amendment, authoritarian goofball, big tech, cancel culture, contracts, free market, josh hawley, sedition
Companies: simon & schuster