John Leo speaks truth to the Thought Police at City Journal.

Dumb bit of censorship around here: Idiot alleged actor-comedian Pepe Rubianes has been charged with "insulting Spain," which is apparently against the law, and is facing a €21,000 fine. He spewed venom against Spain and Spaniards using the crudest and most ignorant language on TV3 back in January 2006, as you may remember. If he is charged with "inciting to hatred," he may be looking at three years in jail. Now, for sheer anti-American hatred, it's hard to top this 2003 Rubianes diatribe which we posted back then.

Though Iberian Notes despises Rubianes, we defend his freedom to be an asshole. Which he most certainly is.

More Spanish TV censorship, or at least what they'd call censorship if it was the Super Bowl: They aired the Goya Awards ceremony, Spain's equivalent of the Oscars, on a half-hour delay, I suppose so that no one would say anything offensive. Great. I'm in favor. The TV people have the right to do whatever they want, since it's their show. They can censor invited guests; if the guest doesn't like being censored, he doesn't have to go on the show.

But the Spanish media howled long and hard that the Yanks were committing puritanical censorship when they put the Rolling Stones on a five-second delay at the Super Bowl last year and told them not to sing the line "You'd make a dead man come" from "Start Me Up." I haven't heard any such howling now that they're doing it over here.