I know many of my friends are happy or taking some pleasure at the expense of Whoopi Goldberg. There is no doubt that she said some things that were ignorant but that is what she does. if you are one of those people who thinks she deserves what she is getting and wants her to be fired, you might be walking across the line of hypocrisy.

Let me first say that there is some bit of truth in what she was trying to explain although I think her motives and understanding are flawed. My interpretation of what she said had to do with the Jews being exterminated in Nazi Germany. The Germans certainly identified the Jews as a race as have many people. The Nazis through their propaganda certainly identified them as a race. But the Holocaust was not limited to the extermination or enslaving of Jews. Many people were put in camps where they were used as slave labor until they died or were exterminated because they could not be used as slaves simply because of physical deformities or mental conditions. So without knowing why, she was correct to say that the Holocaust was not solely about race.

Having said that, Whoopi has just as much of a right to say what she would like as anyone else. She can be ignorant, hateful, derogatory, or anything else in what she says. There are very few legitimate limits on free speech in our country and that is the way it should be.

If you have been upset with big tech, such as Facebook or Google, censoring conservative speech or opinions with which they disagree, then you should be upset about the calls to censor Whoopi. She did not engage in any of the types of speech that are legitimately controlled or banned under the First Amendment protections of our right to free speech.

I am not sure I would have gone as far as to suspend her. Certainly her employer has the right to do so if they believe her speech is harmful to the conduct and success of their business. I might have put out a statement expressing my support for everyone's right to speak freely but that I also strongly disagree with her opinions. I would explain, if it were my network, that we are protectors of people’s rights. As a business person I might make a decision to remove her or the show or possibly move it to a different time slot based on simple business principles such as viewership or advertising revenue generated.

Sometimes protecting the rights of others is difficult. But we must stand by those principles that we hold dear. That is one of the core principles of a successful Republic.