THE STATUS OF THE HEARER IN MR. MADISON'S NEIGHBORHOOD

Witness the Court's treatment of the pathetic liar in United States v. Alvarez,7 whose false claims about having received a Congressional Medal of Honor were recycled by the Court as dignitary efforts at self-definition;8 or the Court's characterization of the ugly antigay bigots in Snyder v. Phelps,9 who hijacked the funeral of a young soldier killed in Afghanistan as a launching pad for their messages of hate directed at the soldier's grieving family, as instrumental speakers commenting on public issues.10 And then, there is the wise guy in Elonis v. United States11 who terrified his ex-wife on the Internet by quoting violent rap lyrics aimed at her on his web site, and got away with it because the Court did not want to burden Internet speakers with a criminally enforceable duty to avoid speech that they knew or should have known would frighten a particular target;12 and the teenage cross-burners who frightened black families newly arrived in a white neighborhood by burning crosses on sidewalks abutting their homes, but were treated by the Court as protected speakers in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt of a subjective intent to frighten their new neighbors.13 I do not recall in the intensely speaker-centered opinions anything but a passing reference to the interests or concerns of the other participants in the process. in Alvarez, did the families of genuine Medal of Honor winners feel that their husband's or father's heroic act of self-sacrifice had been cheapened? [...]the speakers were instrumentally useless,...