{"id":46861,"date":"2025-09-20T17:22:25","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T17:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idea.membrane.com\/songwriter\/?p=46861"},"modified":"2025-09-20T20:01:46","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T20:01:46","slug":"moot-mute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/2025\/09\/20\/moot-mute\/","title":{"rendered":"Moot Mute"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Moot Mute (Best Of) #trump #firstamendment\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/KUIiHgSVEMo?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/kingarthur.com\/MegaEpix-Enormous\/multimedia\/XVI\/Moot-Mute-Best-Of.mp3\">Moot-Mute-Best-Of.mp3<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/kingarthur.com\/MegaEpix-Enormous\/multimedia\/XVI\/Moot-Mute-Best-Of.mp4\">Moot-Mute-Best-Of.mp4<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/kingarthur.com\/MegaEpix-Enormous\/multimedia\/XVI\/Moot-Mute.mp3\">Moot-Mute.mp3<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/kingarthur.com\/MegaEpix-Enormous\/multimedia\/XVI\/Moot-Mute.mp4\">Moot-Mute.mp4<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/kingarthur.com\/MegaEpix-Enormous\/multimedia\/XVI\/Moot-Mute-intro.mp3\">Moot-Mute-intro.mp3<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[Refrain]<br \/>\nIn fear of dismay&#8230;<br \/>\n(It&#8217;s hard to say either way)<br \/>\nSilenced!<br \/>\n(Is the mute moot?)<\/p>\n<p>[Bridge]<br \/>\nSilenced!<br \/>\n(Is the mute moot?)<\/p>\n<p>[Refrain]<br \/>\nIn fear of dismay&#8230;<br \/>\n(It&#8217;s hard to say either way)<br \/>\nSilenced!<br \/>\n(Is the mute moot?)<\/p>\n<p>[Outro]<br \/>\nSilenced!<br \/>\n(Is the mute moot?)<br \/>\nQuietly (the tragedy)<br \/>\nFades into the night<br \/>\n(Under thrown shade)<br \/>\nOf the far-right<br \/>\n(Fade)<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2423\" data-end=\"2513\"><strong data-start=\"2423\" data-end=\"2431\">PSA:<\/strong> \u201cKilling humor isn\u2019t funny. Kill humor, kill freedom. Not so funny now, is it?\u201d<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"223\" data-end=\"608\">As an investigative journalist with decades of experience defending the First Amendment, I\u2019ve endured more than my share of danger. My life has been threatened, my family targeted. I\u2019ve been assaulted by both criminals and police, fined, arrested, jailed, and dragged through years of court battles. But never \u2014 not once \u2014 have I seen anything as alarming as what is happening today. During one period of being illegally detained, silenced, and stripped of my rights, I adopted the pseudonym <em data-start=\"657\" data-end=\"667\">Mootmute<\/em>. What is a moot mute? Well, imagine being forced into silence until your very voice becomes a moot point. If you were a town crier and the Queen cut out your tongue, how would you tell the people? If you were a writer pressed so hard that you had to invoke your Fifth Amendment rights, would you become a moot mute? That\u2019s the absurdity of censorship \u2014 to be muted into irrelevance.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"223\" data-end=\"608\">Much to my amusement, when under oath I would ask prosecutors what I wasn\u2019t allowed to say. Their response? They wheeled in file cabinets overflowing with papers they themselves had published, and read aloud, line by line, everything that was now forbidden speech.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, that\u2019s the name \u2014 <em data-start=\"88\" data-end=\"98\">mootmute<\/em>. They tried to silence me, to turn me into a moot mute. Instead, they became my unwitting mouthpiece.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"610\" data-end=\"963\">On September 18, 2025, Donald Trump declared that any television network critical of him would risk having its broadcast license revoked. This came just one day after ABC\u2019s <em data-start=\"783\" data-end=\"803\">Jimmy Kimmel Live!<\/em> was suspended, following the earlier cancellation of <em data-start=\"857\" data-end=\"893\">The Late Show with Stephen Colbert<\/em>. Trump\u2019s message is clear: dissenting voices will not be tolerated.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"965\" data-end=\"1236\">Let\u2019s be perfectly honest: this isn\u2019t about \u201cbias in the media.\u201d This is about censorship. <strong>This is about silencing opposition<\/strong>. This is about killing comedy before it can mock power \u2014 and make no mistake, satire has always been the sharpest blade in democracy\u2019s arsenal.<\/p>\n<h3 data-start=\"1706\" data-end=\"1745\">A Call to Arms \u2014 Through Laughter<\/h3>\n<p data-start=\"1746\" data-end=\"2017\">In protest of this ongoing assault on free speech \u2014 and in solidarity with Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and the many journalists slaughtered around the globe this year \u2014 I am returning to my roots: satirical wit. Words are swords, and right now, satire is our shield.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2019\" data-end=\"2264\">Comedy has always been democracy\u2019s secret weapon. That\u2019s why tyrants fear it, that\u2019s why dictators ban it, and that\u2019s why Trump is trying to kill it. Humor exposes lies. Humor punctures egos. Humor topples emperors who think they wear clothes.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2266\" data-end=\"2421\">Long live comedy. Long live satire. It\u2019s time for all of us to pick up the torch and rise. Sharpen your wit, wield your words, and refuse to be silenced.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"2266\" data-end=\"2421\"><a href=\"https:\/\/everything.membrane.com\/trumpenomics-the-decline-of-the-us\/\"><strong>Trumpenomics: The Decline of America<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong>From the album &#8220;<a href=\"\/songwriter\/tag\/undercover\/\">Undercover<\/a>&#8220;<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moot-Mute-Best-Of.mp3 Moot-Mute-Best-Of.mp4 Moot-Mute.mp3 Moot-Mute.mp4 Moot-Mute-intro.mp3 [Refrain] In fear of dismay&#8230; (It&#8217;s hard to say either way) Silenced! (Is the mute moot?) [Bridge] Silenced! (Is the mute moot?) [Refrain] In fear of dismay&#8230; (It&#8217;s hard to say either way) Silenced! (Is the mute moot?) [Outro] Silenced! (Is the mute moot?) Quietly (the tragedy) Fades into the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9,14,15],"tags":[4166],"class_list":["post-46861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-daniel","category-lyrics","category-mootmute","tag-undercover"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46861"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46861\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46877,"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46861\/revisions\/46877"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kingarthur.com\/songwriter\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}