Interviewer: So Granny, this is a nice little business enterprise you've made for yourself.
Granny: Yes, censorship opens up a surprising number of commercial opportunities.
Interviewer: So, in taking this opportunity would you call yourself a free-speech heroine, or a trouble-maker?
Granny: I don't aim to be either, although heroism often does cause trouble -- for someone.
Interviewer: Will it make trouble for you if someone decides your speech is too incorrect? Aren't you afraid of being shot?
Granny: Yes -- so this is bullet-proof glass I'm sitting behind.
Interviewer: Ah. Opinions can be dangerous. Maybe you should add a Danger-Pay Surcharge to your fee.
Granny: Really, speech should be free. If someone is wise and broke, I'll express their forbidden thoughts gratis. (But don't tell the rich folks ...) Everything is monetized now. Your own magazine charges buyers or advertisers to read your words.
Interviewer: True. I see you have quite an audience around your booth. Do some get upset if they don't approve when you contradict fashionably-correct attitudes?
Granny: I do get an audience, but no one has to stay and listen if something offends them. The other side of free speech is the freedom to not listen.
Interviewer: You're performing a public service, eh?
Granny: Indeed. I'm retired, I've got my little pension, I can afford to do this because I don't have to please an employer who could fire me for expressing what their pollsters have determined are not the popular public attitudes of the moment.
Interviewer: Well good luck, Granny! Stay safe.
Granny: I'll be fine. The up-side of being an old granny is that by being dismissed by influencers and virtue-signallers, we oldsters are also often overlooked by cancel-culture.
* * *
"Democracy is not about how many people vote but about how many people feel free to say what they think in public".
-- V. Ramaswamy, 2022
"... in the sunset of life ... I feel it my special mission to tell people what they are not prepared to hear."
-- Elizabeth Cady Stanton,1898
