This past week ESPN pulled Hank Williams Jr.’s “Are You Ready for Some Football” song from its Monday Night Football telecast in response to Williams invoking Hitler when discussing President Obama on Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends. Originally cutting the song for only one week, ESPN later decided to ax the song from its broadcast altogether, although Williams has since claimed that he made the decision to pull the song himself after, in his words, “[ESPN] stepped on the Toes of the First Amendment Freedom of Speech.”  The controversy is reminiscent of Dr. Laura Schlessinger’s decision to end her long-running talk radio show last year, following a public outcry after she used the n-word eleven times in five minutes on one of her broadcasts. On Larry King Live, Schlessinger explained she was ending her show to “regain [her] First Amendment rights.”

In both Williams’ and Schlessinger’s cases, however, their interpretations of the First Amendment are erroneous, and likely designed to invoke sympathy among fellow conservatives. Conservatives frequently coopt the language of victimization whenever they feel put upon – evidenced by recent talk of the “poor” millionaires whose taxes President Obama wants to raise – and there’s often no underlying logic behind the rhetoric.

(There’s also no underlying logic behind calling Williams’ song “classic” as the AP story on the controversy did. For one thing, the only classic Monday Night Football song is Johnny Pearson’s “Heavy Action,” even if it’s been diluted by appearing in a thousand non-football commercials the past couple of years. More importantly, the only way “Hank Williams” and “classic” should appear in the same sentence is if we’re talking about Hank Williams Senior. Period.)

The First Amendment only assures that we as Americans have the right to say what we want. Williams has the right to compare to Obama to Hitler as much as he wants, and Schlessinger is free to say the n-word until the cows come home (unless she were to use it as hate speech, which she didn’t on her radio show.) What the First Amendment does not guarantee is the right to use someone else’s platform for your speech. Williams has no more right to be on ESPN in any capacity than an atheist has the right to barge into a Christian church service and assume the pulpit to rail about how he or she believes there is no God.

If you want others to hear you exercise your First Amendment rights then it is incumbent on you to secure a platform that will enable you to reach your target audience. Unless you’re rich enough to create and staff your own television network or newspaper, this means having to use someone else’s platform and adhere to the rules that the owners of that platform have set down. Even I’m not free to say whatever I want here on my blog; my hosting company, Laughing Squid, has rules about what I can and can’t put on here, and if I want to put something on here that goes against their guidelines then I’d have to pay a different company to host the .org.

This leads to the other important point often lost in First Amendment debates, which is that the First Amendment does not provide immunity to people who say stupid things. As teenagers we are all taught that with rights come responsibilities, and the right to free speech is no different. If I were to write here that some politician I don’t like is a baby-eating meth addict then that person could sue me for libel. The First Amendment gives me the right to say that, but it doesn’t protect me from legal action for damaging another person’s reputation with deliberate falsehoods. (If the politician does eat babies and is a meth addict, on the other hand, then I’m safe because it’s not libel if it’s true.)

Comparing anyone you don’t like to Hitler is the height of hyperbole, and it is done so often by people of all political stripes, and so poorly, that it’s unbelievable that so many people still try to do it. Pictures of Presidents Bush and Obama with Hitler mustaches painted on have become almost commonplace at political protests this past decade, and in both cases the comparison is equally absurd. In fact, one of the first “rules” of the Internet, Godwin’s Law, was created specifically in response to the abuse of Hitler comparisons in online arguments. Godwin’s Law states that the first person to invoke Hitler in a debate automatically loses the argument, and it’s not a bad rule for any debate.

For Williams to claim that ESPN infringed on his First Amendment rights fails the most basic smell test. He is as free now to compare Obama to Hitler as he was before his appearance on Fox & Friends, and if anything the publicity the controversy generated has given him an even broader platform to let his views about the president be known. It’s  resulted in millions more people than the watchers of that Fox & Friends broadcast hearing what Williams said. No wonder Williams and his political allies have publicized the controversy as much as they have. ESPN is under no obligation to provide Williams with a platform, and whether or not you agree with their decision to stop using his song on their broadcasts, their actions certainly do not rise to the level of a Constitutional violation. That claim is nearly as hyperbolic as Williams, or anyone else, comparing Obama, or anyone else, to Hitler.