by MootMute
September 21, 2025
Moot Mute (Best Of).mp3
Moot Mute (Best Of).mp4
Moot Mute.mp3
Moot Mute.mp4
The new release of the day, “Mootmute,” was born from the flood of questions I keep hearing: “What can I do?” in the middle of this growing sense of helplessness and hopelessness. My answer? Focus on your strengths. Build a strong individual plan. And sharpen your wits — because wit is a weapon.
As an investigative journalist with decades defending the First Amendment, I’ve been threatened, targeted, assaulted by both criminals and police, fined, arrested, jailed, and dragged through years of court battles. But never — not once — have I seen anything as alarming as what’s happening today. I’m furious at the loss of our First Amendment rights, and I’m going back to my roots. In protest of this assault on free speech — and in solidarity with Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert, and the countless journalists slaughtered worldwide this year — I’m returning to satire. Words are swords, and comedy is our shield. That’s why tyrants fear it, that’s why dictators ban it, and that’s why Trump is trying to kill it. Humor exposes lies, punctures egos, and topples emperors who think they wear clothes.
During one period when I was illegally detained, silenced, and stripped of my rights, I adopted the pseudonym Mootmute. I had my lawyer on speed dial and even had a plan to publish from jail.
So, what is a moot mute? It’s the absurdity of censorship itself — being forced into silence until your very voice becomes a moot point. If a town crier had their tongue cut out, how would they warn the people? If a writer were pressed so hard that the only escape was invoking the Fifth, would they become a moot mute? That’s what censorship does: it tries to erase you into irrelevance.
Much to my amusement, when I was under oath I asked prosecutors what I wasn’t allowed to say. Their response? They wheeled in file cabinets overflowing with papers they themselves had published and read, line by line, everything now forbidden as “speech.”
And so the name stuck — Mootmute. They tried to silence me, but instead they became my unwitting mouthpiece, committing the very crime they accused me of.
PSA: “Remember, killing humor isn’t funny. Kill humor, kill freedom. Not so funny now, is it?”
ABOUT THE SONG: The Death of the First Amendment: Trump’s War on Free Speech
