[Liberal progressives] tend to invoke the language of censorship prinarilg as a strategy of ritual scapegoating--that is, to push certain forms of expression out of the arena of free speech. (Riley 96)
Riley seems to believe that the liberal progressive commentators on The Last Temptation with their invective, polemical, and "scapegoating" language imply that the conservatives should not be allowed to voice their opinions. Because of the ignorance, barbaric totalitarianism, and artistic intolerance they, in fact, should not be tolerated, or so Riley makes them to say. But nowhere, in his book or elsewhere, have I seen a liberal peogressive even imply the conservatives have no right or law protecting them in voicing their opinions. Riley puts words in the liberal progressives' mouths, just as he does with Scorsese earlier in the book, in the vain hopes that he can, somehow, bring both parties to the same level of fault in the situation.