SARAH PALIN (6/6/10): Helen Thomas press pals condone racist rant? Heaven forbid "esteemed" press corps represent society's enlightened elite; Rest of us choose truth
SARAH PALIN (8/18/10): Dr. Laura don't retreat…reload! (Steps aside bc her 1st Amend. rights ceased 2exist thx 2activists trying 2silence"isn't American, not fair")
&
SARAH PALIN (8/18/10): Dr. .Laura=even more powerful & effective w/out the shackles, so watch out Constitutional obstructionists. And b thankful 4 her voice, America!
My, my, what a difference a few months makes. But before going forward, perhaps we need to look at a black man’s perspective.
CHRIS ROCK: “But the question remains the same: Can white people say “nigger”? And the answer’s the same: not really. But wait a minute, there’s one exception. There’s one exception. There’s one instance where white people can say nigger. And I’ma let it out tonight…The one time that white people can say nigger. White people are like “this is what I paid for! It’s a fuckin’ great night now!” The one time white people can say nigger: here it goes; listen closely. ‘Cause I may never say this shit again. The one time white people can sat nigger, OK: if it’s Christmas Eve, and it’s between 4:30 and 4:49 in the morning. If you white, and you’re on your way to Toys ‘R’ Us to get your kid the last Transformer doll, and right before you walk into Toys ‘R’ Us, some black person runs up beside you, smacks you in the head with a brick, knocks you to the ground, stomps on your face–”take that, you cracker-ass motherfucker!” Riverdances on your head–”take that, you cracker-ass motherfucker!” Takes your money, pisses on you, and runs away–if you white, at that moment, you can say “Somebody stop that nigger!” Matter of fact, if you white and that happens to you, you can say nigger for a whole month! But you gotta walk around with the police report in your pocket. In case any black people catch you sayin’ nigger, the police report will act as your freedom papers. “Hey, I heard you saying nigger; let me see your fuckin’ papers. Gimme the papers; show me the papers!” [pretends to read a sheet] “Christmas Eve! 4:48! You just made it, motherfucker! Pissed on you! …I hope they catch that nigger!”“
I’ve said it before, but it bears repeating (and is far easier than writing new stuff): I’m pretty much a free speech absolutist. I will defend to the death your right to use the N-word, and my right to (usually) condemn you for doing so.
To get back to the matter at hand, the recent outburst of offensive language by raving psychotic wingnut radio shrink “Dr.” Laura Schlesinger (and the concomitant imminent end of her career in narrow-minded broad-casting), I don’t listen to right wing talk radio, and except if you’re paid to do so as part of some public spirited monitoring program, I am going to question your sanity if you do.
So, the first thing that stuck me when listening to the tape of :“Dr.” Laura’s Tourette’s inflected mix of psychobabble and tunnel-vision, featuring the use of the word “nigger,” eleven, count ’em, eleven times was why any sensible person would volunteer to listen to her on an uncompensated basis, let alone actually try to engage her in rational conversation. The second thing that struck me was that use of the word “nigger” might have been the least offensive things she said in the conversation. In fact, the patronizing, dismissive, tone deaf, holier than though words she used in dealing with someone obviously distraught about a situation negatively impacting her marriage (an institution “Dr.” Schlessinger purports to find sacred and nearly always worth saving –at least in those instances when she’s not committing adultery or spreading her legs before a camera), probably violated at least six separate provisions of her Hippocratic oath (or would have, if she were actually a “doctor”).
“Dr.” Laura may have been fully clothed during her broadcast (it’s radio, so we don’t really know for sure), but in my mind, her words to this distraught woman–even extracting those which began with an N, have left her fully exposed before the world, and it ain’t pretty.
As I’ve made clear in previous columns, I do not automatically object to the use of the word “nigger.” Sometimes no other word will do. Sometimes, the power of the points being made could only be made using that word in that sentence. Back in 2009, when writing a two-part piece about
the cultural underpinnings of the Republican Party of Michael Steele, I told the tale or record label owner J.D. Miller of Crowley, Louisiana, who in addition to producing some of the greatest blues records of the postwar era, used the same integrated band of backing musicians for a unusual sideline:
In 1966, he formed Reb Rebel Records, with a label featuring Confederate flags. The first releases were "Flight NAACP 105" by the Son Of Mississippi and "Dear Mr. President" by Happy Fats. Each sold in excess of 200,000 records. He followed this with "Kajun Klu Klux Klan" and "Looking For A Handout" by Johnny Rebel. Rebel, the label’s most popular artist, followed up with such toe-tappers as “Move Them Niggers North,” “Nigger, Nigger,” “Stay Away from Dixie,” “Some Niggers Never Die (They Just Smell That Way”) and “Nigger Hatin’ Me’, while James Crow hit with the soulful “Cowboys and Niggers.”
That year, I also did a column where I reprinted these words:
“People do bad things, things they know that are bad, for what they feel at the moment were good reasons. One is to institute speech codes. Trample all over the First Amendment, the right of free speech, because we decide that using certain language hurts our fellow human beings–it demeans their humanity. While that might seem like a good idea, the long-term consequences on the right to free expression are far greater than whatever immediate hurt or pain a woman would feel for being called a bitch or a black would feel for being called a nigger. If we're talking about actual physical harm, laws against that exist already. It's not worth it to me to assuage the pain by killing off the First Amendment.
Speech codes are symbolic acts. They let a group of people say, "This symbolizes that we at the University of Wisconsin are not the sort of community where we would tolerate someone saying the word 'nigger."' Well, big deal. But there are other symbolic consequences, like what's the effect on freedom of inquiry. I think we're all bigger and more secure than that. I think we have to allow people to say even unpopular things and nasty things in order to protect the right of us to attack our government and say whatever's on our minds.”
The author of that particular digression was one Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
As I’ve noted before, I think the world is better served by the truth. I think the point is best made by the eloquent words of a young journalist named Alan Cranston, who later went to the US Senate:
“While I was doing my foreign correspondence work, I read Adolph Hitler's Mein Kampf, the book he wrote while he was in prison before he became the dictator, outlining his plans for Germany and the terrible things he intended to do in the world. There was no English language version of it. When I quit journalism and came back to try to get involved in activities in the United States, one day in Macy's bookstore in New York I saw a display of Mein Kampf, an English language version, which I'd never seen before, which hadn't existed. I went over to look at it out of curiosity and as I picked it up, I knew it wasn't the real book. It was much thinner than the long book that I had read, which is about 350,000 words. So I bought it to see how come. And delving into it I found that it was a condensed version, and some of the things that would most upset Americans just weren't there as they were in the version I had read, the original, in German.
So I talked to an editor friend of mine in New York, a Hearst editor named Amster Spiro, and suggested that I write and we publish an anti-Nazi version of Mein Kampf that would be the real book and would awaken Americans to the peril Hitler posed for us and the rest of the world. So we did that. I spent eight days [compiling] my version of Mein Kampf from the English language version that I now had, the original German language version, and another copy that had just appeared. A book was then selling for around three dollars normal price. Hitler was getting forty cents royalty for each copy that somebody bought that wasn't [even] the real thing. We proceeded to print in tabloid the version that I wrote, with a very lurid red cover showing Hitler carving up the world, and we sold it for ten cents on newsstands. It created quite a stir…We sold half a million copies in ten days and were immediately sued by Hitler's agents on the grounds we had violated his copyright, which we had done…a Connecticut judge ruled in Hitler's favor. No damages were assessed, but we had to stop selling the book. We got what was called an injunction. But we did wake up a lot of Americans to the Nazi threat.”
As Eugene Weber, noted in "The Hollow Years: France in the 1930's":
"The chances of the French fully realizing the Nazi peril diminished further when a translation of Mein Kampf, in which Germany's new leader designated France as the hereditary enemy to be crushed before his plans could be fulfilled, was ordered destroyed by a Paris commercial court. Only expurgated versions would be available to the few who bothered to press past Nazi propaganda blowing hot and cold."
In general, I prefer sins of commission to those of omission.
Back in 2006, a Danish newspaper printed a set of cartoons, some of which were seemingly bigoted against Muslims, and others of which merely offended with their sacrilege. There were worldwide outbreaks of violence, including the burning of embassies. I didn’t much like the cartoons, which weren't very funny, insightful, or tasteful, and they certainly wouldn’t have seen the light of day on my editorial page (I've been offended by the equivalent stuff about Jews); but, once they became news, they were worthy of being reprinted on the news pages. However, in a stunning epidemic of cowardice, almost no news outlet reprinted them. How could we understand what all the fuss was about if we couldn’t see the items in question?
It was like a real life version of "Waiting for Godot".
The cartoons were dubious speech, but printing them would have been journalism as it should be practiced. The cartoons were hardly of the level of hatred of Der Sturmer (or of the stuff many Arab papers print about Jews on a daily basis), but even if they were, I would have advocated printing them. One has to see this stuff to truly understand its nature. To see a Streicher cartoon is to understand what Nazism is all about. The diluted version or a description just won't do.
And I would extend that even further. Perhaps an elementary school student needs to be shielded. My fifth grade teacher thought so, reading us “Huckleberry Finn,” but changing the name of his slave companion. Being 1969, in Paramus, New Jersey, Huck’s friend was renamed “Negro Jim.” Today, Mr. Malatesta would be probably accused of turning Huck Finn’s raft into “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”
But an older student should learn the whole truth. The truth about slavery which is only conveyed when a grown man is called “NIGGER.” Also, the essential truth of Twain being a product of his age, which was one when even what passed for enlightened liberals still regarded black people as their dumb but noble inferiors.
Like educated readers, we can judge Twain both from the context of his times and the context of our own, and thereby judge both his times and our own, rather than giving everything the Tom Sawyer-style whitewashing that censorship would provide. And we can be thankful that Twain, warts and all, recorded these ugly truths while calling them fiction, and made them entertaining enough so that we don’t even now avert our eyes as we learn about our ugly past and reflect upon our not always so pretty present.
So, use the word “nigger” if that’s the word you need to use, but proceed at your own peril.
As usual, many on the right, like moronic, cud chewing NY Post columnist Andrea Peyser, don’t grasp the subtleties of what is a complicated issue. Take this recent piece of regurgitation belched up from one of her eight stomachs:
“For months, mosque opponents have watched mutely as cheerleaders do everything but stick ball gags in their mouths. Where I come from, that's called trampling upon one's right to protest. The right to free speech? If you object to the mega-mosque, you have none.”
What Peyser was objected to was not the per se denial of the right to speak, which never occurred (there had, in fact, been two long public hearings where speakers expressed their ignorance ad infinitum) but the fact that their speech was accurately branded by observers as the garbage that it was,.
Yes, Andrea, the First Amendment guarantees the rights of bigots and the ignorant, including yourself, to say shameful things and even to peddle them in the marketplace of ideas. But the First Amendment also guarantees my right, and that of Mayor Mike, to shame and humiliate those who do.
To restrict our ability to do so would be to impinge upon our own freedom of speech. The opponents of the Young Men’s Islamic Association proposed for the Holy Mother Coat Factory, as well as the opponents of the Mosque proposed for Staten Island whose demise Peyser so gleefully cheered (putting lie to her imbecilic assertion that her opposition to the Lower Manhattan facility really had anything to do with its location, unless the location she was objecting to was the United States of America) have said shameful things. I reserve the right to shame them
Peyser should be shamed on a daily basis. I would use the C-word myself , but it’s not Mother’s Day between 4:30 and 4:49 in the morning, and I’m not on my way to Barnes and Noble to get Domestic Partner the last Kindle, and Andrea Peyser has not run up beside me, smacked me in the head with a brick, knocked me to the ground, stomped on my nuts–”take that, you America hating liberal motherfucker!” Riverdanced on my nuts–”take that, you flag burning liberal!” Taken my money, thrown one of her noxious and foul smelling columns upon me, and run away.
Not that I put such behavior past her. I mean, have you read the stuff she writes?
Paradoxically, like many of the left still mourning the well-merited banishment of Helen Thomas from polite society, Ms. Peyser and former Future Vice President Dipstick fail to grasps how the First Amendment operates. The First Amendment is a restriction upon the power of government, even when that government is reflecting the views of the overwhelming majority of the public (strangely enough, its clauses concerning religious freedom work in exactly the same manner).
But, as I’ve said many times, the public has other means to express and even enforce their feelings. .
Far more often than attempted governmental interference, social mores and the threat of peer disapproval prevent the expression of comments which might have the possibility as being perceived as bigoted or otherwise unacceptable.
Social mores and peer disapproval are usually far more effective limits on speech than government regulation could ever be.
Add to that the power of the marketplace.
Both the Hearst Syndicate which employed Ms. Thomas, and whoever prostitutes themselves by syndicating “Dr.” Laura’s psychotic psychobabble, are commercial enterprises, and Ms. Thomas and “Dr.” Laura are basically little more than products they are peddling to interested buyers (like manure dealers selling bags of fertilizer–though fertilizer at least serves a productive purpose). If, like British Petroleum, the product becomes toxic, buyers have the right to express their outrage as they see fit, and distributors associated with the toxic product are often well advised to run for cover and/or cut their losses.
Moreover, while I’m guessing that the changes in employment status of both ladies owes only to commercial considerations, those need not be the only ones. The First Amendment does not guarantee anyone a write (pun intentional) to post or print whatever they want in someone else's forum. It is a publisher or radio syndicator’s First Amendment right to be as open or closed to other views as they want. It is also (to use a term often deployed by the allies of Ms. Palin) their property right.
Is this censorship? No. Both Ms. Thomas and “Dr.” Laura are free to blog to her heart's content, and those who seek them out will surely find them and others of their ilk.
"Free speech" is a misnomer; it always has a cost; in a "free" society, that cost is determined by the marketplace rather than the government. This is usually a point extolled as edicts from the mountaintop by the likes of Ms. Palin.
Moreover, there is surely a marketplace for the bilge Ms. Thomas and “Dr.” Laura peddle. Is it as lucrative as that of their former or soon to be former sponsors? I surely hope not, but they surely will not be deprived of a living in a marketplace of ideas that supports the likes of Pat Buchanan, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck.
As I’ve noted before, that some choose to sometimes hold their tongues rather than to express their every flatulent brain fart is not always necessarily a bad thing, although it sometimes acts to silence voices and lines of inquiry which it might be beneficial to have heard. In the case of Ms. Thomas and “Dr.” Laura though, the loss will be small.
While I consider boycotts a legitimate but distasteful form of free speech I generally avoid, and I don’t recall ever supporting someone being fired for something they’ve said (as opposed to done), I reserve the right to call out as a bigot anyone who has earned the label.
I also reserve the right to call out as hypocrites those who the First Amendment should shield “Dr.” Laura from criticism, but not Helen Thomas, when it should shield neither.