If you've been hiding under a rock and have somehow missed the expanding controversy over an editorial entiled "Taser This, F*** Bush" published in the Colorado State University student newspaper, you're missing yet another chapter in the engrossing novel "The Founding Fathers Thought Free Speech Was The Shite So F Off". This is the latest installment of a novel in 2903487 parts whose most recent prior chapter was "Don't Taser Me, Bro", and includes such notable chapters as Suck It, Jesus, Bong Hits 4 Jesus, and Ward Churchill Is An Idiot.
First of all, let's make it clear: I support free speech. I'm against censorship or criminal penalties for saying pretty much anything. But I am firmly convinced that the right to say WHAT you want does NOT grant you the right to say it WHERE you want. This idea was at the heart of why Don Imus was fired - he has the right to whatever ridiculous opinions he wants, but he does NOT have the inherent right to broadcast that opinion on a nationally syndicated radio show. Take the "Suck It, Jesus" comment from Kathy Griffin - does she have the inherent RIGHT to have that comment broadcast on national TV? What if she had said "Suck it, queers" or "Suck it, Allah" - would the same people who were clamoring for her voice to be heard have reacted with such vehemence? Of course not. We on this side of the aisle have made it clear that certain comments should not be countenanced in certain venues or contexts.
That brings us to the situation at hand, namely that the official student newspaper at a major college chose to run a gratuitously offensive ad hominem editorial. Does the editor have a right to think and say what he wants to about the president? Of course. Should the editor have the journalistic right to criticize the president in respectful and reasonable terms in the paper? Absolutely. The standard by which the appropriateness of this editorial should be judged has NOTHING to do with the fact that advertisers are unhappy with the content. Fashioning one's journalism to appease one's advertisers is a Rupert Murdoch tactic. The central questions are 1) Is there a journalistic standard which dictates that such belligerent editorials must be published? (No; ask yourself whether any such headline would ever be printed by the AJC) and 2) Should a college newspaper be viewed as an "anything goes" venue with regard to content? If you answered "yes", ask yourself what might have happened if the editorial had been entitled "Send the Beaners Back to Mexico". Would WE have accepted that? Certainly not; WE would be the ones calling for resignations. How can we accept "F*** Bush" without accepting a particularly vile double standard? How could we then reasonably argue that racial and ethnic epithets should be summarily excluded from official college publications? We can't. That's why we ought to abandon our partisan bias and lose the misguided "free speech" rhetoric here.
Comments (3)
"What if she had said 'Suck it, queers' or 'Suck it, Allah'"
Indeed, what if? What if Kathy Griffin had chosen to attack a relatively powerless and often reviled minority group instead of attack the deity of an exceptionally powerful and generally praised majority group?
Wouldn't that have been just as bad?
Answer: Fuck no, it wouldn't have been. There's a big difference between knocking an idol off a pedestal and kicking a person when they're down.
Specifically, there's a big difference between Kathy Griffin being less than respectful to a man who has been dead for more than two millenia and whose followers take their moral superiority as a given - and Don Imus slandering a group of teenage girls as "nappy-headed hos" because they mistakenly believed that playing a good game of basketball was more important than keeping him fully erect while they did.
I have no idea why "We on this side of the aisle" would believe that those are in any way similar, except for the fact that they both involve "TEH SWEARZ!!11!!!", but on my side of the isle, wherever that is these days, there is both an obligation to question privilege and an obligation to defend those without it.
I don't see that as a double-standard, but then, I don't see the similarity between saying "Send the Beaners Back to Mexico" and "Send George Bush To Guantanamo," either.
How is it not a double standard to demand that "our" offensive coments about "their" religion should be aired and proclaimed to the masses, while "their" offensive comments about everyone else must be reviled as hate speech? Are we supposed to countenance someone saying "F the crackers" just because they're attacking a "powerful and generally praised majority group"? Where is the logic there? It's this exact kind of bias that makes it very difficult for me to support the ACLU as much as I'd like, because they have perfected this particular double standard. Or would you prefer the government decide who it's ok to hate on national TV and who it isn't? Hate speech is hate speech, no matter who it's directed at, and to claim otherwise gives the Michelle Malkins of the world ammunition next time WE try to put the kibosh on hate speech.
Incidentally, I never mentioned any comparison to the phrase "Send George Bush to Guantanamo".
It's not about "our" and "their." It's about the powerful and the powerless.
You can't honestly believe that there is no difference between ridiculing George Bush, leader of the most powerful nation on earth, and heaping the same ridicule on a homeless person on the street, can you? Mock their clothes, their walk, their smell, their shakes, their begging - you really think that's no different from ridiculing George Bush? One is worthy of that sort of withering scorn by his undeserved power and privilege, and the other simply isn't - it's pure cruelty to attack them with even a fraction of that intensity.
So when you ask about the crackers, I want to know, which crackers are we talking about? If it's the ones who work sixty-hour weeks at the carpet factories in north Georgia before going home to trailers and rent-by-the-week motels, then I'd say they're fucked enough already. If it's the ones who sup with lobbyists in Atlanta's posh environs, then hell yeah, they deserve to be as well and truly done to as they've done to the rest of us.
That's biased, yeah, but it's no double standard. Where is the double standard in attacking the powerful for exploiting the powerless? Where is the double standard in defending the powerless from cruelty?
As for the ACLU, I have no idea what you're talking about. They defend speech, not its content, and they've taken considerable heat for it - there's neither bias nor double-standard there.
"Hate speech is hate speech, no matter who it's directed at"
Really. No difference between "I hate fags" and "I hate homophobes?" Because I see one.
As for Malkin - please. If you think anything you do or don't do changes whether she will talk up, blow up, or fake up a controversy, you're mistaken. It's a waste of your time to try and please her - so don't.