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Right and left, activists in California are organizing against publicly honoring people they don't like:
"Assembly Democrats attack children's innocence, parental rights," the headline of a recent press release from SaveCalifornia.com declares, attacking a bill establishing a day of recognition for Harvey Milk and exhorting the governor to veto it (as he did last year.) "The Democrat politicians are telling schoolchildren to honor a sexual predator of teens, a homosexual sex addict who advocated polygamous relationships, and a public liar who justified his deceit," SaveCalifornia president Randy Thomasson fulminates.
Meanwhile, the NAACP and ACLU are protesting a decision by the Auburn, California parks board to accept a gift of land establishing a park named after late Nobel laureate and eugenicist William Shockley and his wife. "It is an insult to people of color and anyone in the Placer area with an IQ under 100," Jim Updegraff, chair of the ACLU's Sacramento chapter declared, playing the Hitler card. "Would (the parks board) have accepted land to be named after Adolf Hitler? (If only Adolf Hitler had been no worse than William Shockley.)
Of course, the First Amendment is on the side of the protesters in these controversies. (The state has power, not rights; the people have rights to restrict state power.) From the ACLU's perspective, it is standing up for free speech in organizing against the Shockley Memorial Park: "This act of petitioning the government is not just consistent with the First Amendment, it is in fact an exercise of core free speech values," Alan Schlosser, Legal Director of the Northern California ACLU stresses.
That's a legally accurate statement, obviously. And the ACLU regularly petitions the government, when it engages in lobbying at the state and federal level. But generally its lobbying efforts are aimed at securing rights and liberties - none of which are at stake in the Shockley Park controversy: it involves a content-based protest of government speech which, unlike government mandated speech about the alleged dangers of abortion (for example) does not infringe on the exercise of any individual rights. The decision of a civil liberties group to organize a protest like this is problematic, (as a matter of policy, not law) precisely because it entails choosing sides in a political dispute over the content of speech, instead of acting as a neutral arbiter or guarantor of disputant's rights on all sides.
Taking sides, the ACLU also effectively suggests that government decisions to memorialize controversial figures should be determined by citizen protests and either the reality or appearance of majority rule, which could put the organization in the awkward position of implicitly approving decisions denying recognition to a gay rights leader or extending it to a racist, so long as the decisions enjoyed majority support. That, however, is democracy. How might legislators fairly resolve these controversies without consulting the majority?
But apply this principle of majority rule over the content of government speech to disputes over the content of corporate speech, and you confront the interesting, complicated questions of de facto marketplace censorship raised by both corporate control of speech and citizen protests of that control, like boycott threats against Glenn Beck's advertisers, (partly reflecting outrage over Beck's comparisons of Obama to Adolf Hitler) or protests of Pat Buchanan's apologies for (who else?) Adolf Hitler, or demands that CNN bar Lou Dobbs from appearing at an anti-immigrant rally.
Privately organized boycotts and other campaigns to pressure corporate media obviously enjoy First Amendment protection; you might even describe them the way ACLU describes the Shockley Park protests, as "exercises of core free speech values." But as an official (and often ignored) ACLU policy suggests, protests by private pressure groups sometimes effectively restrict rather than expand the marketplace of ideas. Naturally, liberals tend to be sensitive to this problem when boycotts threaten liberal speech while conservatives are sensitive to it when boycotts threaten conservative speech, which is why the ACLU's traditional role as an honest broker of free speech disputes is so essential. In fact, ACLU policy requires the organization to "call attention" to the dangers of private protests, even as it affirms the right to engage in them:
Are there dangers in liberal boycotts of Glenn Beck's advertisers? Did the furor over Don Imus's cracks about the Rutger's women's basketball team, resulting in his 2007 firing by CBS, restrict or expand the marketplace of ideas? Civil libertarians argue endlessly about the wisdom or desirability of private protests aimed at silencing hate-mongers, lunatics, or provocateurs who enjoy corporate support: "There is something disturbing about the fact that the self-appointed PC police have accumulated sufficient power to cause talk-show hosts to look warily over their shoulders every time they say something remotely offensive," my friend Harvey Silverglate wrote lamenting protests by "the would-be censors of 'hate speech.'"
I share his concerns about speech policing but doubt that it poses an appreciable threat to many provocative talk show hosts, whose popularity is directly proportionately to their offensiveness. Besides, in the battle between private citizens groups and private corporate media there are de facto censors or "would-censors" on both sides, exercising their respective First Amendment rights to engage in content based discrimination against speech. When media moguls decide what to air and who to hire and fire, whether they act in the interests of corporate profits or their own partisan ideologies, they do not act as disinterested civil libertarians, aiming to extend everyone's right to speak. Are private corporations better defenders of a healthy, diverse marketplace of ideas than ideologically driven private citizen pressure groups? As I've noted before, that is not a rhetorical question.
Photo Credit: Flickr User Marcin Wichary
"Assembly Democrats attack children's innocence, parental rights," the headline of a recent press release from SaveCalifornia.com declares, attacking a bill establishing a day of recognition for Harvey Milk and exhorting the governor to veto it (as he did last year.) "The Democrat politicians are telling schoolchildren to honor a sexual predator of teens, a homosexual sex addict who advocated polygamous relationships, and a public liar who justified his deceit," SaveCalifornia president Randy Thomasson fulminates.
Meanwhile, the NAACP and ACLU are protesting a decision by the Auburn, California parks board to accept a gift of land establishing a park named after late Nobel laureate and eugenicist William Shockley and his wife. "It is an insult to people of color and anyone in the Placer area with an IQ under 100," Jim Updegraff, chair of the ACLU's Sacramento chapter declared, playing the Hitler card. "Would (the parks board) have accepted land to be named after Adolf Hitler? (If only Adolf Hitler had been no worse than William Shockley.) Of course, the First Amendment is on the side of the protesters in these controversies. (The state has power, not rights; the people have rights to restrict state power.) From the ACLU's perspective, it is standing up for free speech in organizing against the Shockley Memorial Park: "This act of petitioning the government is not just consistent with the First Amendment, it is in fact an exercise of core free speech values," Alan Schlosser, Legal Director of the Northern California ACLU stresses.
That's a legally accurate statement, obviously. And the ACLU regularly petitions the government, when it engages in lobbying at the state and federal level. But generally its lobbying efforts are aimed at securing rights and liberties - none of which are at stake in the Shockley Park controversy: it involves a content-based protest of government speech which, unlike government mandated speech about the alleged dangers of abortion (for example) does not infringe on the exercise of any individual rights. The decision of a civil liberties group to organize a protest like this is problematic, (as a matter of policy, not law) precisely because it entails choosing sides in a political dispute over the content of speech, instead of acting as a neutral arbiter or guarantor of disputant's rights on all sides.
Taking sides, the ACLU also effectively suggests that government decisions to memorialize controversial figures should be determined by citizen protests and either the reality or appearance of majority rule, which could put the organization in the awkward position of implicitly approving decisions denying recognition to a gay rights leader or extending it to a racist, so long as the decisions enjoyed majority support. That, however, is democracy. How might legislators fairly resolve these controversies without consulting the majority?
But apply this principle of majority rule over the content of government speech to disputes over the content of corporate speech, and you confront the interesting, complicated questions of de facto marketplace censorship raised by both corporate control of speech and citizen protests of that control, like boycott threats against Glenn Beck's advertisers, (partly reflecting outrage over Beck's comparisons of Obama to Adolf Hitler) or protests of Pat Buchanan's apologies for (who else?) Adolf Hitler, or demands that CNN bar Lou Dobbs from appearing at an anti-immigrant rally.
Privately organized boycotts and other campaigns to pressure corporate media obviously enjoy First Amendment protection; you might even describe them the way ACLU describes the Shockley Park protests, as "exercises of core free speech values." But as an official (and often ignored) ACLU policy suggests, protests by private pressure groups sometimes effectively restrict rather than expand the marketplace of ideas. Naturally, liberals tend to be sensitive to this problem when boycotts threaten liberal speech while conservatives are sensitive to it when boycotts threaten conservative speech, which is why the ACLU's traditional role as an honest broker of free speech disputes is so essential. In fact, ACLU policy requires the organization to "call attention" to the dangers of private protests, even as it affirms the right to engage in them:
Defending the right of all to advance their points of view by whatever nonviolent methods they may choose, however, does not mean that the ACLU should refrain from objecting when the likely consequences of private pressure group activities would be inimical to civil liberties, and particularly if the consequences would be to restrict a free and diverse marketplace of ideas. Under such circumstances, the ACLU will call public attention to the dangers of such consequences.
Are there dangers in liberal boycotts of Glenn Beck's advertisers? Did the furor over Don Imus's cracks about the Rutger's women's basketball team, resulting in his 2007 firing by CBS, restrict or expand the marketplace of ideas? Civil libertarians argue endlessly about the wisdom or desirability of private protests aimed at silencing hate-mongers, lunatics, or provocateurs who enjoy corporate support: "There is something disturbing about the fact that the self-appointed PC police have accumulated sufficient power to cause talk-show hosts to look warily over their shoulders every time they say something remotely offensive," my friend Harvey Silverglate wrote lamenting protests by "the would-be censors of 'hate speech.'"
I share his concerns about speech policing but doubt that it poses an appreciable threat to many provocative talk show hosts, whose popularity is directly proportionately to their offensiveness. Besides, in the battle between private citizens groups and private corporate media there are de facto censors or "would-censors" on both sides, exercising their respective First Amendment rights to engage in content based discrimination against speech. When media moguls decide what to air and who to hire and fire, whether they act in the interests of corporate profits or their own partisan ideologies, they do not act as disinterested civil libertarians, aiming to extend everyone's right to speak. Are private corporations better defenders of a healthy, diverse marketplace of ideas than ideologically driven private citizen pressure groups? As I've noted before, that is not a rhetorical question.
Photo Credit: Flickr User Marcin Wichary
Just in time for Banned Books Week, the American Library Association's annual celebration of intellectual freedom, the Brooklyn Public Library has removed a 79 year old children's book from its shelves after a patron complained about its racial offensiveness. As the New York Times reported last week, "Tintin au Congo," has been locked up in a "vault-like room" of the library, where it is "available for viewing by appointment only." How does this infringe on the right to read and learn? Library users won't discover this book browsing the library shelves, they won't have an opportunity to read it anonymously, and unless they're aware of the book's existence and highly desirous of reading it, they won't learn what it might teach them about the history of racism and racist literature.
The good news is that most efforts to remove books from library shelves and school curricula are unsuccessful, according to the American Library Association. The bad news is that such efforts are common, nationwide. Censorship is distressingly banal. The ALA counts 520 reported challenges in 2008; (an estimated 70 - 80% of challenges are unreported.) "Parents challenge materials more often than any other group, the ALA reports. "Sex, profanity, and racism remain the primary categories of objections, and most occur in schools and school libraries. Frequently, challenges are motivated by the desire to protect children," the Illinois Library Association confirms: Books challenged in 2008 -2009 range arbitrarily from the instructional -- The Joy of Sex -- to the beloved -- To Kill a Mockingbird.
As the list of challenged books shows, contemporary censorship campaigns are not a response to new media, the proliferation of pornography, or heightened concern about pedophilia. Prevailing notions of what's harmful to children are relative. In the late 19th century, advocates for women, like Frances Willard of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, condemned "impure" and "vicious literature" with the intensity directed at Internet porn today. "Books are feeders for brothels," anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock famously proclaimed. In the mid 20th century, Congressional hearings investigated television's alleged connection to juvenile delinquency, citing the violence in shows like Hopalong Cassidy. So, while the content and media at issue in our censorship battles are sometimes new, underlying hysteria about harm to children and censorship campaigns aimed at protecting them are hardy perennials.
In part, they're a tribute to a socially conservative love affair with big government - a government that dictates through public schools and libraries, obscenity and indecency laws what we may or may not read and view. Are you offended by ads for erectile dysfunction? Virginia Democrat Jim Moran has introduced H.R. 2175 -- Families for ED Advertising Decency Act: "To prohibit as indecent the broadcasting of any advertisement for a medication for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, and for other purposes." (Other purposes include the euphemistically referenced "male enhancement.") Labeling these ads "indecent" would bar them from radio or tv broadcasts between 6AM and 10PM, when they might pollute the eyes or ears of children. That a product famously endorsed by a former Republican Senate majority leader and presidential candidate is now the subject of a federal indecency bill is just one measure of our cultural confusion.
Another is the resolution introduced by Georgia Republican Paul Broun encouraging the President to designate 2010 the Year of the Bible -- a book replete with sex and violence. Maybe Congress can redact Lot's offer to pimp out his daughters. Or maybe people who hold the Bible sacred can come to understand that deeply offensive literature can also be deeply redemptive.
UPDATE (or pre-date:) Another historical note -- Chris Finan, President of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, recalls that the Brooklyn Public Library "banned Huck Finn in 1885 because 'Huck not only itched but scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration.' ") Naturally, people find different reasons to protest Huck Finn today, (different times, different lists of forbidden words,) but the impulse to censor remains the same.
The good news is that most efforts to remove books from library shelves and school curricula are unsuccessful, according to the American Library Association. The bad news is that such efforts are common, nationwide. Censorship is distressingly banal. The ALA counts 520 reported challenges in 2008; (an estimated 70 - 80% of challenges are unreported.) "Parents challenge materials more often than any other group, the ALA reports. "Sex, profanity, and racism remain the primary categories of objections, and most occur in schools and school libraries. Frequently, challenges are motivated by the desire to protect children," the Illinois Library Association confirms: Books challenged in 2008 -2009 range arbitrarily from the instructional -- The Joy of Sex -- to the beloved -- To Kill a Mockingbird.
As the list of challenged books shows, contemporary censorship campaigns are not a response to new media, the proliferation of pornography, or heightened concern about pedophilia. Prevailing notions of what's harmful to children are relative. In the late 19th century, advocates for women, like Frances Willard of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, condemned "impure" and "vicious literature" with the intensity directed at Internet porn today. "Books are feeders for brothels," anti-vice crusader Anthony Comstock famously proclaimed. In the mid 20th century, Congressional hearings investigated television's alleged connection to juvenile delinquency, citing the violence in shows like Hopalong Cassidy. So, while the content and media at issue in our censorship battles are sometimes new, underlying hysteria about harm to children and censorship campaigns aimed at protecting them are hardy perennials.
In part, they're a tribute to a socially conservative love affair with big government - a government that dictates through public schools and libraries, obscenity and indecency laws what we may or may not read and view. Are you offended by ads for erectile dysfunction? Virginia Democrat Jim Moran has introduced H.R. 2175 -- Families for ED Advertising Decency Act: "To prohibit as indecent the broadcasting of any advertisement for a medication for the treatment of erectile dysfunction, and for other purposes." (Other purposes include the euphemistically referenced "male enhancement.") Labeling these ads "indecent" would bar them from radio or tv broadcasts between 6AM and 10PM, when they might pollute the eyes or ears of children. That a product famously endorsed by a former Republican Senate majority leader and presidential candidate is now the subject of a federal indecency bill is just one measure of our cultural confusion.
Another is the resolution introduced by Georgia Republican Paul Broun encouraging the President to designate 2010 the Year of the Bible -- a book replete with sex and violence. Maybe Congress can redact Lot's offer to pimp out his daughters. Or maybe people who hold the Bible sacred can come to understand that deeply offensive literature can also be deeply redemptive.
UPDATE (or pre-date:) Another historical note -- Chris Finan, President of the American Booksellers Foundation for Free Expression, recalls that the Brooklyn Public Library "banned Huck Finn in 1885 because 'Huck not only itched but scratched, and that he said sweat when he should have said perspiration.' ") Naturally, people find different reasons to protest Huck Finn today, (different times, different lists of forbidden words,) but the impulse to censor remains the same.
Repudiating its professed commitment to "the discovery and dissemination of light and truth," Yale University Press will publish Jytte Klausen's forthcoming account of the Muhammed cartoon controversy, The Cartoons That Shook the World, only after excising the cartoons and other images of Muhammed. ("Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book," the New York Times reports.) A justifiably outraged statement from the American Association of University Professors notes that Yale Press is not even responding to threats of violence but merely "anticipating them and making or recommending concessions beforehand."
Giving in to a fear of violence (the advice of unnamed consultants and, I suspect, some risk averse lawyers), Yale has effectively condoned the heckler's veto. This policy of appeasement may serve to encourage threats of violence against other authors or publishers of allegedly blasphemous or presumptively hateful books. Its chilling effect seems obvious. As the AAUP statement asks, "What is to stop publishers from suppressing an author's words if it appears they may offend religious fundamentalists or groups threatening violence?"
(Photo Credit: Creative Commons)
Giving in to a fear of violence (the advice of unnamed consultants and, I suspect, some risk averse lawyers), Yale has effectively condoned the heckler's veto. This policy of appeasement may serve to encourage threats of violence against other authors or publishers of allegedly blasphemous or presumptively hateful books. Its chilling effect seems obvious. As the AAUP statement asks, "What is to stop publishers from suppressing an author's words if it appears they may offend religious fundamentalists or groups threatening violence?" (Photo Credit: Creative Commons)
Add the "r-word" to the lexicon of words that may only be referenced by their initials. As Bob Johnson, President and CEO of the Massachusetts Special Olympics, explained today in an NPR tribute to Eunice Shriver, "the r-word, as we put it, has really become a bit of a pejorative ... our athletes are offended by the term that begins with "r," which I'm not going to repeat. And suggested to us that a better term, a more acceptable term, would be that of intellectual disability." The desire of people once labeled retarded to be described as intellectually disabled instead ought to be respected, of course. It's true that the "r-word" is, as Johnson says, "a bit of a pejorative." In the schoolyards of my childhood, "retard" was a common insult. My elementary school served one small, segregated group of special ed students (which included the only black child in the school), who were at best objects of curiousity and, at worst, targets of mockery. If the special ed students were intellectually disabled, many of the presumptively non-disabled were ignorant and emotionally stupefied.
Nomenclature can be a form of education or of raising consciousness, (which my elementary school classmates and I sorely needed), but must it become an obsession? When Bob Johnson references the "r-word," stressing his unwillingness to utter it, does he believe that people aren't saying the word "retarded" silently, to themselves? His squeamishness doesn't erase the word from our data banks, much less defang it. Instead, like other words we dare not say, the r-word is invested with brutal omnipotence. No longer a lowly word, it becomes an incantation.
New York Congresswoman and possible Senate candidate Carolyn Maloney made news this week by uttering "the N-word." Too bad Lenny Bruce wasn't around to hear her. He used racial and ethnic slurs purposefully, repeatedly, to deprive them of their power. As free speech stalwart Nat Hentoff recalled in a 2000 interview, Bruce "used to come into the Vanguard Stage, and at this time, that was probably the most integrated audience of all kinds, sexual preference, color, religion, no religion. He'd come up and look around and say, "Any kikes here tonight? Any niggers? And spicks?" The place would freeze. What dybbuk got into this guy? Then he'd say, "All right, now, why do you get paralyzed by words? Why don't you try to figure out why those words have that effect?"
Fifty years later, we're still paralyzed, terrified, and fascinated by words, at least officially. In 2007, the New York city council passed a symbolic moratorium on the "N-word," to the delight of The Daily Show, which boldly went where Bruce had gone before. In 2008, Brandeis University Professor Donald Hindley was found guilty of racial harassment (after a secret investigation) for uttering the word "wetback" while explaining its use. As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported: "In his Fall 2007 course on Latin American politics, Hindley allegedly used terms that at least one student found objectionable. Despite his repeated demands to Brandeis administrators to disclose in writing precisely what offended some students in his class, they have refused to tell him. According to Hindley, he explained to his class that Mexican migrants in the United States are sometimes referred to pejoratively as 'wetbacks' "
Hindley, a tenured faculty member did not back down, but naturally Congresswoman Maloney is already groveling, the New York Daily News reports: "I apologize for having repeated a word I find disgusting. It's no excuse but I was so caught up in relaying the story exactly as it was told to me that, in doing so, I repeated a word that should never be repeated." Naturally, Al Sharpton is already blustering: "If in fact this quote is accurate, Congresswoman Maloney should issue a public apology for allowing that kind of dialogue to go un-challenged by her and for repeating it," he pronounced (according to the Daily News.) "Congresswoman Maloney should reveal the person that she was talking about so we know that in fact this conversation did occur and the way in which it occurred."
Sharpton laid down the law: "No public official even in quoting someone else should loosely use such an offensive term and should certainly challenge someone using the term to him or her." It's worth stressing that Sharpton's law is generally obeyed by the press as well as politicians. Neither politico.com nor the New York Daily News dared spell out the word "nigger." When the FCC punishes use of even "fleeting expletives," (with the Supreme Court's approval,) media moguls often have little moral standing to complain.
Fifty years later, we're still paralyzed, terrified, and fascinated by words, at least officially. In 2007, the New York city council passed a symbolic moratorium on the "N-word," to the delight of The Daily Show, which boldly went where Bruce had gone before. In 2008, Brandeis University Professor Donald Hindley was found guilty of racial harassment (after a secret investigation) for uttering the word "wetback" while explaining its use. As the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reported: "In his Fall 2007 course on Latin American politics, Hindley allegedly used terms that at least one student found objectionable. Despite his repeated demands to Brandeis administrators to disclose in writing precisely what offended some students in his class, they have refused to tell him. According to Hindley, he explained to his class that Mexican migrants in the United States are sometimes referred to pejoratively as 'wetbacks' "
Hindley, a tenured faculty member did not back down, but naturally Congresswoman Maloney is already groveling, the New York Daily News reports: "I apologize for having repeated a word I find disgusting. It's no excuse but I was so caught up in relaying the story exactly as it was told to me that, in doing so, I repeated a word that should never be repeated." Naturally, Al Sharpton is already blustering: "If in fact this quote is accurate, Congresswoman Maloney should issue a public apology for allowing that kind of dialogue to go un-challenged by her and for repeating it," he pronounced (according to the Daily News.) "Congresswoman Maloney should reveal the person that she was talking about so we know that in fact this conversation did occur and the way in which it occurred."
Sharpton laid down the law: "No public official even in quoting someone else should loosely use such an offensive term and should certainly challenge someone using the term to him or her." It's worth stressing that Sharpton's law is generally obeyed by the press as well as politicians. Neither politico.com nor the New York Daily News dared spell out the word "nigger." When the FCC punishes use of even "fleeting expletives," (with the Supreme Court's approval,) media moguls often have little moral standing to complain.
Here's a quick response to comments on my post last week re Sarah Palin's stylistic debt to popular liberalism, or more precisely, the culture that popular liberalism helped shape. Mainly I want to respond to the suggestion that I have maligned liberalism by associating it with Palin's illogic, solipsism, sense of aggrievement and tendency to dismiss criticism as hate speech or libel.
I probably should have explicitly acknowledged the obvious -- that, like most isms, (feminism, conservatism, socialism, or libertarianism) liberalism is not monolithic. It is, however, marked by dominant trends, especially in its popular incarnations. The liberalism of John Stuart Mill, for example, (notably his defense of free speech) is difficult to reconcile with what passes for liberalism on college campuses today. It's true that, back in the 1980s, when Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin proposed restricting pornography as a civil rights violation, they met with resistance from many traditional, liberal civil libertarians, (like me.) It's true that a federal appeals court struck down a local ordinance based on their model anti-porn statute almost 25 years ago. But while anti-porn feminists lost that battle, they won the war to cast censorship as a respectable, even necessary means of advancing equality.
Anyone who doubts the diminished regard for free speech and the enhanced support for censorship among many liberals and progressives might consider the ACLU's recent absence from some important free speech battles; (on the ACLU board, sympathy for restrictions on hate speech has increased significantly in recent years.) Or review (at thefire.org) speech and harassment codes, sensitivity training or attitude adjustment programs common on presumptively liberal campuses. (The sanctimonious, small-minded disregard for individual rights reflected in these policies has been sharply criticized and satirized for some 15 years; still it flourishes, and as a result, students with libertarian or civil libertarian sympathies, are apt to view liberalism as synonymous with repression.)
The connection between the rise of liberal censorship and pop therapeutic notions of victimization, abuse, and self-esteem is evident, and I have explored it in at least a couple of books. (Analyses and arguments bear repeating when the problems they address persist.) Like censorship, pop psychologies prosper right and left, of course. (The recovery movement that feminism helped popularize in the 1980s and 90s was rooted in religion, and its customs were eventually adopted by modern evangelicals, as Alan Wolfe documented in The Transformation of American Religion.)
So I would not characterize censorship, solipsism, self-aggrandizement, or a preference for feelings over facts as either liberal or conservative impulses, but I do think it's more than fair to say that the forms they take in contemporary culture owe much to pop liberalism and not incidentally, the drive for diversity and equality. To persist in believing that popular American liberalism today is dominated by regard for reason and civil libertarianism is to remain in what a recovering person would probably describe as a dangerous state of denial.
I probably should have explicitly acknowledged the obvious -- that, like most isms, (feminism, conservatism, socialism, or libertarianism) liberalism is not monolithic. It is, however, marked by dominant trends, especially in its popular incarnations. The liberalism of John Stuart Mill, for example, (notably his defense of free speech) is difficult to reconcile with what passes for liberalism on college campuses today. It's true that, back in the 1980s, when Catherine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin proposed restricting pornography as a civil rights violation, they met with resistance from many traditional, liberal civil libertarians, (like me.) It's true that a federal appeals court struck down a local ordinance based on their model anti-porn statute almost 25 years ago. But while anti-porn feminists lost that battle, they won the war to cast censorship as a respectable, even necessary means of advancing equality.
Anyone who doubts the diminished regard for free speech and the enhanced support for censorship among many liberals and progressives might consider the ACLU's recent absence from some important free speech battles; (on the ACLU board, sympathy for restrictions on hate speech has increased significantly in recent years.) Or review (at thefire.org) speech and harassment codes, sensitivity training or attitude adjustment programs common on presumptively liberal campuses. (The sanctimonious, small-minded disregard for individual rights reflected in these policies has been sharply criticized and satirized for some 15 years; still it flourishes, and as a result, students with libertarian or civil libertarian sympathies, are apt to view liberalism as synonymous with repression.)
The connection between the rise of liberal censorship and pop therapeutic notions of victimization, abuse, and self-esteem is evident, and I have explored it in at least a couple of books. (Analyses and arguments bear repeating when the problems they address persist.) Like censorship, pop psychologies prosper right and left, of course. (The recovery movement that feminism helped popularize in the 1980s and 90s was rooted in religion, and its customs were eventually adopted by modern evangelicals, as Alan Wolfe documented in The Transformation of American Religion.)
So I would not characterize censorship, solipsism, self-aggrandizement, or a preference for feelings over facts as either liberal or conservative impulses, but I do think it's more than fair to say that the forms they take in contemporary culture owe much to pop liberalism and not incidentally, the drive for diversity and equality. To persist in believing that popular American liberalism today is dominated by regard for reason and civil libertarianism is to remain in what a recovering person would probably describe as a dangerous state of denial.
Listening to Republican attacks on Sonia Sotomayor's alleged biases and the undue influence of her "personal experiences" on her judgment, you could be forgiven for inferring that, just like a woman, Sotomayor thinks with her heart, not with her head. You might also infer that she has a rather post-modern take on justice - one that denies both the possibility and the virtue of relatively objective decision-making, in the belief that facts are mere perceptions. But pondering this vision of presumptively left-wing, emotive, feminine relativism, you might find yourself thinking less about Sonia Sotomayor than Sarah Palin.
Palin embodies a post-modern ideal that conservatives have delighted in deriding. Self-referential, unembarrassed by solipsism and un-tethered by logic or facts she doesn't argue; she declares. Declining to engage in reasoned argument, she can't be defeated by it. You can measure the success of her tactics, or instincts, by the frustration of her reality based critics who persist in trying to make facts matter.
Palin doesn't need to traffic in facts or truths; she recites her refrigerator magnet nostrums, affirms her self-esteem, (like a right-wing Stuart Smalley) and offers "feeling realities," which resonate with the feelings of her fans: Pointing out that ethics investigations did not cost Alaska millions of dollars as she has claimed is, for example, non-responsive -- irrelevant -- to Palin's emotional insistence that she has been unfairly targeted by liberal elitists and the politics as usual gang, at great cost to the state of Alaska as well as her family. From this perspective, fidelity to facts is partisan nitpicking, at best. Insensitivity to Palin's "feeling realities" is a form of abuse. Criticism, or satire of her adolescent ramblings is "hate speech:" As a letter to the Boston Globe complained in response to an op ed: "The recent humor piece (mocking Sarah Palin) follows the worst tradition of liberal media hate speech. Just like the pieces on "Saturday Night Live," and on Jon Stewart's and Bill Maher's show ..."
Sonia Sotomayor would understand the constitutional protections extended to presumptively hateful liberal or conservative "media speech" (she has recognized the First Amendment right to engage in racist, anti-Semetic diatribes.) But, as a liberal media ironist might note, the expansive notion of hate speech that Palin supporters sometimes invoke was popularized by the liberalism they decry (which Sotomayor allegedly represents.) Indeed, anyone familiar with pop therapeutic notions of victimization and abuse, the concomitant rise of campus speech codes and mandatory sensitivity training, and the elevation of feelings or the moral authority of experience over reason and verifiable facts will recognize the debt Palin owes to social, political and intellectual movements that right wing pundits have long denounced as left-wing pathologies. If Palin represents much of what's wrong with America, as her most vehement liberal and progressive critics assert, she also indicates what's wrong with the culture that popular liberalism helped shape.
Palin embodies a post-modern ideal that conservatives have delighted in deriding. Self-referential, unembarrassed by solipsism and un-tethered by logic or facts she doesn't argue; she declares. Declining to engage in reasoned argument, she can't be defeated by it. You can measure the success of her tactics, or instincts, by the frustration of her reality based critics who persist in trying to make facts matter.
Palin doesn't need to traffic in facts or truths; she recites her refrigerator magnet nostrums, affirms her self-esteem, (like a right-wing Stuart Smalley) and offers "feeling realities," which resonate with the feelings of her fans: Pointing out that ethics investigations did not cost Alaska millions of dollars as she has claimed is, for example, non-responsive -- irrelevant -- to Palin's emotional insistence that she has been unfairly targeted by liberal elitists and the politics as usual gang, at great cost to the state of Alaska as well as her family. From this perspective, fidelity to facts is partisan nitpicking, at best. Insensitivity to Palin's "feeling realities" is a form of abuse. Criticism, or satire of her adolescent ramblings is "hate speech:" As a letter to the Boston Globe complained in response to an op ed: "The recent humor piece (mocking Sarah Palin) follows the worst tradition of liberal media hate speech. Just like the pieces on "Saturday Night Live," and on Jon Stewart's and Bill Maher's show ..."
Sonia Sotomayor would understand the constitutional protections extended to presumptively hateful liberal or conservative "media speech" (she has recognized the First Amendment right to engage in racist, anti-Semetic diatribes.) But, as a liberal media ironist might note, the expansive notion of hate speech that Palin supporters sometimes invoke was popularized by the liberalism they decry (which Sotomayor allegedly represents.) Indeed, anyone familiar with pop therapeutic notions of victimization and abuse, the concomitant rise of campus speech codes and mandatory sensitivity training, and the elevation of feelings or the moral authority of experience over reason and verifiable facts will recognize the debt Palin owes to social, political and intellectual movements that right wing pundits have long denounced as left-wing pathologies. If Palin represents much of what's wrong with America, as her most vehement liberal and progressive critics assert, she also indicates what's wrong with the culture that popular liberalism helped shape.
If Bernie Madoff's crimes were "extraordinarily evil," as his sentencing judge declared, than how to we describe the crimes of Joseph Stalin, or the warp speed massacres in late 20th century Rwanda? How do we distinguish linguistically between a massive Ponzi scheme and genocide? It's not an idle semantic question. Hyperbole, pop culture's lingua franca, doesn't simply exaggerate; it also diminishes. It threatens to obliterate essential moral and aesthetic distinctions, undermining our ability to recognize gradations of good and evil, freedom and repression, or beauty, intelligence and talent.
Yes, Madoff ruined countless lives (literally, considering the effect of his fraud on charities as well as individual investors.) Yes, he stole on a grand scale and earned his imprisonment. Yes, apparently he had his share of neuroses, (like reported obsessive compulsive tendencies,) but who doesn't? Generally, he seems such an ordinarily evil man. His sins -- greed, selfishness, dishonesty, an absence of empathy -- are all distressingly common. Indeed, his story owes its symbolic resonance to the ordinariness of his character and crime. Extraordinary people stand apart. Madoff stands within and for the acquisitive, status hungry culture that lionized him, the tribalism that led so many Jews to trust him, and the corrupt financial and regulatory system that allowed him to prosper.
Yes, Madoff ruined countless lives (literally, considering the effect of his fraud on charities as well as individual investors.) Yes, he stole on a grand scale and earned his imprisonment. Yes, apparently he had his share of neuroses, (like reported obsessive compulsive tendencies,) but who doesn't? Generally, he seems such an ordinarily evil man. His sins -- greed, selfishness, dishonesty, an absence of empathy -- are all distressingly common. Indeed, his story owes its symbolic resonance to the ordinariness of his character and crime. Extraordinary people stand apart. Madoff stands within and for the acquisitive, status hungry culture that lionized him, the tribalism that led so many Jews to trust him, and the corrupt financial and regulatory system that allowed him to prosper.
