I've been seeing talk again about censorship, or more specifically, things that don't count as censorship because they're not cases of the government making it a criminal offense to express certain ideas. This topic is one that serves as an excellent illustration of how liberals' principles have become highly situational over the past generation.
In 1990, a museum in Cincinnati that showed an exhibit by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe was brought up on obscenity charges, at least partly because the exhibit contained child pornography. The case became a rallying point for liberals, who felt that the government had no place putting limits on art. In response, one of the exhibit's most vocal critics, William F. Buckley, editor of the National Review, said,
“Are we taking the position that any
creation executed by an artist is ‘art’—and that it should be immune
from criticism?” he asked readers. “Let us suppose that an artist
painted a synagogue in the shape of a swastika. Would we be obliged to
withhold criticism of the painting, in deference to the liberties of the
artist?”
In that case, the official position of liberals was that there should never be any impediment placed on free expression, not even in a case of child pornography. In this case, it was a case of actual censorship, with the government stepping in and pressing criminal charges, but liberals said it was wrong.
Fast-forward to 1999, still in Cincinnati. Marge Schott, owner of the Reds baseball team, was forced out of management of the team, not because she mismanaged it, but because she had frequently embarrassed the team by making shockingly racist statements, both publicly and privately. Note, Schott had not broken any laws in making these offensive remarks. When she said that she felt that Adolf Hitler was good for Germany at first, but that he then "took it too far," she was not in violation of any obscenity laws like the museum had been with their kiddie porn display nine years earlier. When she made fun of Asians or referred to her outfielders as "million dollar niggers," she had not violated anyone's civil rights. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, she had neither picked their pockets nor broken their legs...at least not the people she was making the butts of her jokes, that is. She may very well have caused financial injury to the baseball team, which is why the team's board forced her out. She was owner, managing partner, President, and CEO, yet it was permissible to take all that away from her because she legally spoke words that hurt people's feelings and may have caused them to spend their money elsewhere.
If American liberals had been consistent as champions of free expression, this is the point where they'd jump up and say, "Hey, if we'll stop the government from jailing pedophiles, surely we have to stand up to a corporation trying to silence an old woman who's just expressing her opinion." It didn't happen, though. Instead, they were busy clutching their pearls over Schott's latest insensitive remark.
"Not the same thing," I can hear you saying. "The Mapplethorpe exhibit was government censorship. The Cincinnati Reds are a business that made a business decision. Nobody has a constitutional right to manage the Reds. They don't have to pay her if she's going to embarrass them. Nobody has to pay to give Schott a platform."
Okay...2003--the Dixie Chicks, while performing at a concert in the UK, said,
"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."
The President took it in stride, saying that the thing about America was that these women were free to express their opinions. Country music fans, though, were outraged. They protested and boycotted the band. Their top single fell from #10 to #43 in a single week. The week after that, it fell off the chart completely. Major organizations cancelled promotional deals with the band. Association with them was financial suicide.
The left, though, was outraged by the outrage. Not typically country music fans, American liberals came together to embrace the Dixie Chicks and celebrate them as righteous martyrs, cruelly and wrongfully persecuted for expressing a political position. Other celebrities, notably Madonna and Merle Haggard, spoke out publicly to support the Dixie Chicks' right to express themselves freely. No arrests had been made. No charges had been filed. Although some radio DJs were fired for playing Dixie Chicks songs, the band itself remained employed. The only "penalty" they were subjected to was that they earned less money because their erstwhile fans chose not to pay them to express those opinions. (They were subjected to death threats by some individuals, but they were not official government actions. Indeed, police gave the band a personal security detail to protect them from criminals.) The record label kept them. They continued doing concerts. They actually got some good publicity from the controversy, but the political left treated them as innocent victims or a ruthless hate crime because people who didn't like what they said stopped paying and stopped listening.
"B-but...Marge Schott was speaking hate. She was oppressing minorities with her words. The Dixie Chicks were speaking truth to power!"
Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson was asked in a 2013 GQ interview what he felt was sinful. He responded,
"Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men." A&E disavowed the comments and suspended Robertson from the show. Some retailers stopped carrying Duck Dynasty merchandise. Robertson was not calling for gays to be oppressed, or for rights to be taken away from them. Indeed, in a follow-up interview, he expressed a compassionate, if socially conservative, view.
"Jesus will take sins away. If you're a homosexual, He'll take it away. If you're an adulterer, if you're a liar, what's the difference?"
Liberals screamed their roaring approval of the suspension, saying that A&E had every right to suspend someone. Same as with the Reds, it was a private company "refusing to give a platform to hate." In fact, though, it was A&E who expressed hate by censoring Robertson's religious views--and not just by suspending him over his politically incorrect religious views. A year prior, during a portion of the show where Robertson and his family prayed, editors bleeped the word "Jesus" as though it were profanity, and asked Robertson to stop saying the name.
It would appear, then, that by the ever-evolving liberal standards, it's okay for a business in the pursuit of money to silence religious expression, but not political expression. Er, that is to say, it's okay to be anti-Christian for profit, but not okay to be pro-Bush for profit. So now the principle is, in fact, totally devoid of principle. There is no hard standard based on an abstract rule of behavior. It's entirely down to content, judged on a case-by-case basis as to whether the speaker is saying something that offends or encourages liberals. That's no principle at all. That's just bias.
Since this time, America's political left has come out with rigid prescriptions on how men should sit on public transportation, which pronouns we must use for people of ambiguous gender, which gender is allowed to set office thermostats, and what skin colors a person must have to express a valid opinion about race relations,
In that case, the official position of liberals was that there should never be any impediment placed on free expression, not even in a case of child pornography. In this case, it was a case of actual censorship, with the government stepping in and pressing criminal charges, but liberals said it was wrong.
Fast-forward to 1999, still in Cincinnati. Marge Schott, owner of the Reds baseball team, was forced out of management of the team, not because she mismanaged it, but because she had frequently embarrassed the team by making shockingly racist statements, both publicly and privately. Note, Schott had not broken any laws in making these offensive remarks. When she said that she felt that Adolf Hitler was good for Germany at first, but that he then "took it too far," she was not in violation of any obscenity laws like the museum had been with their kiddie porn display nine years earlier. When she made fun of Asians or referred to her outfielders as "million dollar niggers," she had not violated anyone's civil rights. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, she had neither picked their pockets nor broken their legs...at least not the people she was making the butts of her jokes, that is. She may very well have caused financial injury to the baseball team, which is why the team's board forced her out. She was owner, managing partner, President, and CEO, yet it was permissible to take all that away from her because she legally spoke words that hurt people's feelings and may have caused them to spend their money elsewhere.
If American liberals had been consistent as champions of free expression, this is the point where they'd jump up and say, "Hey, if we'll stop the government from jailing pedophiles, surely we have to stand up to a corporation trying to silence an old woman who's just expressing her opinion." It didn't happen, though. Instead, they were busy clutching their pearls over Schott's latest insensitive remark.
"Not the same thing," I can hear you saying. "The Mapplethorpe exhibit was government censorship. The Cincinnati Reds are a business that made a business decision. Nobody has a constitutional right to manage the Reds. They don't have to pay her if she's going to embarrass them. Nobody has to pay to give Schott a platform."
Okay...2003--the Dixie Chicks, while performing at a concert in the UK, said,
"Just so you know, we're on the good side with y'all. We do not want this war, this violence, and we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas."
The President took it in stride, saying that the thing about America was that these women were free to express their opinions. Country music fans, though, were outraged. They protested and boycotted the band. Their top single fell from #10 to #43 in a single week. The week after that, it fell off the chart completely. Major organizations cancelled promotional deals with the band. Association with them was financial suicide.
The left, though, was outraged by the outrage. Not typically country music fans, American liberals came together to embrace the Dixie Chicks and celebrate them as righteous martyrs, cruelly and wrongfully persecuted for expressing a political position. Other celebrities, notably Madonna and Merle Haggard, spoke out publicly to support the Dixie Chicks' right to express themselves freely. No arrests had been made. No charges had been filed. Although some radio DJs were fired for playing Dixie Chicks songs, the band itself remained employed. The only "penalty" they were subjected to was that they earned less money because their erstwhile fans chose not to pay them to express those opinions. (They were subjected to death threats by some individuals, but they were not official government actions. Indeed, police gave the band a personal security detail to protect them from criminals.) The record label kept them. They continued doing concerts. They actually got some good publicity from the controversy, but the political left treated them as innocent victims or a ruthless hate crime because people who didn't like what they said stopped paying and stopped listening.
"B-but...Marge Schott was speaking hate. She was oppressing minorities with her words. The Dixie Chicks were speaking truth to power!"
Duck Dynasty star Phil Robertson was asked in a 2013 GQ interview what he felt was sinful. He responded,
"Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men." A&E disavowed the comments and suspended Robertson from the show. Some retailers stopped carrying Duck Dynasty merchandise. Robertson was not calling for gays to be oppressed, or for rights to be taken away from them. Indeed, in a follow-up interview, he expressed a compassionate, if socially conservative, view.
"Jesus will take sins away. If you're a homosexual, He'll take it away. If you're an adulterer, if you're a liar, what's the difference?"
Liberals screamed their roaring approval of the suspension, saying that A&E had every right to suspend someone. Same as with the Reds, it was a private company "refusing to give a platform to hate." In fact, though, it was A&E who expressed hate by censoring Robertson's religious views--and not just by suspending him over his politically incorrect religious views. A year prior, during a portion of the show where Robertson and his family prayed, editors bleeped the word "Jesus" as though it were profanity, and asked Robertson to stop saying the name.
It would appear, then, that by the ever-evolving liberal standards, it's okay for a business in the pursuit of money to silence religious expression, but not political expression. Er, that is to say, it's okay to be anti-Christian for profit, but not okay to be pro-Bush for profit. So now the principle is, in fact, totally devoid of principle. There is no hard standard based on an abstract rule of behavior. It's entirely down to content, judged on a case-by-case basis as to whether the speaker is saying something that offends or encourages liberals. That's no principle at all. That's just bias.
Since this time, America's political left has come out with rigid prescriptions on how men should sit on public transportation, which pronouns we must use for people of ambiguous gender, which gender is allowed to set office thermostats, and what skin colors a person must have to express a valid opinion about race relations,
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