The Chimp Cartoon and the Death of Free Speech

"There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches. Every minority, be it Baptist/Unitarian, Irish/Italian/Octogenarian/Zen Buddhist, Zionist/Seventh-day Adventist, Women's Lib/Republican, Mattachine/FourSquareGospel feel it has the will, the right, the duty to douse the kerosene, light the fuse. Every dimwit editor who sees himself as the source of all dreary blanc-mange plain porridge unleavened literature, licks his guillotine and eyes the neck of any author who dares to speak above a whisper or write above a nursery rhyme." - Ray Bradbury

In Ray Bradbury's futuristic novel Fahrenheit 451, the state burned all books in order to hide the truth from the people. In the coda to a 1979 edition of the book, Bradbury wrote: "Fire-Captain Beatty, in my novel Fahrenheit 451, described how the books were burned first by minorities, each ripping a page or a paragraph from this book, until the day came when the books were empty and the minds shut and the libraries closed forever."

Today, the forces of political correctness have managed to replace actual book burning with intellectual book burning. For example, take the recent firestorm over a New York Post editorial cartoon by Sean Delonas depicting a chimp, alluded to as the author of the stimulus package, being gunned down by police officers.

The day after the piece was published, 200 protesters picketed the Post's offices, enraged over what they considered a racist slur against President Obama. The Post apologized, pointing out that the cartoon was an allusion to a much-publicized incident in which a chimp that had badly mauled a Connecticut woman was shot to death by police.

Refusing to be mollified, the NAACP has called for a boycott of the paper and its parent company News Corp and for Delonas and editor-in-chief Col Allan to be fired. Not to be outdone, the Rev. Al Sharpton has launched a petition campaign to urge the FCC to step in and take away the waiver allowing News Corp to operate two newspapers and two TV stations in the same city. His rationale, as he explained to CNN, is essentially that News Corp shouldn't have the waivers if they "don't understand what would offend a large amount of African-Americans -- and whites, by the way."

Fired up by the black leadership's charges of racism, students at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn have actually resorted to burning copies of the Post and have called on their classmates to shut down their MySpace pages.

This type of reaction is typical of the totalitarian democracy in which we now live, and the chimp cartoon is a perfect microcosm of what is happening across the nation. While the notion of free speech remains enshrined in the First Amendment of our Constitution, censorship is no longer a bad word. Instead, it is what so-called responsible adults must now do in order to ensure that no one is offended.

The real issue here has little to do with racism and everything to do with free speech and our commitment, as a free and open society, to tolerate offensive ideas. Yet when we suppress controversial ideas, we deny free speech. And when we deny free speech, we cease to be a free society. As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart once noted, "Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime."

No doubt Delonas' cartoon was crude and lacking in sound judgment. Yet don't we have a particular duty to protect those like Delonas -- those politically incorrect few who, while they might be perceived as irresponsible and lacking in judgment, are in fact testing our constitutional fortitude?

The sensible response should have been to use the Delonas incident as a springboard for a meaningful discussion on race relations. However, what we got were knee-jerk reactions by people who were quick to take offense and slow to find real solutions to the underlying problems. The consequence of such behavior is an increasing tendency to pre-censor unpopular and detested ideas instead of discussing them and, thus, dealing with them head-on.

However, by allowing the monster of political correctness to trash our First Amendment right to free speech, we slam the door on open debate and dialogue. Ultimately, intimidating people into silence will lead to more grievous problems. Delonas' cartoon was crude. But to totally dismantle a newspaper or destroy Delonas' life is inimical to democracy. Call for an apology. But don't suppress free expression. And, above all, don't annihilate the man or the free press.

If people fear losing their jobs or having their lives ruined for uttering offensive remarks, they become afraid to speak. Without a public outlet for their thoughts -- hateful or otherwise, they fester in secret. This is where most violent acts are born. And that is why the First Amendment in its protection of speech is so important. It acts as a steam valve to let those who hate release their pent-up anger.

The First Amendment also protects against the mob mentality. In fact, the backlash against Sean Delonas represents our politically correct society's constant attempts to control the minds of those who persist in thinking that we are a free people. Censoring unpopular speech sends the message that if we don't toe the line, our lives can, and will, be ruined. As a consequence, it not only destroys human beings, it tells us that we can't think for ourselves, we can't hold certain views and we can't speak freely.

Ray Bradbury was right. There is more than one way to burn a book. In writing about his own experiences with "butcher/censors," as he termed them, Ray Bradbury remarked, "[I]t is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist, pro-computerologist or Neo-Luddite, simpleton or sage, to interfere with aesthetics. The real world is the playing ground for each and every group, to make or unmake laws." Did Bradbury dare use such words as "dwarf," "orangutan" and "simpleton"? Who will be offended by that?

This overblown debacle clearly illustrates how far we've fallen as a free society. America once symbolized the very essence of free speech, where society's most arduous and insidious ideas could be put to the test in what Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes coined as the "free marketplace of ideas." Today, however, America has been captured by the chains of political correctness and polite society, or what we might call fascism with a smile. At least some will go to the guillotine grinning.

 

Follow John W. Whitehead on Twitter: www.twitter.com/rutherford_inst

Comments

[negotiatethis]

Free speech has its costs as well as its priviledges. Every paper has the right to publish vile and offensive things. Their privilege. The cost is that they have exposed themselves as a vile and offensive entity. That will prove to be a cost. The free market system will reward and punish us all for our rights to speak freely. As long as the government doesn't, I'm cool with that. http://talkingcuba.wordpress.com/

[missbelladog]

Free speech, as a constitutional protection, doesn't insulate a publication from the marketplace.

[highflag]

Delonas and the Post faced no criminal prosecution for the insensitive cartoon. They are free to publish cartoons every day for the next 8 years depicting our President as a dead chimp. The fact that they won't do so, recognizing the obvious racism and violent overtones, is strictly an editorial choice on their part.

Everyone's free speech rights are in evidence here. Your point is mistaken.

[TheModerateVoice]

You have a very narrow view of freedom of speech.
Those who criticized the cartoon and went onto boycotting the New York Post are, in fact, exercising their right to free speech. Who are you to dismiss their actions as "knee-jerk reaction" or "suppression of free speech"?

[Gogetter]

Let me get this straight. Protecting the cartoonist's freedom of expression requires taking away freedom of expression away from :
Sharpton
The students at Medgar Evers College
The NAACP

"Fired up by the black leadership's charges of racism, students at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn have actually resorted to burning copies of the Post and have called on their classmates to shut down their MySpace pages. "

So these "Fired up" students shouldn't be free to express themselves? Did they storm the Post's printing facility and burn all the copies? No. Did they snatch copies away from people on the street and burn them? No. If they want to buy copies of the Post and burn them in protest, who gives a crap? It's on the net anyway.

[SeanFromNJ]

I don't see the government doing anything to prevent the NY Post from publishing or this artist from creating future cartoons. That's the only way this would be a free speech/1st Amendment issue. Individuals have a right to read or not read whatever they want, that's part of being a free society. If you see something you disapprove of, your power is to not buy that thing. You also have a right not to buy products that sponsor the thing with which you disagree. This is what people have been doing. They have been calling the Post to express outrage at the cartoon and inform them that they will not be directing any of their money towards the Post in the future. They have also been contacting the sponsors to inform them of their disapproval. Both of these are not fascism or an infringement of free speech but merely consumers making their wishes clear. If the Post wants to fire this cartoonist for business reasons, or if they want to keep him for some ideological reason, either choice is acceptable but we as people have every right to inform them of our wishes and to punish them in the market if they go against our demands.

[Zanti]

"I don't see the government doing anything to prevent the NY Post from publishing or this artist from creating future cartoons."

It's not that simple. The govt. has a responsibility to protect freedom of speech, regardless of who or what is threatening it. Fellow citizens don't have a go-ahead to bully us into relinquishing any of our rights.

Yes, people have a right to disagree as loudly as they wish to the clearly racist cartoon in question, but Mr. Whitehead is warning against mob pressure. Don't pretend the intention isn't to intimidate the paper into not printing such cartoons.

[SeanFromNJ]

That's just not true. If I see you on the street and tell you to shut up the cops can't arrest me. I can't be fined for refusing to buy a newspaper or patronize a sponsor of said newspaper. Unless I perpetrate some sort of violence on you there really is nothing the government can do. I am not bound to respect your freedom of speech. I am not a government agent. I can tell you to shut up. I can ignore you. I can go on the internet and tell everyone I know not to listen to a word you say. I can do anything I want short of holding you down and taping your mouth shut. I never said the intention wasn't to intimidate the paper into acting differently in the future. That's obviously the intention. That's also perfectly reasonable and legal. That's how the market works. You choose to patronize certain businesses and not patronize others and this causes those businesses to act in certain ways to try to get you to patronize their business. If we all stand up and say we're not going to buy the Post, or buy from companies that sponsor the Post, we are sending them a message. That could be considered intimidation but nobody's standing outside their offices with a bat threatening to beat them down.

[Lon]

To make the point of hypocrisy a bit clearer, in his Slouching Towards Gomorrah, Robert Bork makes the case for censorship. Of course what he wants to censor is material he disapproves of, there is no reason to think he would object to the cartoon in question even on its worst interpretation. After all, Bork first made his reputation in the '60s arguing for the right of white business owners to not serve black customers.

Is Rutherford as glad as I am that liberals in the Senate prevented Bork's weak view of the 1st Amendment from getting a seat on the court, or his still pushing the fiction that Bork was excluded from the court because of bias and not his judicial philosophy? Somehow my money would be on the latter.

The 1st Amendment will be under much less of a threat with more liberal juries. The last thing we need are more Borks.

[WillNYC]

anything that promotes hatred and race baits is NOT free speech and does not have the same protection­s....

[tyger]

Free Speech my butt. If free speech is the right to dehumanize a people and subtly advocate violence toward our president than to hell with it. I'm sure if the cartoonist had tried he could have come up with a better comparrison. So when the people are protesting and calling for others of like minds to not purchase the news rag that's equated with censorship and burning of books. Than so be it! Don't urinate on my head and tell me it is raining! As a person of color I know racism when I see it. I have had fifty years training on the subject.

[Ricardo Bernard]

Joh, I don't think we should allow those who have overreacted on the issue to cloud the fact that many reasonable people do, in fact, find the cartoon racist and would like to have some kind of discourse on the issue instead of calling for anyone to be fired. I have a post on my blog that illustrates this at:

http://ricoexplainsitall.squarespace.com/politcs-economy/2009/2/22/sometimes-a-cartoon-is-more-than-a-cartoon.html

[warmjohn]

What is it with you censorship guys? There are no laws against shooting your mouth off in the "marketplace of ideas", you just have to take your lumps in that marketplace when you say something clueless. The NAACP did not frame this response--it was framed by decades of negative characaturizing and vilification of African Americans by the ruling culture. Newspapers and other print journals were often complicit in promoting those harmful stereotypes. Our society doesn't get to just pretend that history never happened, and the Post's defensive response of "I'm sorry you where offended," just proved they they remain clueless.

[jhNY]

Didn't like the cartoon, but I have already spoken in the marketplace: I never buy the Pest or now the WSJ or watch Faux Noise and I never will, so long as Rupert is master over them.

But, as the cartoon was racist (see? it's easy, just as the author declares his opinion of the cartoon as if it were fact, I can claim that the racism I see contained therein is a fact), and at least vaguely inciteful, given the odious long history of monkey-Black equivalencies, as well as our history of firearms aimed at chief executives, I'd say that this is an instance where the cartoonist's right to free expression, and his editor's right to put it into print , may be deserving of a Secret Service interview at least.

But I digress, the subject at hand is the freedom of the press, a national press owned by a powerful few now more than ever, which rightly understood means the freedom of those press owners to print whatever they want, which they evidently feel free to do-- only not without becoming the targets of public outrage when warranted, as is the case here. Rupe just needs to toughen up, as he seems now much better at dishing out garbage to his readers than eating his just desserts. He's all right; let him get up by himself.

[Nommo]

So how is "free speech" served by monopolistic practices? Speech is, apparently, for those who can afford it. Free speech has been stifled for years by advertisers who refuse to buy space in "minority" newspapers, even as they sold product to the very same community served by those periodicals. Ray Bradbury had no idea. Even when he wrote "Fahrenheit 451" , citizens of the US were involved in campaigns for enfranchisement and equal protection under the law. Where was there free speech? There is no question who spoke freely then, anyone can ascertain that and even look at the political cartoons of the day. Anyone can see the violence that was brought on American citizens seeking redress.

All who claim that the cartoon was about a chimp seem to delight in their denial of the violence portrayed in that cartoon. The same delight that is engendered by violence toward Black and other "minority" citizens. In the light of police shooting of Black men, the intent of that cartoon was clear enough to those who seek to make clear that they are tired of being the subject of grossly inhumane
portrayals.

"Free" thinkers and speakers would not tend towards such expression. That is the province of misanthropes.

[burntbeans]

the first amendment right to free speech that allowed the NY post to run this cartoon, also allows readers and citizens to protest, boycott and call for the resignation of the editor of the post. now, if the government had stepped in and censored this, you might have an argument to make. unfortunately, people responding the way they have to this cartoon is also protected under the first amendment. i'm afraid your argument does not hold water with me, mr. whitehead.

[DaVinci42]

I concur. This is the proper action for irresponsible, but legal, actions.

I can't quite understand what I call the 'Bully Mentality'. Basically the mindset that I can push you, but 'How DARE' you push back!

But I've found quite a few people who rationalize their prejudices by ONLY focusing on his / her personal rights, ignoring the reciprocal rights of said group. For example, I was talking to someone the other month that claimed that Gay Marriage would infringe on HIS rights, completely ignoring the rights of Gays/Lesbians that want to marry.

[Steve Bucholz]

The very fact that this cartoon was published seems to refute Mr. Whiteheads contention that "free speech" is waning or dead. Just as it is illegal to shout "fire" falsely in a crowded theatre, cleverly depicting a junta against a sitting president will raise it's share of outrage in even the freeest societies.­Yes, there is concern over the degree of PC stances taken by certain groups and idealogues but the consequences and effects of crossing the line ebb and flow much like the very definition of "conservative" and "liberal" They do not remain static.