In my role as commentary editor I’ve written many editorials during the last few weeks about what the Emerald editorial board believes to be a series of troubling setbacks for free speech on this campus. But today I wish to speak for myself alone. I know many of you are now sick and tired of the First Amendment issue, and I don’t blame you. But please don’t turn away just yet. The coverage is necessary because protecting this fundamental right is the most important domestic issue facing the country right now.
I want to speak directly to my fellow progressives on campus – the ones mounting the attack on the Oregon Commentator. I am beyond disappointed in you. I am downright appalled that you are unable, or unwilling, to see the error of trying to silence a publication for content you don’t like. I am appalled to see you throw around the serious charge of “hate speech” for something so obviously innocuous.
Many of the same people who proclaim that their freedom of privacy should trump national security in the context of the PATRIOT Act, are now arguing that the perceived security of a single, public official should trump everybody’s freedom of speech. The logical inconsistency is difficult
to reconcile.
I have come to expect this kind of behavior from conservatives – just look at what they have done to Ward Churchill, the beleaguered professor at the University of Colorado. An old essay about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has come to light in which Churchill argues that the best way to stop future terrorism is for America to stop committing terrorism abroad. It is a perfectly reasonable point, but he uses extremely controversial language at best (and downright hateful language at worst) to advance it. For example, he referred to some of the victims of Sept. 11 as “little Eichmanns,” a reference to Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi in charge of the logistics of Hitler’s “final solution.”
As horrible and insensitive and false as that analogy might be, the conservative backlash is simply too severe. Conservative talk radio hosts say equally insensitive things every day without the life and death repercussions that Churchill is now facing. Hell, Pat Robertson said that gays and lesbians were responsible for the deaths on Sept. 11. Both statements are equally disgusting.
The outrage over the Commentator’s content has also been over the top. Information about the Commentator’s budget hearing on Tuesday was posted on the Portland Indymedia Web site under the title “Resist Hate Speech at UO.” The message states that the Commentator has a “record of printing material that directly hurts women, people of color, [and] queers” by publishing “rape jokes and other forms of oppressive ridicule.” It ends ominously: “We are watching to make sure that groups are held accountable for contributing to hate and violence.” The message was placed in the “anti-racism” category and grouped with stories about protesting neo-Nazi and skinhead rallies in Portland.
This kind of mindless hyperbole is an automatic credibility buster. Until we have mastered the technology whereby printed words are able to leap off the page and slap you in the face, no story has “directly hurt” anybody. And even so, is “hurt” now the standard for acceptable and unacceptable speech? To say that the Commentator has contributed to “violence” is ridiculous. This logic comes dangerously close to saying that conservative dissent should be censored. Is arguing against affirmative action hate speech?
It is getting harder and harder to take activists on the left seriously. Your actions are becoming more arbitrary and less consistent, more reactionary and less thoughtful. Even when you have a good point to make, you seem to find a way to destroy all your credibility. Take, for example, OSPIRG’s event at the University Bookstore on Tuesday to bring
attention to out-of-control textbook costs. They dressed up in black, as if they were mourners at a funeral, next to fake tombstones. “These books died at a very young age by the release of new editions,” Courtney
Anglin said.
Give me a break! I’m sick of this theater activism. Leave the costumes, puppets and props at home and act like a group of people who have something intelligent to say, a group with some dignity. What this group should have been mourning is the state of the progressive movement. It too has died at a very young age.
Welcome to activist theatre
Daily Emerald
February 3, 2005
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