[A response to AOL's attempt to clean up hurtful language of its various message boards.]
Hell, I'm not questioning AOL's right to have a "TOS."*** Stuff gets axed for pretty dumbass reasons every now and then -- but, bottom line: it's their wire, and their axe. I get it, man.
The problem ain't inside this walled garden. It's out there in the...haha...what they call the "real" world.
It's actually pretty good in here, compared to that there real world. You say something: the next person responds...and usually shows some sign of having read it. Nice, long volleys of thought going over the net... It's as cute as a badmitton game.
Back in the "real" world, I'm starting to feel this chilling effect (nice name for a rap band, eh?). Hard to putcher finger on exactly where the scrotum-tightening wind is coming from--but seems to have something to do with bad manners.
Maybe it's just me, but seems like it's real easy to offend people these days. You say something--but no one hears what you're saying. They hear a word, a phrase, a tone, and filter it through the question: are you for me or against me? And that's when they get....ANGRY! Seems to be getting easier and easier to push that ANGRY button... Most of the "free speech" issues that hit the papers have something to do with some racialethnicreligiocorporate interest group that feels its image is being assaulted.
A lot of this could be solved with a little good manners--but some of the outrages are real outrages. I'm not telling anybody to "get over it." But it's hard to draw that fist/nose line, hence my last post of sticky issues where Left and Right are fighting. Words are powerful, can give life or kill. But ...
On the other hand, being hurt is another form of power. The Christian Right learned that in the late 70's -- and started going around saying "We're victims! The secular humanist State is persecuting us!"
And so it goes.
The latest craze... Now tobacco companies are portraying health regulation as some form of persecution. Oh gawd...look at all those marginalized smokers, sitting out there on the wing of that plane...*
White males are victims now, too ... victims of that stabbing pain of being called a "white male European." It hurts ... and it hurts so good. "Ow....great...now I'm a victim! It's...it's reverse racism against me, thank God! Now I can be ANGRY! At last!" ... Etc.
So where do you draw the line?
Call a whiny fratboy a "whiny fratboy," that's exactly what they deserve. But it's another thing to call a woman "bitch." That's an offense -- a verbal assault.
Yeah. No argument.
But where do you draw the line between "offensive speech" and speech that happens to offend some twitchy, oversensitive asshole? Like, hypothetically ...
Let's say you're an art critic and you criticize somebody's painting. The artist (who happens to be male) finds you at a party, grabs you by the shoulder, whirls you around and starts screaming, foam coming out of his mouth, "As a visual artist I am OFFENDED that you consider my work something you can categorize with your words. I am TRYING TO SELL PAINTINGS and I think what you have done with your reviews is a DELIBERATE ATTACK on visual arts everywhere...YOU ARE TRYING TO DESTROY THE VISUAL ARTS IN THIS COMMUNITY!!!!!"
And this goes on for fifteen more minutes. You can easily wipe the spittle from your face when the ordeal is done. But the philosophical problem remains ...
See, the problem ain't that you criticized this dude's painting. The problem is: you criticized a visual artist; and each visual artist is synecdochally part of all visual artists everywhere; you attack one, you attack all; which means YOU ARE AGAINST VISUAL ARTISTS!
And it goes without saying (in my little hypothetical) that said visual artist didn't read the review, understand the argument, or have a basis of disagreement. No.
Said arteest is responding to the review as an attack: because criticism, per se, is an attack -- not on the work, or the ideas behind the work, but on the group.
And...uh...hehheh...this is purely hypothetical, understand. Purely. Not picking on visual artists. Everybody's doing this kind of thing: plumbers, filmmakers, religious groups...
But it makes it hard to draw the line between someone responding to real abuse and a thinskinned perception of abuse by someone with their bowels in an uproar.
It's one thing to punch somebody in the nose, another when that somebody puts a chip on their shoulder and you knock it off by doing your thing -- and that somebody has been dying for you to do just that. The point being ...
Free speech is fucked when it bows its knee to the lines you can't cross, the words you can't say, and the agendas of various groups -- who dearly want to control their public image.
What you're left with is a gotcha game and nobody hears what anybody else is saying.
So what good is free speech if well-reasoned words come out of your mouth -- and all the other person hears is "blahblahblah I hate you blahblah I am saying something bad about you blahblahblah" -- and that's not what you're saying at all?
Free speech is a wunnerful thing, yep, and a lunatic pushing a cart full of crap in New York City is exercising the right to free speech. God bless America.
Metaphorically speaking, we could all be lunatics pushing our accumulated carts of personal baggage around, yapping to an audience of one... But, hey. It beats working in advertising...** But I digress.
So, what's the solution to the nose-fist dilemma?
Send $500 in a self-addressed stamped envelope to:
Jack Getz
PO Box 49493,
Sarasota, FL
34230
The solution will arrive in the mail before you know it. Honest.
**Advertising is the real devil. All the rest of this shit is the work of irritating minor demons.
***"TOS" = "terms of service.
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