OPINION & EDITORIAL
1st Amendment protects insensitivity
Looking for a print version?
Simply choose ‘Print’ on your computer and a printer-friendly document will be generated.
Also by Cynthia Martens:
- America maintains unhealthy obsession with body image (February 10, 2006)
- Genocide not limited to Holocaust (January 27, 2006)
- Undergraduate fears of commencement unjustified (February 3, 2006)
- Outbursts in class unacceptable (April 7, 2005)
- Teacher evaluations not always effective (February 17, 2006)
Related Stories:
- From the desk of the editor: A different perspective (April 23, 2007)
- Incoming editor discusses future of Opinion page (May 10, 2007)
- Opinions are really hard to come up with. (February 3, 2003)
- Online feedback lacks accountablity (October 24, 2006)
- Peace and love y'all (December 13, 2007)
by Cynthia Martens
Friday, February 24, 2006
As an opinion columnist, I'm accustomed to getting my share of e-mails in response to what I write. Most often, responses are from one Anonymous who, it has to be said, is really all over the issues, in addition to being all over the Internet.
That's why it was a real treat for me when University of Wisconsin professor Carl Grant invited me to discuss one of my articles as a guest at the Multicultural Student Center Wednesday.
The article in question was one I had written in January about the United Nations' international day of commemoration for Holocaust victims. I noted that because the Holocaust is such a sensitive topic, I had to be careful in choosing my words. Our group discussion soon moved from sensitive topics to offensive topics, with the inevitable mention of the Danish cartoons that have caused such a stir worldwide. From there, I found myself in the middle of an animated discussion about freedom of the press.
The MSC students raised a long list of hot questions.
If newspaper and magazine editors have the ultimate say in what gets published, then how do they decide what's appropriate? Does freedom of the press cover the right to publish extremely offensive views? Does publishing an offensive view mean that you condone it? If you publish a controversial piece, are you responsible for the actions of others who read that piece? How powerful are printed words and images? What is the difference between factuality and objectivity?
Ultimately, the true test of your belief in freedom of the press and free speech is your willingness to print or hear views that you disagree with — maybe even views that make your blood boil. In a country where people can SAY anything they want (not DO anything they want), you will always find some people expressing despicable views.
One concern I sensed among the students was that if a well-known, influential newspaper publishes a hateful or derogatory viewpoint, this might in turn incite others into hateful or derogatory action. Some European countries have placed limited restrictions on freedom of speech. In France, for instance, it is actually illegal to express pro-Nazi views. That's France's way of trying to ensure the Holocaust was a one-time deal. Similarly, a British author was just arrested in Austria and sentenced to three years in prison for denying the Holocaust.
It's a tough call. I regularly read editorials that I disagree with, and the only action they lead me to is throwing my hands up in disgust. But if you're going to start saying some opinions shouldn't be published, how do you decide which opinions those are? There's a real danger in censorship. Simply the fact that some people find a particular view offensive is not reason enough to silence the person expressing that view. The American system assumes that there are so many competing sources of information — from newspapers and magazines to television, radio and the Internet — that no single objectionable piece could wield that much influence.
The United States has a secular government. Thus, Americans can and do get away with making highly insensitive remarks when it comes to religion. They can also criticize government officials, mock public figures and make any politically incorrect statements they please — all at the risk of knowingly offending an individual or group.
Mark Twain observed: "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them."
Free speech is more broadly protected in the United States than elsewhere. Slavery ravaged the families of African-Americans, but once slavery ended, the suffering didn't. Lynching and the Ku Klux Klan terrorized African-American families nationwide. Today, there remains a "lost cause" faction that waves the Confederate flag and denies the inhumanity of slavery and segregation.
Two major televangelists commenting on Sept. 11 agreed that God may have allowed the attacks because of moral decay and listed the American Civil Liberties Union, abortionists, feminists, gays and the People For the American way as sharing in the blame.
And while many U.S. newspapers voluntarily refused to publish the inflammatory Danish cartoon, Americans can easily access it online through Wikipedia.
America's melting-pot society strives to be open to people from all walks of life, but it also demands that everyone grow a thick skin.
Cynthia Martens (cmartens@badgerherald.com) is a senior majoring in Italian and European studies.
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 6:23am):
May be the first article we see eye to eye on. The only argument against the cartoons is supression of first amendment rights, and like you said, it is impossible to pick and choose which will offend.
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 8:52am):
I have little tolerance for intolerance. Nothing anybody can say is a justification for murder.
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 9:45am):
I agree with what you say as a whole about the freedom of speech and that self-censoring is not the way of the press (ESP at UW-Madison because we kick ass). An observation I made is that the choice in reprinting the image is a sad reflection of how a majority of the people feel on campus (and in the US perhaps). For example, if someone sent you an cartoon of Jesus Christ on a cross, with the KKK hood over his head. Would you print it? I think the fact that a LOT more people here would feel offended or upset by it would keep the any American press from printing it because of the consequences. I'm not talking about legal consequences - just the controvery: the name calling you may recieve and the fact that you may lose a bunch of your ad sponsers etc. Similarly, the Abercrombie and Fitch fiasco a few years back when they printed T-shirts with Chinese caricatures and moderately derogatory phrases. If they had printed a T-shirt with a caricature of Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat by using a lot of swear words and ebonics....we'd probably have riots. We are all fully aware of the double standard that it is socially acceptable that make fun of white people, but not black people.
Personally I felt rather upset about the reprinting of the controversal comic but like you said, I'm growing thicker skin, (almost calussing! j/k) After some thought, like I said earlier, I realized that this seems to be a simple reflection on the society we live in.
The freedom of speech is something very valuable. The US supreme court overturned the local officials' decision in skokie, IL in 1977 and allowed the Nazi demonstrations to proceed. I sometimes wonder about the guy a couple of years ago (can't remember name!) who was scrutinized for comparing the people who died on 9/11 to the Nazi soldiers working the concentration camps. He wasn't punished legally, but he wasn't allowed to speak anywhere anymore. Oh society....
Anyway, have a great weekend. Peace!
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 12:30pm):
Another article about absolutely nothing.
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 12:57pm):
Thewre are over 100 million so called "lost cause" Confederates today who understand that the Confederacy and the War of Northern Aggression had nothing to do with slavery! If you had bothered to do your research you would know that! Exactly what crystal ball do you use to form the opinions in your column? They certainly aren't based on fact or history!
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 1:03pm):
When I see people being imprisoned for disputing an historical event, like the holocaust stories, (1,000s imprisoned in Europe), or a scientific idea, (Galilio), I don't give credence to the side that does the imprisoning.
How can these holocaust stories have ligitamacy when they are enforced with prison?
Travis Yates (February 24, 2006 @ 1:37pm):
War of Northern Agression? Only hillbillies and rednecks who pork their sister use that phrase. I lived in Arkansas for over a decade, and I can tell you that anybody who waves a rebel flag can barely tie their shoes, much less read a history book.
Travis Yates (February 24, 2006 @ 1:39pm):
How can the holocaust stories be legitimate? Let's see, there are the videos, the photos, the eye witnesses, the survivors, and the decaying ruins of the death camps that are still there. But I guess that's all just a Jewish conspiracy?
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 2:20pm):
True believers of any stripe are enemies of truth, freedom, and justice. May they all go to hell.
Anonymous (February 24, 2006 @ 11:24pm):
"denies the inhumanity of slavery"
Not all Moslems are slavers but most slavers are Moslems.
Anonymous (February 25, 2006 @ 3:22pm):
"The only argument against the cartoons is supression of first amendment rights, and like you said, it is impossible to pick and choose which will offend."
Oh, please! Look, the First Amendment does protect insensitive and even offensive speech. But just because you're legally entitled to say something stupid, doesn't mean you should.
The Danish cartoons were intended to be inflammatory. Is it legal to publish them? Absolutely -- as it should be. But there was never any doubt they would be extremely offensive and likely to incite violence, so maybe it wasn't such a good idea to publish them. That's not censorship. It's common sense and good taste.
Anonymous (February 26, 2006 @ 12:49am):
Hey, if something meant to display that a minority of Muslims have a problem with violence only provokes violence...point proven. It doesn't matter who it is that does it, it's your job to tell your peers to stop their ways. When Catholics were forced to deal with priests who molested...they didn't cry foul that people covered the story or posted cartoons, they attempted to fix the problem in a CIVIL way. If you can't handle someone's opinion, you have issues. If you can't handle it without getting violent, then maybe you need to be treated like the juvenile you are.
David Raitt (February 26, 2006 @ 7:16pm):
In case anyone believed this issue is a dead horse, exhibit A is the recent Op-Ed from that conservative, hate-mongering paper of record, the NYT:
February 25, 2006
Editorial
SILENCED by ILAMIC RAGE
With every new riot over the Danish cartoons, it becomes clearer that the protests are no longer about the caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, but about the demagoguery of Islamic extremists. The demonstrators are undeniably outraged by what they perceive as blasphemy. But radical Islamists are trying to harness that indignation to their political goals and their theocratic ends by fomenting hatred for the West and for moderate regimes in the Muslim world. These are dangerous games, and they require the most resolute response.
It is not the West that is most threatened in this crisis. The voices of moderation in the Muslim world are the ones that are being intimidated and silenced. Those few journalists and leaders who have spoken out against the rioting have been vilified and assailed, and even jailed. According to a report by Michael Slackman and Hassan M. Fattah in The New York Times, 11 journalists in five Islamic countries face prosecution for printing some of the Danish cartoons, even when their purpose was to condemn them.
In most of these cases, the legal action represents attempts by cowed authorities to appease the Islamists. But the effect -- in Yemen, Jordan and other countries -- has only been to give extremists a dollop of legitimacy, and to encourage them to turn up the heat. That, in turn, increases the perception of a "clash of civilizations" between Islam and the West.
It is time for moderate Muslims to abandon the illusion that they can placate the Islamists by straddling the fence. It is they who must explain to their people that the cartoons were an isolated incident, and not the face of hostile crusaders. It is they who must make it clear to their people that blowing up mosques, beheading hostages and strapping on belts of explosives are far, far greater evils than a few drawings in a distant paper. They must do so because their future is at stake -- not Denmark's.
Here's the link: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/25/opinion/25sat3.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fEditorials
I couldn't have said it much better myself. Though I gave it a pretty solid try. In case you missed it, here's my 2/21 letter to the Badger Herald:
PEOPLE AFRAID to criticize Muslims
What I learned at the UW's 2/21 forum on Islam and cartoons is that it's sacrilegious hate speech to criticize Islam. So no one dared bring up the fact that Islam currently has a violence problem (the most apparent intended message of the cartoon). Most recent "suicide bombers" were Muslims, renamed "heroic martyrs" by their imams. Not to mention the way conservative Muslim sects currently treat women. Will change occur if murderous fatwas, violent protests and hate speech codes silence anyone who might express concern about such practices?
I expect some disapproval when criticizing Christians (Popes regularly offer up opportunities to be criticized). But misguided apologists for Muslim violence take things to a whole new level with their complicity in efforts to suppress legitimate criticism. Aren't Muslims outraged over violence perpetrated in the name of Islam? Such is the "prestige" of the suicide bomber among Palestinians that no one dares raise a voice against the practice. This silence is letting "martyrs" get away with murder.
And it seems to me such silence sanctions the perversion of the peaceful teachings of the Prophet Muhammad.
David Raitt, '96
Madison, WI
Discuss.
Mr Patterson (February 26, 2006 @ 9:39pm):
Ms Martens, I agree with you desperately!
In this multi-religious secular nation with popular media that regularly relishes heaping mounds of slanderous injury onto any religion we have come to understand and accept that nothing is sacred. Why, one can even rail against "free speech" if they want to! What's more, for many people all religions and their practices are mythologies, fairytales and superstitions. For them slandering a prophet or messiah is no worst then torching a poster of Neo from the Matrix--so get to it.
However, I could not abide such behavior on the part of a government--that would among other things be stupid. But this isn't diplomacy. It's privet media. This warrants mentioning that many Islamic states circulate media that would be found deeply offensive by other religions amidst draconian government censorship. A lot of these stone throwers are sitting in glass houses.
The type of work in question can is quite pornographic and gratuitous no doubt. I was disgusted by it. With this however, we should realize that most often people, when speak ther are saying more about themselves. Anyway I can't imagine that Muhammad (PBUH) was completely immune the pleasure and tickle that a good gibe can summon.
Certainly it is illegal to make a mortal threat. This with some other sensible limitations has provided us with a forum in which we have the speech liberties without which there is no democracy.
So sensitivity? Yeah sure, if you please. If not then be a jerk, but never silent out of fashion or fear.
From your article: "The American system assumes that there are so many competing sources of information -- from newspapers and magazines to television, radio and the Internet -- that no single objectionable piece could wield that much influence."
"There's a real danger" indeed "in censorship." And we should not assume that there are so many competing sources. Conglomeration has lathed the count down to less than ten if I'm not mistaken. The voice is getting dangerously homogeneous. Monopoly under the guise of "free-market" is a lusty cunning incubus.
Todd Thompson (February 27, 2006 @ 6:48pm):
I enjoyed the whole story except the remarks about the Confederate Flag. The original KKK was created to protect southerners from the 12 years of military occupation that is called "reconstruction." Don't forget that Africans sold their fellow Africans into slavery. Africans are just as much to blame for slavery as anyone else. Segregation went on for amost 100 years after the civil war, under the US flag. Lets not forget the unfair tax system that taxed the south and sent the money north. I fly my Confederate Flag on my house and behind my truck because I am darn proud of my ancestors and I am not gona start backing down from my rights, just like my ancestors. Todd
Anonymous (February 28, 2006 @ 1:34am):
WELL PUT TODD. The Confederate Flag is heritage, free speech and more. The truth is that the South gets it the hard way retrospectively. A great big industrial North picking on the agrarian South--it's true. The fight wasn't even fair. We got our own butts handed to us buy the North and then they institutionalized methods to keep us down.
It is no wonder that we test lower on everything grades 1-12 even today. It has got nothing to do with being southern. "Reconstruction", yeah right, same kind of reconstruction they are doing over there in Iraq. Start a war with them, get the recourses and keep them down. See how they'll lag behind the same way. Now that isn't right.
Also Africans did sell their ancestors into slavery just as Saxon marauders sold St Patrick as a slave, or the English enslaved the Irish. Europeans enslaved EACH OTHER longer than they did Africans. Not only that but you can't put it all on Europe. North Western Europe was still nomadic and illiterate when the rest of the world had civilization on up till the late ancient period and early middleages. Slavery's history is long and when talking about Free Speech no symbol should be the only one link with it.
Plus there is nothing wrong with being proud of your ancestry. Todd and I claim our heritage in the South. I'm "darn proud if it too," even the multitudes of African Americans both free and slave who are more a part of the Southern heritage than any other race. Our spirit is as such--Fly that flag, stars and bars Dale Earnhardt #3, Hell no we ain't forgettin'!
