IS IT TIME TO CHALLENGE THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

About a year ago in his standup act, comedian Bill Maher called Sarah Palin a “cunt.” There it is. In black and white. It is a word that our culture has deemed about as ugly as any word in the language. In common usage it reduces a woman to nothing more than her genitalia. It negates her intellect, her emotions, her purpose in the world. It is, at this point in the evolution of the English language, about as insulting as one word can be.

This week, in light of the prolonged controversy surrounding radio entertainer Rush Limbaugh calling a Georgetown University student a “slut” and a “prostitute,” Mahar has come under some criticism for his misogynistic language. In an interview with ABS’s Jake Tapper, Mahar defended his unfortunate choice of words this way: “I'm a comedian - not just a guy who says he is, like Rush, but someone who - well, you saw me do stand-up last year in D.C. There's a big difference between just saying you're a comedian and going out and getting thousands of people to laugh hard for 90 minutes. And the one I'm compared to most is Carlin, who also had these kind of problems.”

To paraphrase 1988 vice-presidential candidate Lloyd Bentsen, let me just say this to Bill Mahar: Bill, you’re no George Carlin. You see, Carlin, from his earliest days on stage and on television, was a cultural commentator disguised as a comedian. Bill, you’re a comedian, disguised as a cultural commentator. There is a huge difference.

Here is how Mahar (left) rationalized his Palin (left) insult to Tapper: “Because it was a routine where that word came in at just the right moment. Context is very important, and it's also important to remember that stand-up comedy is the final frontier of free speech.”

Really? I think not. There will probably never be a “final frontier” of free speech. In fact, what we are witnessing in our culture right now is a real struggle to figure out if there are, or should be, boundaries to free speech. And if boundaries do or should exist for this historical American freedom, do we want them to be federalized or moralized? In a true democracy, who decides if it’s okay or not okay to call a college student a slut over the national airwaves? And if it’s not okay, what do we do? Should we take away Rush Limbaugh’s right to speak over the airwaves, or should the free market do its thing and naturally decide if he belongs in his high tech public forum?

There are many more questions than answers in our struggle to figure out what to do with the Rush Limbaughs (right) and Bill Mahars of the world. Chief among them is this: Is it time for us to challenge the limits of the first amendment? If that sounds revolutionary, it is not. The first amendment was notably challenged twice, in 1992 and 1993. Both times, the cases revolved around incendiary or hate speech. Decades earlier, the Supreme Court decided that such speech was not protected under the First Amendment. So, perhaps now would be an appropriate time for the amendment to be scrutinized further. This time, perhaps it would make sense for the U.S. government to consider the issue of civility. And for those who would question how we would define civility or incivility, remember there were those who strongly questioned what constituted hate speech when the amendment was challenged two decades ago.

Why is it implicitly acceptable in America to call a candidate for the vice-presidency a cunt? Why is it implicitly acceptable in America to denigrate private citizens on a radio talk show? It is time for us to find some consistency in the acceptable communication mores in our culture. Don Imus,(left) the radio talk host, managed to stay on the air for a very long time before finally being released by CBS radio in 2007 after referring to black women on Rutgers University’s basketball team as “nappy headed hos.” However, long before that he made repeated defamatory remarks, including one prior to the Rutgers debacle when he said one of his co-hosts was “hired to do nigger jokes.” He routinely referred to gay men as “faggots.” He was able to stay on the air because there is no consistency in FCC policy related to slander based on race, gender or sexuality. That lack of consistency runs parallel with the vague nature of the First Amendment.

So now it seems time to once again challenge the amendment to exclude defamatory speech, just as it excludes hate speech. Consider this: When the Constitution was written, there was no way for its authors to foresee the emergence of digital communication centuries later. Digital communication easily allows one individual to reach a majority of Americans instantly. That suggests that freedom of speech then bore very little resemblance to freedom of speech in 2012. That being the case, shouldn’t we Americans be taking a second look at the amendment to determine if it adequately speaks to contemporary cultural and technological shifts? I think so.

FADE OUT DR. LAURA

Racial issues have been front and center lately. A quick recap: Mel Gibson, Shirley Sherrod, Barack Obama, Andrew Breitbart – aahhhh, the memories. But the woman of the hour right now is Dr. Laura Schlessinger, radio talk show host, who thankfully announced the end of her radio career this week on Larry King. It all started when she, of the “tough love” advice radio format, recently lambasted a caller who sought advice on a racial problem in her own family. Listen:

First things first. Dr. Laura, as she is known, has a Ph.D in physiology from Columbia University. Respectable – some might even say impressive. But how a physiologist got herself an audience of about nine million listeners who tune in to hear her advice on love, life, career, family, etc., is anybody’s guess. Over the years, Schlessinger has consistently made outrageous, judgmental, arrogant statements that angered some and invigorated others. After Rush Limbaugh (approx. 20 million listeners) and Sean Hannity (12 million), Schlessinger has often tied for third place in Arbitron radio ratings with the likes of Glenn Beck. Schlessinger is a provocateur with few scruples, and a topical opportunist. Not long ago her listener base was estimated at 10 million, and that loss of about a million has to be weighing heavily on her tightly-coiffed head. It was predictable that she would pull something like you just heard, but disturbing just the same.

Just days after her ridiculous tirade, and after a half-baked on-air apology, Schlessinger no doubt saw the writing on the wall and said this:

Schlessinger is positioning herself as a victim of an overly predatory culture that preaches political correctness, when the truth is that she is a product of social change growing pains. The culture has decided that racist rhetoric is not acceptable any more. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech. It has to do with respect for all human beings, and the recognition of the responsibility that comes with the First Amendment. One cannot lean on the Constitution to support racial prejudice. Moreover, one cannot lean on the constitution to whitewash her imminent dismissal from the airwaves. I suspect the Talk Radio Network saw the immediate loss of sponsors and decided Schlessinger had become a liability. She knew that and had to put a spin on the situation that would allow her to leave with dignity.

Fortunately, the public is smarter than that, and we know what happened to other public figures when they cavalierly dismissed entire segments of the population.
Schlessinger’s personal and professional history does not inspire confidence. Here’s some juicy Dr. Laura stuff: In the 1970s she proclaimed her feminist self, but by turn of the century, she was anti-feminism. In the 1990s she went through the arduous process of converting to Orthodox Judaism, but by 2004 she announced she was no longer an Orthodox Jew and was having a tough time “connecting with God.” You may recall the hoopla about her mother’s death, when it was revealed her mother’s body was found in her condo, after having been dead for about two months. Schlessinger’s public response was typified by this statement: "I'm horrified by the tragic circumstances of my mother's death, and so sad to learn that she died as she chose to live -- alone and isolated.” (One wonders if her mother “chose” for her body to remain unfound for two months). In the late 1990s, Schlessinger, who was increasingly positioning herself as a pillar of virtue, was shocked when nude photos of her popped up on the Internet. A longtime-advocate of monogamy and faithfulness in marriage, it is common knowledge that the good doc had an affair with a married man, while she was still married to her first husband. A few years ago she told her listeners that men need a lot of sex, so women should “put out on demand” even if they don’t feel like it. As for her views on homosexuality, Schlessinger calls it a “biological error” and contrary to holy scripture. She also said that homosexuality is all about “pedophilia and the bestiality and the sadomasochism.”

Worst of all is what she said on her radio show about the death of young Matthew Shepard, who was murdered by two men who tortured, beat and tied him to a fence and left him to die in 1998. Dr. Laura: “If Matthew hadn’t been willing to leave [a bar] for sex, he might still be alive. That certainly doesn’t make him responsible for his own death but when you put yourself into a situation of going off to have anonymous sex with people you meet at a bar, what kind of person is gonna leave with you? Usually scum.... This was a terrible tragedy but it’s also one that might have been avoided if he had simply gone home with his friends instead of thinking he was gonna get a little."

For a long time, Schlessinger’s outrageous behavior and on-air comments were the stuff of media gold. She was widely talked and written about, and up until the early 2000’s she was still receiving awards for something or other. But that was then.

Now, Laura is treading water, at best. Harken to Don Imus,(below, left) who was at the top of his game when he made racist comments on his own show. Imus is back on the radio, but teetering on oblivion. At the time, Schlessinger wrote this on her blog about Imus: “"His remark was insulting, stupid, mean and ugly. It was so seemingly 'off-the-cuff' that it felt too casually familiar a thing for him to say." Laura should have thought of that before she made her recent comments, huh? On Monday, August 16, GLAAD, the Women's Media Center and Unity Journalists of Color all encouraged her advertisers to abandon her.

On Tuesday, August 17, Marc Morial, former mayor of New Orleans and currently head of the Urban League, called on the Talk Radio Network to drop Schlessinger’s syndicated radio show. Watchdog group “Media Matters” issued this statement: “It's clear the airwaves are no place for Dr. Laura's hate speech. By choosing to sponsor her, Dr. Laura's advertisers are not only funding her offensive radio show, but are implicitly endorsing its content."

So, Dr. Laura, since you chose not to think before you spoke, I choose to thoughtfully respond to your racist tirade this way. We humans (black and white and other colors) are trying to evolve the word “nigger” out of the language. Every time a public figure like you decides to say the word to a large audience, we are shot back several giant steps. The word “nigger” is a symbol of reducing another human being or group of human beings to their lowest common denominator. You are not in a position to do so. The airwaves you use are offered to you as a privilege, not as a basic right. Other public figures (Michael Richards, Mel Gibson, Don Imus, etc.) have been relegated to public humiliation and shame for doing just what you did. Since you, in your persona as Dr. Laura, choose to give advice to the masses, I will more humbly, as self-appointed Dr. Paul, choose to give my advice to just one person – you:

Dr. Laura, you should have used your position to lift the national conversation to a better place. You were in a position to flood the airwaves with smart rhetoric about issues that concern us, in a way that will add something constructive to the mix of ideas. You are a million listeners down from last year at this time because your words are damaging and hurtful to millions of people. You are underestimating the American public: We are smarter and more progressive in our thinking than you think. We will not rally behind a radio talk show host who dismisses an entire race of Americans. Feel that ice getting thinner under your well-pedicured feet? That’s the feeling of smart, forward-thinking Americans tuning you out. You can go quietly or we can digitally dismiss you, and it appears we just did.