Silence is Permission

Note: this is a blog that I somehow did not post after I wrote it. However, the underlying philosophy continues to be a national issue, so I decided to post it this morning.

There are two issues with which I have issues this week: the first is the Glenn Beck controversy and the second is the involvement of the organization ColorofChange in the Glenn Beck controversy. First and foremost, I believe in freedom of speech, especially as the actor, Michael Douglas, delivers the message in the movie The American President: those who rile us up with divergent views are the ones whom we must support most vigorously. It is through lively dissension that we affirm the rights provided to all citizens by our founding fathers.

When my students read The Crucible, they really do not comprehend the premise Arthur Miller used as the inciting incident, the McCarthy "better dead than red" campaign that mirrored so much of what happened in Salem, Massachusettes during what came to be known as The Salem Witch Trials. In Salem, young girls named residents of Salem as witches, panic ensued, lives were destroyed, the faith of the community was shaken, and the strength of our fledgling democracy was challenged. During the 1950s, a similar event occurred, piloted by Senator Joe McCarthy, who outed rich and famous people as communists without a shred of evidence, creating panic in the press and guilt by association. The fear engendered by that historical event lives today in the entertainment industry: few are brave enough to stand up and admit that s/he voted against Senator Obama in the last presidential election. Anyone who admits a lack of support for a candidate whose qualifications and credentials are, at best, limited is branded a racist in the media and the offers of employment suddenly vanish.

In California, about twenty-five years ago, it was the McMartin Pre-School debaucle wherein allegedly 125 children were sexually molested by the family who owned the preschool. It took time, but all of the charges collapsed; however, not before the McMartin family was destroyed by overly-zealous prosecutors who used the publicity as a springboard for advancing their own careers. The evidence was manufactured, with children carefully guided into conversations about "bad" adults inappropriately touching their "private places," with dolls used as props to point to those places if the children did not understand. Little children are vulnerable to suggestion and the testimony seemed on the surface to be overwhelming, but was nothing but cheesecloth that could not withstand the test of time.

Glenn Beck asserts that President Obama is a racist, basing his belief on his observations of the President's conduct both during the campaign and his newly-begun tenure in the White House. Additionally, Beck cannot process that the President of the United States, regardless of who occupies the office, actually told the world audience that the police acted "stupidly" in arresting a person who became combative during a response to a call from a neighbor about two unknown men apparently breaking into a nearby home. Because the President claims to be African-American and the homeowner is African-American, but the responding police officers are white, The President's off-the-cuff remark did, indeed, seem racially biased.

Believe what you will: that's the right we defend in this country. I never have to agree with what you say or believe, but in this country, I accept your words and your belief as your right to freedom of speech. However, not so the organization ColorofChange, which has contacted the advertisers whose commercials air during the commercial breaks on Glenn Beck's TV show. The bottom line for ColorofChange is that advertisers either discontinue supporting the Beck show vis a vis their advertising dollars or deal with the consequences from ColorofChange. It's always about the money, and if the advertisers don't come into line, there's the additional taint of racism to go along with the financial devastation and bad publicity.

An article in the LA Times contains the following information:

ColorofChange.org quickly targeted companies whose ads had appeared during Beck's show, telling them what he had said and seeking a commitment to drop him. The goal is to make Beck a liability, said James Rucker, the organization's executive director.

"They have a toxic asset," Rucker said. "They can either clean it up or get rid of it."

ColorofChange interferes with the democratic process by making the decision for the advertisers with implied financial and political consequences for failure to withdraw their support. Racism is, by definition, based on the assumption that one's own ethnicity is superior, a status implied by the actions of ColorofChange. Sometimes, if a problem is ignored, it goes away; however, if a spotlight is focused on it, the problem gets far more publicity than it would have without all the publicity. (Note: the issue died a natural media death when Beck counter-attacked: ColorofChange, your 15 minutes are up!)

Major advertisers should be standing up for freedom of speech, taking ColorofChange to task for not supporting freedom of speech, rather than supporting their tactic of targeting anyone who questions the political organizations and decisions of this country as racists. Open debate diffuses political dissension because citizens have not just the right to be heard, but the personal responsibility to speak out. Sometimes, it's not about the money: it's about the principles. Rather than labeling selected individuals who stand up and speak out as "whack jobs," we should all be wearing proudly OUR "whack job" buttons as we speak openly and often and vigorously in public about what we believe, why we believe it, and question decisions that do not appear to be in the best interests of WE, the people. Our silence is their permission.

Follow up thoughts: the issue of racism is going to dog the President throughout his tenure as individuals seek to ascribe their racial feelings into the political environment, such as President Carter's comment that the individual who challenges the President's policies is a racist. However, I heartily applaud President Obama's comment to Dave Letterman that he was black before the election ... . Enough said.