Don’t say something so stupid that Glennzilla feels the need to smack you down. Seriously, someone throw the Captain a life preserver- I don’t think he saw that iceberg.
Note To Self
by John Cole| 69 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Blogospheric Navel-Gazing
jack fate
Ouch. Hah hah. But ouch, too.
Jen
I don’t always read Glenn, because he is so comprehensive and thorough, but he is so very very good. Has anyone read either of his books? I was thinking about ordering one, but my Bush Fatigue Syndrome is really kicking right now so I can’t decide.
carpeicthus
I was glad that he commented on the conservative-commentator-Muslim-cartoon thing. I think we spend so much time looking at the incredibly stupid and pernicious things the “other side” says that it’s very hard to realize when one of their pet causes is actually important. That whole process freaked me out, and I was really glad to see Glenn, who calls ’em like he sees ’em, expound on it.
Jen
Seconded. The first amendment is near and dear to me too, as it should be to all of us and especially libs. The proposals for hate speech ordinances on campus, etc., give me the willies.
Elvis Elvisberg
It won’t affect anything.
Greenwald is a Bush administration critic. Therefore, his views are politically incorrect and not worth engaging, in the eyes of the fact-averse wingnutosphere.
I guess this kind of stuff needs to be smacked down for the benefit of open-minded folks in the middle.
les
What else can you expect from a some or other coastal elitist, with his obvious crazed “respect” for facts and expertise? He probably thinks that scientists and educators should be in charge of school curricula, instead of the good voters of ‘murka.
demimondian
Hate speech on a college campus is a complicated issue, due to the presence of two special populations: the faculty and staff, on the one hand, and the students, on the other. To the former, the campus is a workplace, and, therefore, one that can become “hostile” in the sense of discrimination law. Employees are particularly vulnerable since they…well, they need their jobs. To the latter, the campus is *home*, and so targeted persons are, quite literally, being attacked in their own dwellings. Hate speech on a college campus can be the equivalent of cross burning, which is not protected.
This is very much a “Your right to swing your arms ends where my nose begins” issue. As a rule, hate speech regulations are nauseating — but the situation on a college campus is particularly problematical.
Tillman Fan
Elvis Elvisberg is exactly right when he describes the Bush apologists’ reaction to Greenwald. I don’t get it; although Greenwald sometimes lays it on a little thick, his arguments are always comprehensive and almost always well-reasoned. I thought that his position at Salon would raise his profile enough that those with counter-arguments would have to engage him, but that hasn’t really happened. I have to conclude that, in general, the failure to respond to him is due to an inability to refute his logic.
Bombadil
You mean like he did here?
Jen
Well, you can certainly make that argument, but I’m not sure the courts would agree with you. You are correct about the cross burning thing, it is not protected if the ordinance is worded constitutionally. But if a locality wants to pass an ordinance forbidding cross burning, it must have as an element of the offense that there is an intent to intimidate and harass. Convictions under a blanket ordinance forbidding cross burning — thrown out on free speech grounds.
Notable distinction in that cross burning is a particular, specific, historically significant activity undertaken to intimidate. Contrast that with trying to define what “hate speech” is.
Andrew
I just resubscribed to Salon and they threw in his last book as a bonus.
John Cole
I still think the response to the Jane Hamsher’s of the left was bullshit. One more time, if someone on the right said something exceedingly stupid, and I wrote “The Jonah Goldberg’s of the right have no problem with this,” you all would boo Jonah Goldberg out of the comments section if he came in here and said “Hey- I never said that.”
I was just a convenient target for a cantankerous commentariat. And since you have the link, go through that post and read the whole comments section, to include the absurd things I was accused of (editing posts, lying, etc.).
Elvis Elvisberg
I don’t care about the Jane Hamsher fight. But it does drive me up the wall when people use an apostrophe to pluralize things. So I’ll call the argument for Hamsher.
John Cole
And btw- I was right about the WP charges. it was fucking absurd and outrageous to claim WP was a “chemical weapon” and the like, and while Jane may think that all I had in the tank was “a bunch of right-wing talking points — that liberals hate America, hate the military — and he doesn’t care if he has to invent facts out of whole cloth to make them fit the contours of his inchoate rage,” it actually turns out I had facts on myside.
Not to mention I spent all of 2004-present (some of my pre-2004 stuff was pretty awful, though) as the only Right-wing blogger defending liberals from charges that they hate the troops. There was inchoate rage in that thread- but it was not from me.
Jen
Ooh, weird. I must say, if Jonah came over to the comments section and said “hey, I never said that”, I’d defend him if he hadn’t said it. Then I would quote copiously from the mountains of malarky he has said until he slunk away.
ThymeZone
Yes, and not all of us disagreed with you.
It (the WP-chem charge) was wrong on technical grounds, and stupid in terms of positioning liberals as appearing anti-military, for no good reason whatever.
Garrigus Carraig
Oh lord. I’m gonna light a candle & wish for a quiet end to this “JHL” discussion. And, sadly, a pony.
Bombadil
I understand all that, John. My point was that you said something stupid (that “the Jane Hamshers of the left” didn’t include Jane Hamsher), and you got called on it by Glenn. The rest of it came down on your head because you were still in the throes of right-wing dickheadedness at the time and we couldn’t help ourselves. (The “last throes”, granted, although we didn’t know it at the time.)
And Elvis Elsberg is right — learn the difference between a possessive and a plural, for crying out loud!
Nash
The Wisdom of Jen:
I know the feeling. I don’t read the Bible, because it’s so comprehensive and thorough, but I hear it’s very very good.
Apparently, there’s a market for someone who could synthesize Glenn into something that appeals to the attention span of a 3-year-old.
Too late, Jen’s moved on again.
Jen
Don’t be a dick, Nash, I’m just saying I don’t always have time to read him but I appreciate him. I haven’t “heard” he’s good, I have read him and he is good, and I don’t need anyone to synthesize anything, and I think others here who know me would probably back that up.
Are you Glenn’s dad or something?
Nash
As to the deserved smackdown that The Cap’n is receiving, he’s not being smacked by Glenn because he’s unique, he’s being singled out for derision because his is an archetypical manifestation of the “if I disagree with it, it’s judicial activism” dishonesty.
But yes, The Cap’n has favored us with one for the Idiots’ Hall of Fame.
Nash
Here’s a novel idea, Jen: Come back to comment about him after you *do* get time to read him.
sincerely,
The Non-Daddy Dick
Jen
I *did* read it, dick, and I said I read it, and I just said I didn’t always read him. As in, every day.
Dick.
Dick
Will everyone please stop calling my name? It’s quite distracting.
Nash
Good job, Jen.
As to your original question, yes, both books extant are good, but of the two, I’d recommend the first, A Tragic Legacy. It will be more universally applicable going forward.
Jen
“Good job”? What are you, some kind of guerrilla internet self-defense trainer? I asked for opinions and commented on some of Glenn’s stuff which I have read, you get into an absurd miniature flame war with me about how I haven’t read ALL of his stuff, then answer my question? Even Punchy knows how to apologize.
libarbarian
Greenwald indirectly touches on one of my serious pet peeves – people, like most business conservatives, who give lip service to the Free Market but are indifferent to the foundations of said Free Market – foundations like the sanctity of contracts and their scrupulous enforcement.
Even setting aside the “public airways” thing, NBC’s right to determine their own contract doesn’t give them the right to sign a contract with someone and then unilaterally abrogate it when it is convenient to do so.
These schmucks dont give a damn about the Free Market.
D-Chance.
As a bonus, the Confederate Yankee threw in his two cents’ worth and Greenwald makes a house call (very first comment).
Hilarity ensues.
Nash
I apologize for giving you any reason to think that my comment was an apology. It was not.
My reaction to your lead in to your question was distinct from my reaction to the question itself. The former struck me as bloggerifically foolish and the latter quite legit. Of course, in dick world, snark > serious, which puts the lie to my own comments above, hey?
Your question was a valid one and I (eventually) answered it, from my own perspective. No special authority claimed, other than that I did read both books.
I’ve enjoyed the miniature flame war, how ’bout u? When do we get to call it bigger than “miniature”?
Or we could band together and refuse to embed our links. In sending John around the bend, we’d promote solidarity.
demimondian
Quite so — but every hate speech regulation I’ve ever read for a college campus explicitly includes a (reasonable person standard based) intent to intimidate or harass. That is, a professor can extend a nauseating argument in class for the purpose of triggering discussion, but he needs to do it in a context where a reasonable person would understand that his behavior might not reflect his own core beliefs, and in such a way that other people would naturally conclude that he was not seriously advocating, say, elimination of the Jews in Europe.
As is often the case, when you step back from the hysteria (ZOMGWTF, I’m in ur academik groaves, purging ur dihsenturs!) and look at the actual regulation and outcomes, there’s much less to this issue than meets the eye.
Napoleon
Jen said:
I bought both his books and have just read the second one at this point (I have about 3 or 4 shelves worth of books I have to still get to) and style and substance wise it is what you would expect of him. It is basically an extension or longer form of points he makes in his “column”. Part of why I bought the book was because I am interested in what he has to say but even if I never get to the first book I am glad I got it because people like him need support because God knows a place like Newsweek or the Washington Post will never let a voice like his be heard.
Napoleon
Funny – I love this line from Glenn:
One think I am always amazed with how many people routinely seem to read into what Glenn says something that is simply just not there.
Nash
Quel Napolean a indiqué.
Nash
Or perhaps Napoleon.
Jen
Think I’ll skip the mind lovin’, Nash, and stick to the straightforward. Ok, on to Demi —
Last I heard, and I’m not necessarily up on current caselaw, these campus hate speech regulations had not been tested much in court. No USSC decisions on point. So we don’t really know about their constitutionality, and they seem to me to be distinguishable from cross burning. It is fairly easy to draft a constitutional ban on cross burning — describe what burning a cross entails, make sure you have that intent to intimidate bit in there, and there you are. Now try to define “hate speech”, in a way that isn’t overly broad and that the court won’t strike down. I’m not sure that if they were to be tested, they wouldn’t be. It seems to me an impossible task to draft a definition that would not also encompass protected speech, unless the definition forbade only threats, which are already not protected speech.
Xanthippas
You have to be some kind of freaking moron to not even realize that you’re too flamingly ignorant about a subject to even have an opinion about it, let alone talk about it. And about the law no less! For crying out loud…you don’t have to be a genius to be a lawyer (far from it in fact) but you do need to know basic things about the law, to at least avoid sounding like a moron.
Nash
Those last addressing the first of Nap’s comments, on the GG books.
Jen
Uh, what are you on about, exactly, Xanthippas?
Jen
Oh, Xan, you were actually addressing the original topic of the post, right? I was trying to figure out what I said that was so moronic.
Napoleon
You think I speak French or something?
demimondian
The best definitions of hate speech I’ve seen — and, as you say, there’s no case law to speak of, and absolutely none from the Court itself — have generally focused on a particular issue, speech which a reasonable person would conclude to be threatening or harassing if the speaker knew the hearer to have a particular distinguishing property. Saying “I hate fags”, for instance, might or might not constitute a threat, but would certainly tend to create a hostile work environment for the purposes of discrimination — and hence is actionable, even if the listener’s sexual orientation is not known to the speaker.
Xanthippas
Uh, yeah. I skip block-quoting something if I’m referring to the original post. If I think you’ve said something moronic, I’ll make that explicit.
As for CY…what a dope. His argument is “Well, these guys who I agree with say this…so they must be right.” He goes on to accuse Greenwald of not discussing the substance out of his desire to attack conservatives who do discuss the substance of the issue, missing the point that Greenwald attacks them because they are morons and don’t understand the substance of the issue at hand. Which is pretty much the modus operandi for his whole blog, and the right-wing blogosphere in general.
Jen
Is this from caselaw somewhere?
clone12
Seriously, Greenwald lays the best smackdown.
His combination of acerbic sarcasm and ridiculously thorough documentation forms a deadly one-two punch.
demimondian
No — summary of legal advice during the drafting of a policy. The drafters of such policies aren’t stupid, and many of them are attorneys with backgrounds in first amendment law. Usually, they’re drawn in with the hook that they should be involved if they want to affect a policy. After studying the issue for a while, they come away realizing there *is* a problem and a need to address it, while preserving the peculiar needs for extended free speech rights in academia.
Punchy
A little OT:
Since we’re talking about whackjobs, check out what my friend and yours Huckabizzle says:
I too support a amendment to eat manna from heaven and stone any sinner. I’m buying a gravel company post-haste if this guy backdoors himself into the WH…
Punchy
/blinks thrice, baffled at random name-drop
It did give you lots and lots of mad blog props throughout BlogLeftistan. It brought me here, after seeing the fall-out commentary all over the place. It helped that I, too, strenuously dislike The Hamster.
Napoleon
I know nearly no-one on the left or center wants to see Huckabee as the Republican nominee on the off chance that he wins, but I am not one of them. If he represents the Rebublican party and the Dems have a nominee that is willing to tie the religous right around the neck of the Rep. party and toss it into the lake where they can all drown not to be seen again for the next 20 years, Huckabee is your guy. Can you imagine the ad that you can run with quotes like this?
Jen
I’m sure they’re not stupid and I have no first amendment background, but my argument was simply that I am not sure that were they to be tested, that all campus “hate speech” prohibitions would stand up to scrutiny.
If you’re discussing an internal personnel policy on not creating a hostile work environment, that is a different matter.
To get more out of the intricacies of first amendment law and more back into the meat of what GG was talking about, here’s an example.
I used to live in a very liberal neighborhood near a well-known university. Early one morning someone threw rolled-up pamphlets on people’s driveways, yards, etc. It was a bunch of racist crap. The pamphlet was not targeted at harassing any particular individuals and could not have been considered threatening. A free local newspaper is commonly delivered, unsolicited, exactly the same way.
Now, people should have reacted the same way they react to the free newspaper, recycle it and forget about it, but of course they didn’t. The neighborhood listserv absolutely exploded with calls for the people who did this to be charged with a crime. What crime, they weren’t entirely sure. Wasn’t there a crime against hate speech? Wasn’t there a crime against unsolicited stuff on your lawn? Our friendly local sergeant tried to explain that this wasn’t a crime. I tried to explain the importance of content-neutral speech legislation, and that even if there were hate speech legislation that simple racist propaganda wouldn’t qualify. I listed a few of the illustrious First Amendment law “heroes” — pornographers, fascists, communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, anarchists, racists, I guess now we can add Jonah Goldberg.
I think the majority of the people remained convinced that if it isn’t a crime to distribute racist material, it should be. The pamphlet was not targeted at harassing any particular individuals and could not have been considered threatening. This is a dangerous strain of liberalism, to me.
Elvis Elvisberg
Fun Huckabee quote, Punchy. Huckabee isn’t specific, but presumably he’s referring to repealing the Thirteenth Amendment. After all, slavery was a-OK with the living God for about 1800 years after His death. What better proof is there of His will?
Jen
Oh, Punchy, your shout out was because you apologized to me once for misinterpreting me. It was most gentlemanly, which I’m sure was inadvertent. :)
matt
I’ve never thought of Glenn as particularly funny, but that comment at CY had me rolling.
And yeah, what carpeicthus said and Jen seconded about his take on the Canadian government’s reaction to the Muslim cartoon thing.
demimondian
But a campus hate speech policy is a policy statement to avoid a hostile work environment, which, to the extent that a student’s occupation is the pursuit his or her studies, protects faculty, staff, and students. A university is a funny beast from the first amendment standpoint, with peculiar requirements to both permit and regulate speech.
Jen
Okay, I promise I’m going to let this drop before the others virtually kill me, but I’m just saying whether a university campus is analogous to a workplace is untested. I think you could see why there are some similarities, but also some pretty big differences between an office or a factory and a couple thousand acres of land covered in classrooms, stores, housing, libraries, offices, trees, etc.
Xanthippas
This appears to have already been assumed, but it should be noted that state universities, as public actors, are not as free to regulate speech as private universities are.
Lee
The comments over at CY are butchering him on his post.
That is some fine reading :)
Lee
From the comments at CY:
So some of his commenters are dimmer than he is? Or did I miss the memo that the Paulnuts are now liberal?
disclaimer: I have been at times a Paulnut :)
Jen
I think they prefer to be called “Paultards”. :)
You’re right, I was trying not to go all superfied wonky on everyone and bust out “time, place, and manner” and all the public, semi-public, hellIdon’t remember all this mess anyway, suffice to say First Amendment law is not for the faint of heart. And that’s why I don’t think anyone can say for certain that those hate speech codes would hold up.
peach flavored shampoo
Somewhere in the depths of the offices of The Onion, an intrepid young journalist just dropped 4 f-bombs and chucked his computer out the window.
Seriously, these guys just cant keep up with The Real Republican Party. No matter how outrageous they push it, a real Republican just goes and straps on 2 wetsuits replete with ass-dildo and steals their headlines.
Jen
That was funny, PFS.
Have you ever tried tea tree oil shampoo? Goooood stuff.
Pooh
Demi,
To some extent, I think you are conflating a college and a high school. 1st Amendment rights are actually pretty heavily circumscribed in public HS and lower. The “hostile work environment” theory of hate speech regulation on a college campus is intriguing, but my from-the-hip analysis is that giving it much force would be an instance of the exception swallowing the amendment.
Pooh
Also, every time the Tim F’s of the Balloon Juice* insist that calling a group not including the actual Jane Hamsher of the Left “the Jane Hamshers of the Left” was not a monumentally stupid thing to say, god kills a kitten. Or I start laughing heartily. Or both.
But basically what we end up with is John Cole with a red face, me getting funny looks from co-workers, and RIP Kitteh. So, by all means, carry on.
* you see what I did there?
demimondian
Many dead kittehs there are, Pooh.
laneman
PFS, that was hysterical, I am laughing so hard my kids are looking at me funny, and they have more important things to do, such as Halo.
Johnny Pez
Pooh’s got a point, John. You may want to re-think that particular figure of speech. It lacks precision.
In fact, it’s just the sort of sloppy form of expression that the Jonah Goldbergs* of the right are prone to.
*Note lack of apostrophe.
Tax Analyst
I have a lot of trouble with that apostrophe rule. Every time I have a “Goldbergs” situation I have to run through whether I’m trying to make the statement as a reference to a possessive of the of the subject. Well, “Every time” except when I just blow through it and inevitably choose exactly the wrong treatment.
Tax Analyst
I have to go home…I’m really tired from spending the day talking to Licensed Tax Preparer’s who somehow skipped over the lesson about “How to correctly review an Income Tax return”…Jesus, how can a supposedly “Professional” person call in and ask, “Why is my client’s refund $2,000 less than last year?”, when they’ve got both fucking returns right in front of their noses? I say, “Well, why don’t you COMPARE them to see where there are DIFFERENCES – and then double-check your input for those items.” I had this one lady tell me, “Oh, if you don’t know I guess I’ll just delete the return and re-key it from scratch – that’ll be easier.”…and that’s AFTER I offered to review them for her if she would fax them in to me. I think she wanted or expected me to do a mind-meld with her Tax Program and magically spout where the amounts diverged. Jee-suss Fokking Key-Ryst…
And some poor asshole is PAYING her to do this and maybe even expecting some minimal level of competency.
Rant over…Goodnight.
Beej
Jen,
RE: your 1:26 post. It’s a dangerous strain of anything-liberalism, conservatism, libertarianism, neoconism-oh well, I’m getting carried away here. I did a quick search on Westlaw using the search terms “hatespeech” /p campus. I found exactly 1 federal district court case. It was very amusing. Apparently a group of female Animal Husbandry majors objected to an instructor’s use of sexual and belly dancing metaphors to describe the necessary focus in-are you ready for it?-Technical Writing. The court was not amused that the University decided to discipline the instructor,
I also found 3 cases from state courts dealing with hate speech on campus. In all 3 the court found that the hate speech regulations were overbroad and violated the 1st Amendment. In at least 1 of those cases the requirement of an intent to intimidate was included in the regulation.
While this was a very cursory check, it would seem that courts are not kindly disposed to these kinds of regulations. In only one instance did I find a court which upheld one, and that was in California and dealt with an employer who used racial epithets in communicating with empoloyees, quite a different matter.
May I suggest that the proper response to the racist flyers distributed in your neighborhood was for the neighborhood to write and print their own flyers expressing their disgust with racism and those who harbor it and distribute those flyers as widely as the first. That’s how hate speech should be answered in a free society.
Chuck Butcher
I’m pretty glad I’ve avoided Glen’s negative attention as Captain of the Titanic. I once obliquely winged Jay Rosen in a post, he commented unhappily. I re-read, agreed, and fixed it, along with an apology at my site and his. It was lazy writing and poor communication of an idea, not blatant stupidity – cap’n.