On Free Speech: What You Think About Kathy Griffin Doesn’t Matter
“To offend and judge are distinct offices,
And of opposed natures.” — Portia, “The Merchant of Venice”
It could not possibly matter less what you think is in good or poor taste. It could not possibly matter less what images Republicans have made of liberal Presidents and vice versa. I am not exculpated from this disregard of sensitivity — rest assured, I have my own thoughts on how aesthetics inform politics. I have my own wishes as to how others would choose to engage in their dialectics, their propaganda, and their rhetoric.
But the purpose of this piece is very simple: to reassert yet again the fact that arbitrary lines on free speech — despite repeated attempts in the past — cannot be drawn by legislative or judicial bodies without either engaging in hypocrisies, or amputating the freedom of those wishing to impose such sanctions. Willfully submissive odes to Oliver Wendell Holmes and outraged appeals to a collective sense of pathos aside, one should reflexively look at one’s own desires for expression and the consumption of all content and realize that any appeal to ban, censor, or otherwise curtail free expression in this country is never in your own interest.
This is because of one simple problem: it is impossible to police any boundaries drawn with consistency. Or, more importantly, one would be required to answer the age-old question: who would you trust to draw that line for you? To whom would give the job of deciding what you can read, what you can say, what you can see, what you can produce? To anyone with intellectual self-respect of any kind, the answer I hope is: no one.
This is self-evidently a separate discussion from whether or not material is offensive, demeaning, or perhaps even dangerous. Many others are sometimes rightfully, sometimes wrongfully, deeply engaged in those discourses. But it is always a mistake to conflate the two. More sentimentally, it is bizarrely this unfettered freedom of expression which (despite being biased more or less in different cases) truly unites the Left and the Right in their political objectives: holding freedom of the individual as sacred. But when it comes to the nature of offense, we must acknowledge that such issues are relative — callous though it may be in some instances. What is offensive to me is often not offensive to half of the country, so legislation based on this is simply impossible to create and enforce equitably. This reality can be realized without detracting from important discussions concerning the nature of offense, self-monitoring, civil discourse, and how speech may or may not be policed in private spaces.
I have been posed counter-arguments to this position many times: I am absolutely not adverse to hearing more nor do I pretend that my mind is eternally made up. I simply haven’t heard a contrary position that dissolves this first principle. More personally, I want to have the freedom to hear those positions and see those images which I find absolutely detestable, for the simple reason of wanting to know who my ideological enemies are. I don’t pretend for a moment that silencing them makes them go away: they will exist insidiously at the ballot box. I want to be able to point my finger at them and say: these are the ideas which we detest and against which we will struggle without reservation. I am only granted this right when their expression — however ignorant— remains judicially unopposed.
Allow me to head off and address the first and most important (and therefore the most common) reaction I hear to this argument: that it is a position of privilege to be able to hear horrific ideas without mental and sometimes physical damage to my person. Of course it is. What is often overlooked in this criticism is that I am not in the same breath advocating that those for whom such interactions are legitimately harmful should be required to endure them. The freedom of speech is inherently freedom from speech as well, precisely in the same way I have made this argument in relation to religion. Those who would rather avoid these hurtful dialogues by all means should. But perhaps they have not taken as much stock of themselves as they might — for it may not be forever that they wish to abnegate a role in these discourses. Traumatized, oppressed, and abused individuals and members of subaltern communities may very well decide one day that they too wish to know precisely who to oppose, who is managing the affairs of their ideological antagonists and nemeses, and choose to see that publication or hear that oratory or find that website which was previously detrimental to their well-being. This is a freedom they may choose to take unto themselves, and so this, too, is a freedom which must be preserved — perhaps even more adamantly than that which is on behalf of otherwise unaffected parties.
In other words, advocating for uncensored speech protects more freedoms than it limits. All judicial and social practices in the past which have counteracted this do themselves more injustice than they do to their often despicable antagonists.
For my own sake, I cannot stress this point enough: this is not to say that I find all speech acts palatable, noble, acceptable, or worthy of defense. The number of examples from minstrelsy to calls for genocide to online harassment are nearly uncountable, and these along with many others fall firmly in the conversation about how best to ideologically oppose these phenomena with swift effect. Perhaps I am unimaginative, but I simply cannot see how legislatively or judicially silencing such acts (as opposed to doing so socially) does not otherwise mute ourselves in different tactics or pursuits, presently or in the future, and in other arenas. A squaring of this circle would be most welcome. I do, however, have faith that such insane acts and such evil ideological movements can be mitigated from a social standard — a collective evolution in which the majority of a population decides that such acts are simply wrong, without taking a saw to the first principles which only though horrific rhetorical unscrupulousness makes them possible.
Therefore, whatever you find laudable or horrible about Kathy Griffin’s photo or any others: it is the lesser of two evils to deal with it. At least you know whom to hate, which is a liberty of its own. I realize very well what small consolation that can sometimes be. But no one can tell you that you can’t take a photo with anyone’s head in your hands — a freedom for which too many abhorrently oppressed populations of the world salivate. That comparison may be dusty, but it is more true than most contenders with this argument wish to concede. Whether you choose to realize it or not, you invoke that same privilege when you laud as courageous or decry as contemptible this exercise in others. In this instance, the quality of mercy is, in fact, twice blessed.
