VALERIE SCHULTZ: First Amendment protects speech, not taste
| Friday, Jan 13 2012 11:02 AM
Last Updated Friday, Jan 13 2012 11:06 AM
Recently I was struck by a couple of comments written by fellow columnists in The Californian: "I would like to thank many readers who have sent emails regarding my 2011 columns. And I thank others who have stopped me ... in the most unexpected places to share your opinion ... I am still not used to the attention and always slightly embarrassed. But please, don't stop. It scores big-time points with my wife," wrote columnist Steve Flores, reflecting on the delightful occurrence of being recognized in public by a reader of the paper.
I agree that it is a small but delicious taste of fame to be approached by someone who has read something you've written, especially if he or she is of the same mind as you.
Flores's column appeared a few days after a column by Heather Ijames that I was still thinking about, in which she addressed mean-spirited online comments:
"Yeah, the First Amendment is awesome and stuff, but I don't recall it giving people the right to be nutty and rude. People don't need to pretend that the spilled blood of colonists more than 200 years ago entitles them to act like foul-mouthed blowhards because they have a screen name and an avenue to both spout-off and avoid eye contact at the same time," she wrote.
Both writers described experiences that I imagine all columnists have in common. But I had to disagree with Ijames, much as I share her distaste for "the angry tripe."
Because, actually, that amendment does give people that exact right: to express themselves however they are, foul-mouthed blowhards or otherwise. It's just that in the milieu of social networking, the First Amendment freedoms of the press, speech, religion, to assemble, and to petition seem to explode, due to the dizzying speed and instant convenience of online communication. In 1964, Justice William Brennan wrote, in New York Times Company v. Sullivan , that the First Amendment ensures that debate about public issues is "uninhibited, robust, and wide-open." He might have been describing, in a euphemistic way, social media in the new millennium.
The thing about the First Amendment is that it protects our rights, not our tastes or feelings or sensibilities. My idea of nutty and rude may be someone else's idea of pithy and shrewd. Of course the soldiers of the American Revolution did not think they were fighting for the freedom of the online comment section. Neither, however, did they envision the power of the Internet to further a good cause, like finding a donor kidney for someone living on borrowed time. If I recall correctly, the early Americans were up in arms mostly about unfair tax laws. And the letters written to the newspapers of colonial America were every bit as poisonous as the gas that seeps from some keyboards today. (I'm guessing that Ijames got at least one missive from a testy grammarian taking her to task for her split infinitive.)
It is true that the anonymity of the online forum has encouraged and emboldened some of the nastier impulses of readers. In nearly 10 years as a Californian columnist, I have been called, by faceless techno-savvy strangers, wrong, fanatical, festering, skewed, misinformed, misconstrued, ridiculous, reprehensible, a rabid socialist and a phony moron. I have been accused of perversity, hypocrisy, bad character, an improperly formed conscience and a mental disorder. Believe me, I could do with those folks' First Amendment rights being abridged. Just culling through old emails to quote them has unnerved me.
But I have also received extremely nice, lovely, supportive, even glowing emails from readers over the years that have greatly heartened me, and for which I am grateful. Like most of the complicated things of adulthood, honoring the First Amendment requires taking the good along with the bad, and hoping they will temper each other.
Flores' experiences with readers in person validates Ijames's proposal that people not write anything that they are not willing to say face to face, over a cup of coffee. I concur! Like many columnists, I try to answer all of my emails, polite or not, although I usually decline to rehash what I have already written. Even when I am modified by unflattering adjectives, I respect each writer's freedom of expression under the First Amendment. Sometimes people seem surprised that their message has reached and been read by the person they targeted, as though the email address they contacted did not belong to an actual human being. It does.
Ideally, of course, the First Amendment is a tool, not a weapon. If we talk without listening, if we attack without mercy, if we opine without insight, if we blow hard without ceasing, we do a disservice to the art of communication, online or in person. A date for coffee may not be possible, but a little kindness at the keyboard would go a long way.
These are the opinions of Valerie Schultz, not necessarily those of The Californian. Email her at vschultz22@gmail.com.
