Monday night, just minutes after the final Presidential debate, (aptly summed up by one of my friends as a “word salad of talking points”), a well-known conservative loudmouth tweeted that she was glad Romney went easy on “the retard.” I won’t mention the loudmouth’s name, primarily because to speak it is to give her exactly what she wants, which is attention. And just like a toddler, she’ll resort to anything to get it, especially if it’s negative and especially if it’s from people she makes a living hating. Some people have a name for what she is, but it’s a term routinely used to degrade women. I’m not going to play her school yard name calling game. Besides, selling one’s body for cash is arguably less distasteful than selling one’s soul, and last night’s comment is proof that she will say anything to promote her brand. It’s disgusting.
In regard to her and her ilk, smart people employ a tactic psychologists recommend for use with narcissists and troubled children called Tactical Ignoring. Stop giving her what she wants, and maybe she’ll shut up. But Monday night, in the post-debate Tweet storm, her remarks were retweeted by outraged parties, and just as religious hand washing is no guarantee against stubborn bugs, my strategic shut out failed. There she was, in my Twitter feed. There’s a reason they call it “viral.”
In an effort to minimize the duration of the contagion, I tried to away from the internet the next day. I’m sure it was abuzz with outrage from the usual suspects -- the liberal “gotcha” media and her myriad political and ideological foes. I certainly hope she was taken to task by parents of special needs kids (like her pal Sarah Palin), medical professionals, and educators who devote their careers to working with the developmentally disabled. But I’ll bet my last dollar that her fellow loudmouths are championing her right to free speech.
Here’s the thing that is so obvious it shouldn’t even bear repeating: just because someone can legally say something doesn’t mean they should. While the Constitution grants us free speech, it does not promise anyone freedom from the consequences of the words they utter.
Defending hate speech, racism, and downright nastiness as free speech begs the question entirely.* This is more than a personal pet peeve or a philosophical problem -- it’s one that follows me into the classroom as I attempt to teach rhetoric to a student population that is barraged with its exact opposite: logical fallacies and and utter lack of respect for anything resembling ethical discourse.
Just yesterday, I was lecturing to my comp students about the Aristotelian pillars of persuasion: ethos, pathos, and logos. Appeals to emotion and logic they understood, given a few simple examples. But it took me longer to explain what ethos is: why their audience needs to trust them to communicate honestly and ethically. Why they need to conduct research from reliable sources and respectfully rebut or acknowledge counterarguments in order to be truly persuasive. Then She-Who-Shall-Not-be-Named makes millions of dollars a year calling her Commander in Chief a retard? No wonder my job is so difficult.
Many would argue that she’d be a fool not to continue to practice her craft as long as people are buying what she has to offer. And of course, she is legally “free” to say and sell anything she wants. But is it too much to hope that for once, a sensible conservative will stand up and call her out for it? Can't we all do better? Certainly, there are liberal pundits and politicians and loudmouths guilty of the same. This morning, I read in the local paper Michelle Malkin’s column excoriating Eva Longoria for trashing Mitt Romney on Twitter: “Liberal celebrities want all of the adoration that social media engagement has to offer -- but none of the accountability that actual engagement requires,” she writes. Next to the column on the website is an advertisement for Rhymes-with-Nan-Holter’s most recent book. I am quite certain we will hear nothing from Malkin about her crony’s behavior. I would love to be proved wrong about that.
You don’t have to be a champion of the disabled to object to the use of a term that intelligent people have consigned to the past as being hurtful and pejorative, nor is such objection censorship. It’s human decency and common sense. It’s character and credibility. The person who uttered it has shown herself time and time again to have neither. She’s free to show her ugly colors, and I am free to hold her accountable for contributing to a climate that makes it nearly impossible to teach anyone to think critically and communicate ethically.
I’m going back to my strategy of Tactical Ignoring now. Sadly, my students are, too. Raised on the Internet and 24-hour news cycle, many of them are disengaged and cynical. When I asked them last week how many of them planned to vote in the election, a little over half raised their hands. When I asked why some had not, they professed mistrust and disdain for politicians. Really, given the noise they are surrounded with, it’s hard to blame them.
So I scolded them about taking their freedom for granted and doing their civic duty anyway, just for good measure. Sisyphus has nothing on me.
(*Here I use the term to refer to the logical fallacy of defining something by its own premise, so I don’t have to say what "question" it "begs," as most loudmouths -- conservative and liberal alike -- are bent on doing. )
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On Loudmouths and The Failure of Tactical Ignorance
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