Sticks and Stones

One of the things that I learned from working with Children is that Adults are liars. And even when they mean to be honest, they are often poor teachers.

Consider the following, which we often tell children.

Sticks and stones may break my bones,
But words will never hurt me.

It's often something that we tell children when we seek to unruffle their feathers after an incident of name-calling. But how often have your heard it said to the child who calls another names? In your experience, had anyone ever said to you: "Why on Earth are you calling Sam names? Don't you know that it's utterly ineffective? It doesn't make any sense."

Children, I've learned, are nowhere near as dim (or guileless) as we make them out to be, and they often come to very quick understandings of which side of a mixed message we really live on. No matter how often we tell children that words make for ineffective weapons when they're on the receiving end of them, when we are quick to punish or correct whenever a child is on the giving end, they come to understand that we don't really believe it. And that leaves aside the entire fact that we, as adults, despite telling children that words are ineffective weapons, are unlikely to forgo the use of them ourselves. Or be above responding to them.

And it's not always the simple stuff, like calling someone an "asshole" or a "bitch" that drives this home. Westboro Baptist Church has garnered international headlines through nothing more than verbal epithets and signs. The New York Police Department is in a dispute with the Mayor, and again, garnering international headlines, because they feel that two of their own were gunned down, not because a nationwide community of millions of people feels aggrieved by what they see as several examples of police officers getting away with behaving badly, but because the Mayor and the Attorney General of the United States have said the wrong words in relation to those situations.

And once we've established in the minds of children that words are, in fact, effective weapons, everything beyond that is only a matter of degree. Here in the United States, there is a shared understanding that words are only mildly effective as weapons. For the most part, anyway. But there are plenty of exceptions to that rule, and they are writ large every time someone seeks to shield themselves or others from words they find psychologically or emotionally damaging. Sometimes those exceptions are due to the nature of the words (You can't say that on television.) and other times they are due to the nature of the speaker (Injunction against Westboro Baptist, anyone?), but the effect is the same - the lesson is taught that some words are, as George Carlin put it, "really bad." And this leaves aside the cases of speech that we find illegal for other reasons, like conspiring to break the law. Which we may find more rational, but still amounts to the idea that some speech should be punishable as dangerous in and of itself. In other cultures, the lines are drawn in different places. Perhaps insulting the rules is beyond the pale. Or injuring the feelings of the religious. Or denying historical events important to one group or another.

And once we establish that speech should be punishable, then the punishments are also simply a matter of degree. After all, some places see some things as more harmful than others, and meriting stricter punishments. Societies and cultures are not all the same, so why would we expect their legal systems to be?

I think that you can see where I'm going with this. In the end, the idea that we should all be on the same page when it comes to matter of law, justice and fairness comes across as hopelessly utopian. And that is why people in different places, different cultures and even different families respond differently to matters of speech. But it's all built upon a groundwork that we lay every day in the way that we conduct ourselves. If we're going to teach our children that words cannot hurt, then we're first going to have to teach it to ourselves and start behaving as if it were true - regardless of how that winds up making us feel. We're going to have to make a concerted effort to break the cycle. It's unrealistic to think that we're ever going to completely do away with the idea that words, images or non-aggressive actions are weapon enough that sometimes, it's justified to take extreme measures in "self-defense." But even so, if we ever want to move in that direction, we have to start using more than childish platitudes.

On Satire

There is a thought-provoking piece in The Guardian by Joe Sacco. It is intended to push us into understanding our relationship to satire - and the deliberate giving of offense. So I worked to understand.

The first thing that I understood is that satire is not an objective term. An examination by a physicist will not inform you of whether something is satirical or not. Like offensive, it is in the eye of the beholder. Then I understood that Mr. Sacco had made some very interesting points. So I decided that I would speak to them.

Copied from The Guardian's website, so that you may see what it is to which I am referring.

Though tweaking the noses of Muslims might be as permissible as it is now perceived to be dangerous, it has never struck me as anything other than a vapid way to use the pen.

It strikes me as vapid, too. And? What difference does that make? What I find to be vapid and others find to be gravely offensive still others find to be clever. It is not my place to judge. I must defend the vapid along with the wise. I am stuck defending those (and given that this is the United States, there are a fair number of them) who would use their freedom of speech to denigrate me - and some who would hope to inspire others to be their cat's paws for violence against me, because as vapid as I find it, it is the nature of the beast. The freedom to use the pen in the ways that strike me as clever, uplifting or useful is not the same as the freedom to use the pen.

Bad ideas are sometimes dangerous. But history has shown us the the power to decide which ideas are good or bad (or, inspiring or vapid) and to back that with force - legitimized or otherwise - is nearly always dangerous. People who have been charged with the protection of others almost always come to find that it is in the best interests of the protected that the interests of the protector come first - especially when the protected have few means of enforcing accountability.

And what is it about Muslims in this time and place that makes them unable to laugh of a mere image?

There is nothing about Moslems, apart from those things that are necessary to be Moslem, that does not exist in any other group. I know many non-Moslems who claim they would resort to murder - not only to avenge themselves against those they feel have wronged them, but to show others the price of wrong action. True, those who act in the name of Abrahamic religions often look forward to an eternity of the gratitude of a bloody-minded (but strangely lazy) deity and this undermines the fear of punishment that restrains others, but in the end, they all have chosen a path for themselves based on what they believe that others owe - either to themselves directly, or to the world around them.

When I learned to laugh off a mere image, it was because I came to the understanding that I am not owed anything. The positive (or neutral) impressions of others towards me are not my birthright. I am not entitled to be ignorant of either the possibility or the reality of others' negative opinions of me, nor am I entitled to preventing the spread of same to those who do not currently share them. This is not to say that the opinions of others do not have consequences for me. They do, and if history is any guide, they can be severe in the extreme. But attempting to control people's speech in the hope that I can expunge consequential thoughts is, and was, a fool's game, regardless of the enthusiasm with which I once played.

In the end, the freedom to offend, regardless of how vapid we may find it in practice, may be the only tool we have with which to end offense. Because offense is not in the intent of the offender, but in the reception of the offended. In spite of this, we may not find it valuable. That is our choice to make, and there is nothing that demands we not make it. However, as the saying goes, there are no solutions, only trade-offs. The question is not if we will pay, but only if we will find what we have purchased worthwhile.

A Brunch To Kill For

John Cardillo, Florida businessman and former New York City police officer, posted a picture that was described as "deliberately provocative but wasn't meant as an actual threat."

Because, you know, this is a perfectly rational response to having one's breakfast interrupted.

Here's some context - Cardillo is photographed pointing a gun at the camera and telling people to move along because he's enjoying his breakfast. This is in reaction to #blackbrunch, a protest movement in which African-American protesters interrupt meals at upscale restaurants - "claim[ing] space in areas that are predominantly non-black."
Now, in Cardillo's defense, I find this a pretty eye-roll worthy form of protest myself. And I'm already a firm believer in the idea that public protest is the last resort of the politically powerless. I'm not convinced that the mainstream culture will lend any of their political clout just because someone decides to have a chant-in in a steakhouse somewhere.

But what Cardillo doesn't seem to understand is that the very idea that pointing a handgun at people who are simply being legally obnoxious is part of the whole situation being protested. I've had meals interrupted by dimwits before - it never occurred to me that if only I had a handgun, I'd show them how annoyed I was. In what world are firearms anything close to a proportionate response to having brunch disrupted? A world where the people being disruptive are black, apparently.

And that what lies at the heart of this whole thing. Cardillo is ex-NYPD, and he feels that the #blackbrunch protesters weren't sufficiently vocal about the shootings of NYPD officers. So he takes a picture of himself that places the viewer in the position of staring down the barrel of a gun. But he doesn't mean it as threatening. He just wants to provoke people with the idea that if they interrupted HIS breakfast, he just might consider that a shooting offense. Because apparently, that ranks up there with other reasons to shoot people.

The problem that people have with the killings of people like Eric Garner or Trayvon Martin (Remember him?) isn't simply that they were killed - it's specifically that they were killed while doing things that one wouldn't otherwise think rose to the level of a capital offense. Regardless of what one thinks of selling loose cigarettes, disobeying the directives of a police officer or walking around at night in a hoodie, these aren't the sorts of things that we normally understand should be met with lethal force, but were in the case of Black men.

Cardillo's irritation is understandable. Whether or not he takes the anger of people at police officers (and the NYPD) personally, I can sympathize with his feeling that police are being picked on while the literal crimes of others are being ignored by protesters who cannot, or will not understand. But the means of expressing that - by implying that protests should be met with lethal force simply confirms the very mindset that created the protests in the first place - that some of us live in a nation where being killed by members of the majority over trivialities is a realistic threat. Whether that's due to animosity, fear or thoughtlessness doesn't make it any less frightening or random. Especially in a nation with a history of sanctioning murder specifically as a means of enforcing a set of asymmetrical social mores. A history, I might add, that was a present-day reality for people who are still alive.

Of course, in situations like this, people will often call for a view of a larger picture, looking to portray themselves as unprejudiced or their detractors as biased. But that misses the entire point - that in the moment - it's not about the world as a whole. It's about us as individuals, the people who are like us and the people we like. Because that's who it's always about. Whether he meant to or not, Cardillo decided, in order to be provocative, to telegraph the idea that it was okay for people like him to shoot people like them. Not because they threatened him, but because for them to bother him is so unconscionable that violence just might be warranted. In the middle of a whole series of events that can be honestly interpreted as saying the exact same thing.

Those must have been some really amazing Eggs Benedict.

The Makeover Artist

Yesterday, I got together with some friends for Drinking and Shakespeare. The play we "performed" (complete with funny voices on the part of those of us that could manage them) was "The Taming of the Shrew." Now, until D+S came along, I hadn't done much with Shakespeare since I was in high school, were we routinely read plays in English class, and were treated to two professional performances a year by a theatrical troupe. And so, even though I remembered "The Taming of the Shrew," I found that I did not remember "The Taming of the Shrew." Sometime in the past 30 years, I had managed to completely mislay any memories of the abuse that poor Katharina suffers at Petruchio's hands, as he seeks to remake her from bitter "shrew" to Stepford Wife. I think, in part, it's because it seems difficult to understand the nature of what's going on, and how the beginning and end states line up.

The main point in the play that establishes Katharina as a "shrew" is Act II, set in the family home in Padua. The Act opens with Kate abusing her sister Bianca, and near the end of it, has her verbally (mostly) sparring with Petruchio, at which time he resolves that they will be wed on the following Sunday. At the end of the play, as the proof that she has been "tamed" she lectures, at the direct behest of Petruchio, Bianca and the Widow on: "What duty they do owe their lords and husbands." To the modern sensibility, these seem unrelated - in fact, the only aspect of Katharina's behavior that has been directly changed is that she appears to lose her shame at public displays of affection.

Perhaps it's because when I read the play now, it's hard to understand it as a comedy, but "The Taming of the Shrew" comes across mostly as a heartbreaking tale of domestic abuse. Petruchio's tactics are precisely the sort of thing that would trigger an intervention today, and the parallels to modern cult conditioning are stark. While much of Katharina's ire seems to be directed at her family, their exasperation with her has left her isolated, and thus she had no-one to defend her when Petruchio effectively turns their marriage into an abduction. And note that this is not addressed at the end of the play. Petruchio does not set out to repair Kate's relationships with her sister, father or any of the other people she knew. When she lectures the Widow, her monologue is really an acknowledgement of her own helplessness. To be allowed to eat, sleep, change clothing or leave Petruchio's home, Kate is forced to do and say whatever she is told, and to castigate herself when Petruchio insists that, in her subservience, she has misstated things. I suspect that one could do a lot with a rendition of the play in which Kate's closing is delivered in a flat, falsely cheerful monotone with a forced smile - the sort that inaudibly pleads, "Help me." In this, "The Taming of the Shrew" is a story of predation - Petruchio is a predator and in Kate, he has found the perfect victim - someone who has burned enough bridges that he may prey upon her with the open blessing of her family and acquaintances. Bianca, the sister who is the object of everyone's affections and desire, retains a modicum of freedom for herself by understanding the part expected of her. Katharina plays the game badly, and loses big.

One wonders if things would have been different if the play had circled back around to its opening, with the jest being played on Christopher Sly - the decision of the hunting Lord to "practise on this drunken man," and convince him that he's undergone a fugue for the past decade and a half. One wonders what would have happened had Sly attempted to play Petruchio to the poor Page who had been shanghaied into dressing in drag and pretending to be his wife. One can imagine it ending badly. Of course, the joke being perpetrated at Sly's expense seems cruel and mean itself - but in that it so happens that we are not shown the results of that cruelty. In "The Taming of the Shrew," cruelty being played out to the bitter end is a fate reserved only for Kate. I can't help but wonder if the frame was always left unclosed, as the play comes to us now, or if, at some point, there was a return to Christopher Sly and the Lord. If there was, it seems that there would have been some sort of meta-commentary on the "taming" as Sly had just witnessed it. Perhaps audiences didn't like it for some reason, or, if they play had been commissioned, the patron disapproved. In any event, its absence gives us the opportunity to invent it for ourselves. I'd like to think that poor Sly would have come away from things the wiser in the ways of the nobility, and perhaps sympathetic to Katharina.

Reasoned

I think everybody needs to be educated. Just because a police officer contacts you, and asks for ID, it doesn't mean that you've done anything bad. It's just, you know, they're questioning for whatever reason. You know, a lot of people instantly think and get defensive, and, you know, feel like it's a bad engagement, when it could just be for something completely simple. You never know exactly what their reasoning is but, you know, I think that people just kind of need to follow through with that and, you know, just do what they're asking you to do, within reason.
Diane Langdon, pro-police march organizer. "Seattle Marchers Rally For 'Police Lives Matter'"

"Within reason." But who defines "within reason?" The officer? The citizen? The police department? A citizen review board? The courts? The media? The court of Public Opinion? Mrs. Langdon? It's tempting to use the term as if it were an objective description, something that never changes regardless of the circumstances at hand in the moment, or the history of the people in question.

And this becomes the issue at hand. Mrs. Langdon acknowledges that when a citizen is stopped by a police officer, that citizen may not know what the officer is thinking. In this regard it's worth noting that the officer not only doesn't have to explain themselves, but is allowed to lie. (Of course, lying to an officer is a crime.) Yet her advice is to keep an open mind. After all, the officer's interest could be "completely simple." And it's not like an officer can use anything suspicious or potentially incriminating against you. Oh, wait, they can. And so you have asymmetry in both information and power, the end result of which is a defacto requirement that a citizen trust police officers.

And that places citizens in a bad position, especially when they're dubious about the intent of the officer(s) they are interacting with. In such a case, how does one understand, in the moment, whether or not what an officer is asking is within reason? And it's worth keeping in mind that this isn't simply an academic question. Coming to the conclusion that an officer is being unreasonable, and therefore, resistance or disobedience is warranted can have potentially fatal consequences - especially in today's environment, where police officers have taken non-compliance to be tantamount to an active threat against them. For many people, active acquiescence is the rule of the day: simply submit to whatever the officer asks of you and determine to have it all sorted out later. But that requires a level of belief in two things - that the criminal justice system, at all levels a) acts in good faith and b) can reliably sort out the innocent from the guilty.

It's worth keeping in mind that an arrest record, regardless of how it turns out, can follow a person for life - and can be remarkably difficult to clear up, even in cases where no charges are ever filed. And once an arrest is entered into the FBI database (where it may remain for more than a century), the fact that a local police department may no longer have a record of the incident can make it even more difficult to have the record set straight. And this fact gives police officers a remarkable level of power. If a department submits even misdemeanor arrests to the FBI, something that appears not very serious on its face can result in a lifetime of stigmatization - especially given the fact even an arrest without a reported final disposition means, that as far as the federal government is concerned, a person now has a criminal record.

Being a police officer is a difficult, risky and often thankless job. I won't argue that. The murders of two officers in New York recently, and Seattle police officers being caught up in a rolling gunfight overnight are testaments to the dangers of the position. But the flip side of that is that the job comes with a remarkable amount of power and authority. And the issue that many people have with police today is a concern that there isn't the oversight to balance them. Supporters of the police who advocate simple obedience do nothing to alleviate those concerns. It's true that in a society prizes seeing everyone as an individual, allowing a few bad apples to spoil the barrel seems unfair. But unless an apple is visibly rotten, how does one know that the apple they have in hand is safe, within reason?