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SYNDICATED COLUMN: 54% of the Time, Americans Aren’t Protected by the First Amendment

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Ted Rall

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Of Hicks, Duck Dynasty and Free Speech

“Don’t talk about politics or religion.” It’s boilerplate advice, especially this time of year when family members and friends with varying cultural outlooks gather to break (if you’re a California liberal, gluten-free) bread.

Keeping your opinions to yourself is smart if your priority is conflict avoidance. But keeping the peace makes for seriously boring holiday meals.

Aside from the tense tedium of forced blandness, all that self-censorship accomplishes is to paper over conflicts and differences everyone knows or suspects are there anyway. Nothing gets resolved.

To the contrary, self-censorship enables bad ideas. Unchallenged year after year, the stupid people at the table return to their stupid homes as confident as ever in their stupid opinions, no matter how indefensible.

We are seeing the no-politics dictum play itself out with increasing frequency on a national level, with dismaying implications for freedom of expression.

This week we’re talking about “Duck Dynasty,” a reality TV show I haven’t watched. Phil Robertson, the ZZ Top-bearded patriarch of a Louisiana clan who struck it rich with a gadget that calls ducks, is the show’s star. He’s also a hick. Like many other hicks, Robertson holds stupid opinions about gays and blacks, which he expressed in media interviews.

After people complained about Robertson’s stupid thoughts, A&E “suspended” Robertson. He may or may not come back to the show.

Right-wingers, including ferret-faced Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and intellectual beacon Sarah Palin, played to their bigoted Republican base, issuing strident electronic missives decrying Robertson’s maybe-firing on the grounds of free speech. MSNBC and other Democratic Party mouthpieces responded in kind with a talking point that many Americans remember conservatives using against lefties during the Bush years: the First Amendment doesn’t guarantee you the right not to be fired.

“Yes, everyone is entitled to express his or her views,” Jill Filipovic wrote in The Guardian. “Not everyone is entitled to keep their jobs, though, if they decide to express views that are entirely odious and potentially costly to their employer.”

The same (used to be right-wing) left-wing talking point, cacophonously defending the capitalist “right” of bosses to shut up their workers, cropped up all over mainstream liberal outlets.

We’re again witnessing an odious truism: Americans defend free speech they agree with and sign on to the suppression of that they dislike. What if, instead of filling GQ magazine in on his far-right bigotry, Phil Robertson had gotten himself maybe-fired over an interview in which he expressed views that put him to the left of “mainstream”? What if, for example, he’d said instead that all Republicans are racists and homophobes? It’s a safe bet that joints like MSNBC and The Guardian would have denounced A&E for censoring him, and that Rush Limbaugh et al. would be the ones trotting out the “you can say whatever you want but you don’t have a right to get paid for it” bromides.

These free speech battles inevitably break down along partisan lines — but it’s dumb and hypocritical and needs to stop.

Let’s dispense with this sophistry that prevents us from getting to the meat of the matter. Yes, obviously, the First Amendment doesn’t apply. There is no legal issue. Under the law, A&E can fire Robertson.

The question is: should he be fired/suspended?

Should any employer be able to fire you because they dislike what you say?

On that point, my answer is 100%, unequivocally, no way.

“The right to freely speak your mind without government interference is crucial,” allows Filipovic in her essay. “But few of us are permitted in the course of our employment to say whatever we want without consequence from our employer.”

Legally, that’s true. To which I ask: why the hell not?

Americans spend 54% of their waking hours at work. What good is a First Amendment that ends at the keycard door? (Maybe we should rename it the Half Amendment.)

As someone who has lost gigs because I said something that someone didn’t like — usually about politics or religion — I’ve spent a lot of time imagining an America in which workers could express themselves freely. Try as I might, I don’t see the world falling apart if — I’m going to go extreme here — the bald guy at the hardware store turns out to be a Nazi skinhead — after all, the dude was a Nazi all along, right? If anything, it would be good to see him wearing a Nazi badge because, assuming I have the guts to confront him, there would then be a chance that someone could argue him into a better political place.

If you can be fired for expressing yourself at work — or, as in Robertson’s case, not at work, in an interview, which means that for him, 100% of waking hours are an A&E censorship zone — then free speech is a meaningless abstraction that applies only to the tiny fraction of superrich Americans who don’t have to worry about getting fired.

“It sounds nice in theory to say, ‘Walk away, and look for another job,’ ” says Lewis Maltby of the National Workplace Institute. “But in practice, most people just can’t take that risk. They just put up with it.” Which is why the American workplace is a fascist state. “In Arizona, you can be fired for using birth control,” noted The Guardian in 2012. “If you live in any one of 29 states, you can be fired for being gay. You can be fired for being a fan of the Green Bay Packers if your boss roots for the Bears.” Many workers have gotten fired for off-the-cuff tweets.

Because it’s legal to fire louts like Robertson for mouthing off, it’s legal to fire you too, for saying just about anything, no matter innocuous. In his 2007 book “Speechless: The Erosion of Free Expression in the American Workplace,” Bruce Barry documents countless examples of people losing their jobs over banal political speech — for example, having a John Kerry bumpersticker on their car.

Any judgment about A&E’s action on “Duck Dynasty” has to consider the result.
What, exactly do the “social justice warriors” who led the charge against Robertson win if they succeed in getting him fired, or “Duck Dynasty” taken off the air?

I doubt they’ll change Robertson’s mind about gays or blacks. You can’t bully someone into political correctness. The cure to the illogic of bigotry is logical argument. Which requires more effort than organizing an Internet pile-on. All that PC bloggers get out of Robertson’s suspension is a “victory” that makes them feel good. But it diminishes society’s racism and homophobia not one iota.

Bigotry can also give way to experience — like the time a vanload of big black guys with gang tatts emerged from their vehicle, carrying tire irons, while my car was broken down in bad-old-1980s-days Bedford-Stuyvesant. They fixed me up and sent me on the way — after refusing a tip. Robertson obviously needs to spend some time with some LGBT people and people of color.

Getting someone fired, on the other hand, isn’t exactly a recipe for making new friends.

For Robertson and everyone else, the message is clear: keep your politics to yourself, and you’ll be OK. Unless, of course, your politics happen to coincide with whatever happens to be acceptable to whatever happens to be mainstream at a given time — which can, and eventually will, change — and bite you on the ass. So yeah, if you value your paycheck, shut up.

A society in which the workplace is a zero free speech zone is not free. A nation without the free exchange of ideas, where everyone can express themselves without fear of economic retribution, is not — cannot be — a democracy.

The First Amendment should be amended to include the workplace.

(Support independent journalism and political commentary. Subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)

COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama’s Governus Interruptus

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Ted Rall

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Obama is a Uniquely Lazy, Ignorant, Weird President Who Has Done More to Undermine Faith in American Democracy Than We Could Have Imagined In Our Worst Nightmare

Obama will go down in history as a unique president. Because he’s black*, obviously.

Also because he’s a uniquely weird guy: a politician who knows nothing about politics — and doesn’t seem interested in figuring it out. Even while his presidency is in crisis, he’s so obliviously impassively oblivious you have to wonder if he’s living in the same dimension as the rest of us.

Officially (Dow Jones Industrial Average, rich people’s incomes, the fake unemployment and inflation figures issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics), the economy is recovering. Officially, the wars are ending. (“On the ground” in Iraq and Afghanistan, not so much.) Yet Obama’s approval ratings are plunging, even lower than other recent two-term presidents at the same point in time — including the vile, insipid, illegitimate usurper Bush.

No wonder: Obama’s messaging is lousy. John McCain, a zillion years older than the president he lost to and operating with a brain damaged under torture, can see it — so why can’t Obama?

That’s what McCain was wondering aloud after a panel convened to advise Obama about the NSA issued its report: “Most presidents would have now given a speech and said, ‘OK, here’s what the recommendations are; here’s what I think we ought to do.’ Instead, it just came out.” Like a wet turd. “There’s not a translation of facts and events to remedies that the president supports.” How hard is it to tell the panel to submit their ideas to him first so he can repackage the ones he agrees with as his own? That’s Management 101.

Obama is ignorant. Doesn’t have a clue what his minions are up to. Which is bad. Obama’s ignorance is devastating because he lets us know that he doesn’t know. Reagan only read single-page memos, and though Americans suspected he was daft, they didn’t know. It makes a difference.

Chiming in from the even-a-right-winger-who-loved-Bush-can-be-right-twice-a-year corner of The Washington Post op-ed page, Charles Krauthammer marvels: “With alarming regularity, [Obama] professes obliviousness to the workings of his own government. He claims, for example, to have known nothing about the IRS targeting scandal, the AP phone records scandal, the NSA tapping of Angela Merkel. And had not a clue that the centerpiece of his signature legislative achievement — the online Obamacare exchange, three years in the making — would fail catastrophically upon launch. Or that Obamacare would cause millions of Americans to lose their private health plans.”

Dude went to Columbia and Harvard. He seems smart. What’s wrong with him? Is he — as his former colleagues at the University of Chicago, who noticed that he never published — lazy? He’s certainly a far cry from the LBJ who, according to his biographer Robert Caro, routinely burned the midnight oil committing every sentence of every bill, ever, to memory.

Obviously, a president who finds time to watch sports, play golf and kick off for vacations for weeks at a time — while the global economy is melting down — hell, while his signature legislative accomplishment, Obamacare has all but completely imploded — is lazy as all get up. Still, there’s nothing new about presidential sloth. Reagan, Clinton and Bush all worked less than the average minimum-wage worker whose misery they were steadfastly ignoring.

Obama is unique, though. It goes beyond laziness. He doesn’t follow tried and true practices of presidential governance that have served his predecessors for more than two centuries. Intentional? Who knows? It seems more than likely that (and this is so outlandish that I’ve literally waited years to write these words) he is so ignorant of history that he doesn’t know why and how previous presidents have failed and succeeded. Because, let’s face it, if this is three-dimensional chess, he’s down three queens.

The most blinding example of Obama’s ignorance of/unwillingness to/disdain for the act of governing/politicking is what I call Governus Interruptus — delivering a major speech on a problem, then failing to follow up with a policy initiative (a bill, say).

“President Obama’s speeches…are often thoughtful, nuanced, highly evocative, and exceptionally well-delivered — and worse than inconsequential,” Amitai Etzioni writes in The Atlantic. “They raise expectations — a world without nukes! Ending global warming! Finally curbing gun violence! — but are not followed by much of anything. These barren speeches are one reason the public, and especially the young, are becoming disaffected from politics, bad news for any democracy.”

Speaking of LBJ: When he announced “a national war on poverty” with one objective — “total victory” — to lift up the people “who have not shared in the abundance which has been granted to most of us, and on whom the gates of opportunity have been closed” — he didn’t leave it at that. Food stamps, Head Start and other anti-poverty programs followed…laws that began as bills. Bills drafted by the White House and proposed to Congress, which the president strong-armed into passing.

Where is Obama’s nuclear disarmament bill? Why hasn’t he convened a global summit to address the environmental emergency, with the U.S. leading the way with dramatic initiatives to reduce greenhouse gases? Where is his gun control proposal?

Obama jawboned his way into the White House. Evidently Obama hasn’t read enough to know that talking isn’t governing.

Either that, or he doesn’t care.

(Support independent journalism and political commentary. Subscribe to Ted Rall at Beacon.)

COPYRIGHT 2013 TED RALL

LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Dems Luv Cali

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Ted Rall

Don't Do It

 

I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).

This week:

According to a new poll, “Californians’ perceptions about living in the Golden State are fractured along political, geographic and generational boundaries.”

Is California one of the best places to live? 53% of Democrats say yes. Only 26% of Republicans do.

Even if you’re liberal, the knowledge that conservatives are bummed out about living in the same state that you consider paradise has to give you pause. After all, you’re liberal. You’re supposed to care about other people — especially other people who tell you that they don’t care about you.

Also, you might ask yourself: what if I’m wrong and they’re right? What if California really is hell on earth? Does that make me…crazy?

What I want to know, and the poll does not and cannot reveal, is why members of the two major parties view the state’s quality of life so differently. Is it political — are Republifornians chafing under Governor Jerry and a Sacramento dominated by his Dems? Or does it reflect different worldviews? When Republicans look at the sky, do they see a different hue? When they hear the words “Miley Cyrus,” do their hearts quiver at an alternate frequency?

What about third parties? How do Greens and Libertarians enjoy/hate living here?

Anyway, this cartoon falls into the “illustrative” category of the political toon genre — a piece that doesn’t take an editorial stance, but rather shows what’s going on for its own sake. I have often been critical of this type of cartooning, but I make exceptions (hey, to be human is to be a hypocrite) for cartoons that highlight minor blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stories that have, or may have, broad implications.

Which this one is.

Now that you know that right-wingers dislike living in California, maybe you should consider being nicer to the dude in the monster truck-sized SUV who cuts you off if it has a Tea Party bumper sticker. Chances are, he’s depressed enough us as it is without you honking at him.

Also, he’s more likely to be armed.

Democratic posturing about the long-term unemployed

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Ted Rall

Democratic posturing on the 1.3 million Americans who are going to lose their unemployment benefits makes me sick. These Democrats have already agreed to the bill that eliminates those benefits. All they want to do is jawbone in order to get points with the 99%. Fuck them.
Also: what about the millions and millions more of long-term unemployed people – roughly 4 to 5% of the American population – who already lost their unemployment benefits months and years ago? Those 1.3 million are a drop in the bucket.
I wish the Democratic Party would admit the truth: they don’t give a rat’s ass about the 99%, the long-term unemployed, the poor, the short-term unemployed or anyone else except their banker and insurance company friends. They are scum. At least with the Republicans, they admit that they are scum.
I swear, if MSNBC shows one more lying Democratic Congressman pretending to whine about a bill that he or she is voting for, I am going to throw my television out the window.

“The Stringer”

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Ted Rall

I am working with Pablo G. Callejo on a new graphic novel project we’re calling “The Stringer.” It’s about a washed-up war correspondent who goes rogue — a dark satire about the death of print journalism and how easily social networking can be manipulated.

Here’s three sample pages. What do you think? We’re probably going to try Kickstarter.

Would you support “The Stringer” on Kickstarter?
pollcode.com free polls

 

Stringer1

Stringer2

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Why I am ending my short-lived experiment in drawing President Obama not like President Obama

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Ted Rall

With today’s cartoon I bring an end to a short-lived, benighted experiment in self-censorship. In response to vicious so-called “social justice activists” on a certain Right-Wing-Democrat-Blog-That-Must-Not-Be-Named, last week I abandoned drawing President Obama the way that I draw everyone else, in my usual style. I tried drawing him just as a :-).

I hated it.

I hated the way it looked. I hated the potential for confusion. Most of all, I hated myself for giving in to censors by censoring myself. The only way that censors can win is if artists and writers kowtow to them.

I spent the last few weeks reading and listening to feedback in the form of thousands of emails and comments about the way I draw President Obama. Which is, of course, exactly the way I draw everyone else.

As many, many people pointed out.

It didn’t take long for me to see that 99% of the criticism was motivated not by genuine concern or the perception of racism, but by simple, cynical political posturing: frustrated by my critiques of Obama and his policies from the left, militant Democrats gearing up for the 2014 midterm elections are pulling out all the stops to silence their most effective critics. If there is no support from the liberal/progressive base of the Democratic Party, after all, the GOP will probably pick up a lot of seats next year. So these Obama Democrats, who by any objective political standard are right wing conservatives in favor of torture, Guantánamo, drone strikes, bailing out the banksters, selling out real healthcare reform in favor of insurance company profits, refusing to lift a finger to help the long-term unemployed, expanding and extending the wars against the people of Iraq and Afghanistan ad infinitum, failing to appoint a single liberal to his cabinet, refusing to investigate torture under the Bush administration, continuing the practice of extraordinary rendition, brutally authorizing and torturing Private Chelsea Manning, authorizing and running interference for the despicable invasions of privacy by the out-of-control and lawbreaking NSA. These scum will literally say or do anything to destroy people like me.

They will unleash the most loathsome smears of all, including accusing me of totally unfounded racism. They, and the journalistic outlets that gave them a voice, have truly crossed a line. One of these days, they are going to go too far. What they are doing could literally cost someone’s life. What if some fanatic took the crap that they are saying seriously?

So anyway, the point is, these are disingenuous, almost all, anonymous Dem hacks. In fact, I doxied some of the most strident voices on the Internet – supposedly angry black people – to sock puppets controlled by Democratic Party activists who were in fact…white. There was evidence that these people draw a paycheck from Democratic Party sources.

Why should I give a shit about what these conniving assholes think? (Almost all of whom, by the way, are white males.)

On the other hand, the people who know me and know my work have been almost unanimous in their conviction that I should refuse to be bullied and should carry on the way I always have, viciously skewering this terrible president the way that I criticized the previous terrible president and the terrible president before him. I conducted a poll that showed that two out of three of my readers wanted me to continue as is or to draw Obama uglier than I had been.

So that is what I will be doing. My job. As a political cartoonist and commentator. Which is not to be nice. It is to speak truth to power.

I recognize that there is a price to be paid for refusing to apologize or change or adapt to the demands of the political correctness police online. There are people who will, many years from now, refuse to hear or read anything that I have to say or do because they once read a headline that implied that I was a terrible person back in 2013. They won’t know the facts. They won’t know the background. They will remember the smear. That is how smears work. And it really sucks.

This new McCarthyism, however, will never end until people like me stand up to it. Obviously, I can’t do it alone. I need your support in every way: rhetorically, politically, strategically and if you can afford it, financially.

To the many people who have offered their support in all of these ways and more over the last couple of weeks, thank you so much.

LOS ANGELES TIMES CARTOON: Who Can You Tell?

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Ted Rall

Who Can You Tell?

 

I draw cartoons for The Los Angeles Times about issues related to California and the Southland (metro Los Angeles).

This week:

From a cartoonist’s standpoint, the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department is the gift that keeps on giving. From corruption to inmate abuse, you have to wonder whether the really bad guys are the ones inside the cells or the ones guarding them.

Responding to numerous credible reports of dirty dealings by sheriff’s deputies, the FBI arrested a number of sheriff’s officials in connection with a wide-ranging probe of alleged improprieties by a department charged with — remember? — upholding the law and protecting the public. Which includes inmates.

If the charges hold up, this will turn out to be one of the biggest corruption scandals in L.A. history. If these guys are guilty, they’re guilty of some serious whoppers. “In one case, prosecutors say, an Austrian consul official trying to visit an Austrian inmate was arrested and handcuffed even though she had committed no crime and would have been immune from prosecution, the indictment said.”

A century ago, Austria would have declared war over that sort of thing.

Among the charges are that, after deputies discovered that one of their prisoners was sending evidence about their activities behind bars to the FBI — a cellphone with recent calls to the feds turned up during a search — they “disappeared” him into the byzantine L.A. jail system, both in order to find out what the feds knew about them and to prevent him from talking

My initial idea was of an Escheresque box-within-a-box where it’s hard to distinguish the prisoners from the informants from the jailers. But I thought that would be too high-concept to follow. Also, too many political cartoons do Escher analogy toons.

As my mom says, simply simplify simplify, so I boiled it down to the disappeared prisoner with his interrogator, both men trapped in their own Kafka-like hells of wondering what happens next and who will be prevail as right in the legal and public arenas.

It’s weird, and that’s what my cartoon is about, but what I hope readers will take away is what’s really weird — that the public doesn’t seem to care enough about what happens to their friends, neighbors, brothers and sisters…because, after all, that’s who winds up in jail. Fellow Angelenos, fellow Californians, fellow Americans.

Maybe you someday.

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