Due before class on Thursday, April 5.
Introduction
In class, we discussed a variety of speech, both online and offline, that are protected under the First Amendment. As Chief Justice Douglas wrote in his 1973 dissent to the three-tiered test of obscenity in the Miller v. California Supreme Court decision,
Instructions:
For this assignment, find an example of offensive, uncivil speech. It can be provocative, distasteful, intentional or not. Does it allow any chance for rebuttal? Is the response primary by others to ignore it? Get engaged? Outraged? In 2-3 paragraphs, summarize the description of the event and the response(s) to it. You can post videos, blog posts, online harassment, vitriolic radio and news media, websites that espouse white supremacy. Pretty much any media site.
Post the assignment here. After you post, go back and comment on others’ posts. The idea is to read and comment and thereby make it more interactive.
The First Amendment was designed 'to invite dispute,' to induce 'a condition of unrest,' to 'create dissatisfaction with conditions as they are,' and even to stir 'people to anger.' The idea that the First Amendment permits punishment for ideas that are 'offensive' to the particular judge or jury sitting in judgment is astounding. No greater leveler of speech or literature has ever been designed. To give the power to the censor, as we do today, is to make a sharp and radical break with the traditions of a free society.It is in this way that the First Amendment and free speech supports our democratic ideals. As awful as speech can be, it’s what sets us apart from countries that do not have these freedoms.
Instructions:
For this assignment, find an example of offensive, uncivil speech. It can be provocative, distasteful, intentional or not. Does it allow any chance for rebuttal? Is the response primary by others to ignore it? Get engaged? Outraged? In 2-3 paragraphs, summarize the description of the event and the response(s) to it. You can post videos, blog posts, online harassment, vitriolic radio and news media, websites that espouse white supremacy. Pretty much any media site.
Post the assignment here. After you post, go back and comment on others’ posts. The idea is to read and comment and thereby make it more interactive.
8 comments:
I have taken a different approach to the free speech rights. In some cases it is actually hate speech, but is not seen as offensive by all forms of authority. If an African American is called the n word in public, I do not see the police preventing them. If someone is called a terrorist, this A. makes the person being called a terrorist start being accused of things and looked into authorities but also, B. does not have any repercussions of the person calling them a terrorist. In the following case, a mother received a note saying that she and her family should go back to their homeland, and that they are terrorists. The mother did not act, because there is nothing that would have been done to protect herself and/or her family. She thought it was just the acts of immature teenagers.
Soon after the first note was received, Shaima Alawadi was murdered and beaten to death by assailants. She was discovered by her daughter, only 17 years old, and sitting in a pool of her own blood. She had a note that was similar to the one received earlier telling her and the family to go home.
The offensive speech in this situation is the notes received by the mother. Something that people of Iraqi descent, middle eastern decent, and Indian decent are almost used too. She brushed off the actions, showing that even though she may have been outraged, she knew taking action would not be beneficial but possibly harmful for her family. She did not exactly ignore it, she just decided to not take action.
In the situation of free speech in this situation, it allows for some oppressed cultures in our country to continue to be put down. Calling someone who is brown a terrorist is something that happens on a daily basis, and the stigma of people from Iraq being bad people is still around. Since people are allowed to practice free speech, when this combines with the common conceptions of certain races, it allows for them to not have action taken. In this situation it proved to be deadly for Shaima Awadi.
I almost feel that if a caucasian woman received a letter to the same magnitude of this letter, it would have been blown up in the media. Where was the coverage here? I did not see it on CNN, Fox News, or any other major news channels.
http://www.worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhR15R3q9ylqJE7HIH
A Youtube video entitled “American Nazi Party and Occupy Wallstreet protesters have something in common.” is a great example of a uncivil and offensive speech. The message is essentially a little different then what the title might imply. Their argument is that liberals are guilty of racism by noting how some anti-semite protesters in the recent Occupy Wall Street movement were involved and had similar messages as the American Nazi Party (who also support the Occupy Wall Street movement). The video wanted to make clear that supporters of OWS are liberal and that some of those liberal protesters are also blaming it all on rich jewish bankers/CEOs/Investors, etc. The conclusion being that the right conservatives seldom use racism yet all the while being accused of it while the left liberals somehow are able to hide their racism from the world and not have the stereotype.
There certainly is plenty of room for a rebuttal to this argument since in addition to many dissenting opinions and engagement on the issue. There are plenty of both dissenting and agreeing comments to this video and it’s actually all sort of hard to follow what each commentor is saying (they seem to be going off into different tangents and arguing against each other on different topics not related to the video). The many responses range from “Fuck the Jews fuck America and fuck niggers HEIL HITLER!!!!!!!” to “You couldn't make a point even if you were a compass.” but this video has really riled up a lot of people who keep badgering each other and very few comments are actually directed toward just the video. Anyways, I was entertained reading all the comments. People are crazy.
Youtube video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4VQEH1SQ0tA&feature=related
Sources referenced by the creator of the video: http://nation.foxnews.com/occupy-wall-street/2011/10/15/american-nazi-party-declares-its-full-support-occupy-wall-street-protests
http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/10/figures-nazi-party-throws-support-behind-occupy-wall-street-movement/
For this assignment I found a video of Senator John Mccain (links below), that was taken at a rally, during the United States election period in 2008. In the video a woman says to Mccain, “I gotta ask you a question . . . I can't trust Obama. I have read about him and . . . he's an Arab.” In response to the woman, Mccain says, "No, ma'am. He's a decent family man [and] citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign's all about. He's not [an Arab]."
It was commendable for Mccain to correct the woman on her misinformation since a lot of this was being spread around during the campaign. However, for him to say what he did, it insinuates that there is something wrong with Arabs and that if you are an Arab, you are not a decent, family person. Just the way he worded it and his astonishment with the accusation was done in a way that would be indirectly offensive to anyone listening. Mccain could have said that, no Obama isn't an Arab, but there shouldn't be a problem with it if he was. When did race, ethnicity or religion become a way to judge a person's character? We think that people have gotten better with racial discrimination, and that the ones that are still discriminatory are the ones that are ignorant; but when a Senator, who was also the runner up for presidency, displays this type of discrimination it is hard to get past how the world really is.
Most of the responses to the video where about it being great that Mccain was correcting the wrong information that people had, rarely did people comment on the fact that what he said was incredibly offensive to Arabs. I did, however, find two videos that spoke against what Mccain said. One video is of Ben Affleck on Bill Maher's show and the other is of Campbell brown. Both of them defend Arabs and criticize Mccain's words. They talk about how rude it was of Mccain to say something that offensive. Personally, I am glad that someone noticed and spoke up.
Mccain rally(Obama is arab): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRq6Y4NmB6U
Ben Affleck interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9d-9GM9RGQ
Campbell brown criticizes mccain video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvxkNTdDHPY
My assignment is also about Jeremy Lin.
In a recent interview in Taiwan (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-qUxd5VGEE), Lin said that he had been discriminated by some players and fans while he was playing for Harvard. The interviewer asked him how to face the twit, and he said even though he would get very angry, he learned to use it as motivation rather than fighting back. For example, there was nothing he could do to the yelling from the crowd. He also said that if he tried to fight against a coach or another play, he would be in trouble.
In my opinion, even though the First Amendment is made for people to speak out for themselves, it still does not always turn out a justified result. Fans could yell at a player freely and easily, but it is hard for the player to fight against them. In Jeremy Lin's example, sometimes a coach didn't respect his or other plays at all. Coach's careless words could easily hurt players' feeling, but it is not a common thing for a player to say something back.
When I was trying to decide what to do for this assignment the term cyberbullying kept coming back to mind. The first cyberbullying incident that sticks out to me was an incident that happened around 6 years ago. The victim was a 13 year old teenager named Megan Meier. Megan had just recently set up an account on MySpace and shortly after she received a message from a 16 year old boy which she found to be attractive. Little that she had known, the boy’s account was fictitious and was set up by one of her former friend’s mother. Megan continued to converse back and forth with this boy and her family had even stated that since becoming his online friend, her spirits had been lifted. Soon after, the boy’s tone in the messages started to change. He sent her a message saying “I don't know if I want to be friends with you anymore because I've heard that you are not very nice to your friends.” And there after the message that literally pushed Megan over the edge was “Everybody in O'Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.” Megan’s last reply was “You’re the kind of boy a girl would kill herself over.” Around 20 minutes later Megan was found dead as she hung herself in her closet.
Witnesses later testified that the mother that created the fictitious MySpace account intended to use Megan’s e-mails with the boy to get information about her and later humiliate her, in retribution for her allegedly spreading gossip about her daughter. This is a good example of uncivil speech in regards to cyberbullying. Although I’m sure it wasn’t the intention of the mother to push Megan over the edge to the extreme degree, however, her intentions were malicious. Cyberbullying has been happening for years now and is steadily growing. One in ten parents online around the world say their child has experienced cyberbullying. One in four of those parents say they know a child in their community who has experienced cyberbullying and of those, 60% say the children experienced the harassing behavior on social networking sites such as Facebook (http://puresight.com/Cyberbullying/cyber-bullying-statistics.html). A study conducted by www.cybullying.us found that cyberbullying victims are 1.9 times more likely to commit suicide than those with no experience of cyberbullying.
Cyberbullying has been happening for quite some time, but Megan’s story takes it to a whole new level being that an adult was involved. The mother involved was never prosecuted for the hoax. She did however close her local business and moved her family out of their neighborhood as they were shunned by their community. Hopefully she has learned from this horrible incident and has instilled in her daughter to think before speaking.
For my example of uncivil speech I will be referencing a distasteful article on the website hollywoodlife.com entitled “Jessica Simpson’s Gained 50 lbs — Too Much Say Obstetricians”. In this article they are discussing Jessica Simpson’s recent weight gain during her pregnancy. In the attempt to get out exclusive news about Jessica Simpson it seems like they asked two OBGYN doctors to comment on some photos they obtained of her at a wedding she participated in for one of her friend’s. This article also references comments that Simpson made about what kinds of food she has been eating. One of the doctors that the website quoted was Dr. Tara Solomon. Who goes into detail as to how unhealthy it is for a woman to gain as much weight as they suspect Simpson has gained. Dr. Tara Solomon goes as far as dictating a specific amount of calorie intake per day (1200 per day) and pounds gained (25 maximum) a pregnant woman should stay within. Unfortunately, Dr. Tara Solomon misspoke about the amount of calories, which she corrected on a different site when re-interviewed. She said that she meant to say an extra 1200 calories per day coming to a total of 3,000-3,200 calories. They did offer a second doctors opinion, Dr. Patricia Allen, who expanded the recommended weight gain to be between 25 – 35 lbs. Dr. Patricia Allen also said that some women retain a lot of water during their last month of pregnancy that can lead to them not feeling and looking their best. In this websites attempt to not get scooped they posted the wrong calorie information instead of verifying the information first.
The actions of this website have most definitely produced a lot of engaged reader. The site does offer readers an opportunity to make a rebuttal, by posting their comments. Most of the readers were outraged that they would actually criticize a woman, a star or not, about gaining weight during a pregnancy. Many of the comments were supportive of Jessica Simpson and of women in general who gain weight during pregnancy. Most of the supportive comments also offered their own experiences with weight gain during pregnancy. Some of the readers who commented also criticize her for gaining the weight even saying that she looks enormous.
These kinds of media website seem to forget that these stars are also just people trying to live their lives. What makes this article so distasteful is that they are criticizing Jessica Simpson while they are trying to come off like they’re concerned for her and her baby’s well being. As though it is okay to criticize someone in public if you are doing it in their best interest. This kind of behavior of offering a criticizing opinion about everything people do, and say is definitely eroding away the common courtesy in our society. Especially when you have websites like this one that are more concerned about getting the article out first about a star instead of doing their fact checking.
http://www.hollywoodlife.com/2012/03/27/jessica-simpson-pregnant-weight-gain-doctors/comment-page-2/#comments
Dr. Tara Solomon’s corrected statement is on this website.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2012/04/04/jessica_simpson_s_pregnancy_weight_gain_how_much_is_healthy_.html
(I posted this before, but it was gone without any reason. Here I post it again.)
Take China Down?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6O20dcJONQ
Jon Huntsman, a former US Ambassador to China, is widely known as a friend of Chinese people. However, during the Republican Debate last year, he said:
"Well, the reality's a little different as it usually is when you're on the ground. And I've tried to figure this out for 30 years of my career. First of all, I don't think, Mitt, you can take China to the W.T.O. on currency-related issues. Second, I don't know that this country needs a trade war with China. Who does it hurt? ------ Our small businesses in South Carolina, our exporters -- our agriculture producers.
We don't need that at a time when China is about to embark on a generational position. So what should we be doing? We should be reaching out to our allies and constituencies within China. They're called the young people. They're called the internet generation. There are 500 million internet users in China, and 80 million bloggers. And they are bringing about change, the likes of which is gonna take China down. While we have an opportunity to go up and win back our economic manufacturing muscles. That's all I wanna do as president."
This speech may not be offensive to people other than Chinese, especially the so-called “young people,” the “young generation” like us. It raised hot discussions in China. People have known that there were invisible wars on the Web, but this is the first time that a high-level foreign government official said this in public, as “all he wanna do as a future president”. The young people though are more open, do not the economy in China “to be taken down;” neither don’t they want to know that their mood and future will be manipulated by foreigners.
A lot of comments were posted in Chinese video sharing websites. I translated some of them, and also picked some English comments as following:
• Wow, there are really some people hired by the US government to do this really, really mean thing!!!
• He appeared in a chaos happened in Beijing some time ago.
• WTF?
• Americans finally tell the truth…
• He (Jon Huntsman) is naive.
• He (Jon Huntsman) is a big shit.
• Some Chinese shall waken up!
• Enemy’s enemy is friend.
• Well, we know that the US uses the banner of "Democracy" to silence dissent over their immoral actions (e.g. invading Iraq to get their oil, but on the pretext of removing Saddam and liberating the Iraqi people), but this suggestion by Huntsman is utterly disgusting. To actually suggest that the young generation in China be empowered to cause chaos and disruption to people's livelihood under the banner of "human rights", and then profiteering from it, is honestly unbelievable.
Their anger could be totally understood. Jon Huntsman has his right to say anything he wants. However, he might want to treat the so-called “young generation of China” as real friends, instead of a tool, to make chaos in China and take down the economy. He can even do this, but please show some respect by holding this strategy within his heart or his supporting group.
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