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November 04, 2006
Some bad taste is more equal
One of the things we tend to forget is what's two days old in the blogosphere can be big news. Like today's front page (photographed from the Philadelphia Inquirer):
Gutmann, a noted political scientist and philosopher who became Penn's president in 2004, said, "The costume is clearly offensive and I was offended by it. As soon as I realized what his costume was, I refused to take any more pictures with him, as he requested. The student had the right to wear the costume, just as I, and others, have a right to criticize his wearing of it."The rest of the pictures can be found here. Glenn Reynolds (who's "skeptical that a Klansman costume would be received in the same fashion") linked them the day before yesterday, and the link was emailed to me yesterday by a non-blogging friend, so it's getting around. Like it or not, pictures like that are just too rich to ignore. Certainly the Inquirer can't ignore them, even if the piece is largely about the role of blogs. What bothers me about it is what's bothering so many other people. It's not so much the kid with the terrorist outfit. Such antics are as inevitable as a Hitler moustache. It's that Gutmann would never have posed with a kid in a Nazi outfit, or a Klan outfit. Or God forbid, minstrel blackface. So the question is not along the lines of whether "we" have lost our sense of humor. It's a question of what accounts for such cultural selectivity in humor. What makes Al Jolson more offensive than Osama bin Laden? Is it simply which group shouts the loudest? (Well, at least we're not hearing that the outfit was an offensive stereotype.... Yet.) posted by Eric on 11.04.06 at 07:42 AM |
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I'm going to give the Penn Prez the benefit of the doubt because of her unusually insightful remark that college admin wimps way too often forget should be their default position on free speech issues:
"The student had the right to wear the costume, just as I, and others, have a right to criticize his wearing of it."
Amen.
Let's hope she remembers that rule when a conservative group holds an "affirmative action bakesale"; or a student posts a "right to life" flyer on a bulletin board; or a Minutemen rep tries to speak and the stage is rushed;, or a religious student speaks his or her mind in class on the subject of gay marriage; or to use a Penn-specific example from a few years ago, a student tries to shuush a group of loud African-American sorority girls by calling them "water buffalos."
Right to speak; right to criticize. A liberal arts education should teach that those are two sides of one coin, no matter how "uncomfortable" that speech or that criticism makes one feel.