The Tyranny of “Manners”

Many moons ago, when I was an impressionable doctoral candidate at the U of I, I wrote a column for the student newspaper, the Daily Iowan (DI).  Intimidated by right-wing members of student government who threatened to cut funding for the paper, the editors hired a token right-wing writer selected from a list presented them by the student government types.

The writer, David Mastio, soon justified his selection.  After an abortion provider was shot dead by a militant opponent of legal abortion, Mastio penned a column in which he chastised abortion opponents.  Mastio’s argument was as follows: if abortion opponents are to be intellectually consistent, then they are obligated to defend the killing of abortion providers as “justifiable homicide” if they insist on equating abortion with murder.

You can imagine the furor which ensued.  At a public meeting about the column, I stood up and argued that David Mastio needed to be fired as a columnist.  Ironically, a student I had taught in Rhetoric was there in his role as a city beat reporter for the DI.  Tory promptly told the editors what I had said, and I was called in for a “talk.”  I was subsequently fired as a columnist for criticizing the editors in public.  One of them told me I was “biting the hand” that fed me.

That’s when things got interesting.  The late Betty McCollister, who frequently wrote pieces for the Cedar Rapids Gazette lampooning christian conservatives, published an essay there defending the decision to fire me: I had, she argued, breached polite rules by criticizing my editors in public.

Kim Painter, who is now Johnson County Recorder, was then a DI columnist.  She also defended my firing as necessary, since I had violated the rules of being a polite, compliant employee.  Painter also made a point of supporting Mastio’s free speech rights, and appearing with him at a subsequent campus rally held to protest Mastio’s column.  Ironically, Painter as Recorder refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples (she is lesbian) because same-sex marriage was illegal.  The decision could have been “Varnum v. Painter,” but I guess she didn’t want THAT kind of legacy!

I refuse to defend the idea of “manners” being used to insist employees be properly subordinate to their bosses.  What I will vigorously defend is the use of social pressure, in the form of censure or criticism, for people who use racist or sexist epithets in their speech, who insist on using “retard” or “retarded” to denigrate people, who think prison rape in the US is funny, or who otherwise find humor in the violence of the oppressor.  That is why I found the display of the rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair wrong, and the consequences the clown and announcer are facing just.  Both men invoked racist violence as a joke, and many in the audience rightly complained.

That is why I find the right wing’s condemnation of “political correctness” indefensible and hypocritical.  Conservatives have no problem defending Wood’s Law, also known as “employment at will.”  For most of us, employment is considered a contract which either party may break at any time for any reason, good or bad.  While that seems fair, it is not: the party who stands to lose the most is the worker.  At will and private sector employees have no protected free speech rights.  As the labor arbitrator who heard my case against the DI put it, “an employer can own you 24 hours a day if he or she chooses.”  At will employees can be fired for making statements during their own time, which don’t mention the employer at all, if the employer finds them objectionable.

Conservatives, as a rule, support that.  However, remind them that using words like “n*gger” or “f*ggot” are unacceptable, and you will be accused of “censoring” the speaker.  Try telling many conservatives how offensive it is to use “retard” or “retarded” as pejoratives, and you will be told you are being too sensitive.  Yet, conservatives will become very righteous if you are Bill Maher and you use a sexist slur.  Then, expect your behavior to be roundly criticized.

What too many conservatives want to dismiss as “political correctness” is simple courtesy and human decency, the kind of manners which are not tyrannical.  Forgotten, too, by many in the crowd which touts its “christian values” (which strangely are centered on denying LGBT people full equality under the law) is the simple, radical injunction to “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”  That injunction becomes irrelevant if you want to assert your “right” to express racist, sexist, or otherwise bigoted language and thought without fear of being censured.  Somehow, “free speech” does not extend to my saying, “what you just said is incredibly offensive.”

When it comes to workers’ free expression rights, conservatives have the skin of a rhinoceros: all but impenetrable.  But if you dare to challenge bigoted speech or action, conservatives suddenly become as hypersensitive as the princess who could detect the pea under a pile of mattresses.