A Blast of Pure Intolerance

posted at 11:10 am on June 10, 2009 by Doctor Zero

Our culture praises tolerance as the supreme virtue, but intolerance has its uses, too. For example, decent people should not tolerate a tired, bitter old late-night comedian making jokes about raping the 14-year-old daughter of a politician on national TV. The equivalent joke about raping Barack Obama’s daughters would not be tolerated. To let something like this slide is to concede that Sarah Palin and her daughter are less worthy of respect – less human – than Obama and his daughters. People do not forfeit their humanity because they hold political views that elite liberal culture disapproves of. There are only two things decent Americans need to hear from David Letterman now: his heartfelt apology to Willow Palin and her parents, followed by his resignation. Any guest on Letterman’s show who wishes to be respected as a gentleman or a lady should make this demand to his face, until he finally gets the message.

I’m also intolerant of celebrities casually tossing off ugly religious bigotry during fluff interviews. Asked how she would deal with the villain of her Transformers movies, Megan Fox said, “I’d barter with him, and say instead of the entire planet, can you just take out all of the white trash, hillbilly, anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America?” A comparable remark about the black or Hispanic “anti-gay, super bible-beating people in Middle America” would not have been tolerated. A similar insult directed at the even more anti-gay Koran-beating Muslims in the Middle East, who are known to actually murder gays on a fairly regular basis, would have ended her career. To tolerate this kind of idiocy against certain racial groups and religions, but not others, is to concede that certain racial groups and religions are inherently inferior and worthy of contempt. Megan Fox owes her success to a much bigger star, whose coat-tails she rode to fame and fortune: Optimus Prime, who would never allow her thoughtless insults to pass unchallenged. For one thing, Optimus knows the futility of trying to appease Megatron by offering him a few human sacrifices. Also, when he’s not a giant robot warrior for justice, he’s a truck… which means those white rural Christians insulted by Megan Fox are his people. A sentient eighteen-wheeler would receive a very warm welcome if he rolled up to any truck stop or stock-car rally in the South.

I can’t see any reason to tolerate a nominee for the highest court in the land making repeated statements that her racial heritage and sex make her wiser and better qualified to be a jurist. Not very long ago, our culture demanded the summary termination of veteran sportscaster Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, because he made public comments that black athletes are naturally superior because they were bred for strength and stamina during the era of slavery. We are, correctly, repulsed by theories of racial superiority or inferiority being pumped into our public discourse. Jimmy the Greek said something crass and stupid. So did Sonia Sotomayor, and she did it more than once. You can easily list a number of racial heritages that Sotomayor would not have been allowed to cite as reasons for her superior judicial temperament. I’ve written before that if she was a German woman named Sonia Sotomacher, and she had a history of claiming her Teutonic heritage made her a superior jurist, we’d be going into the second week of Barack Obama’s impeachment hearings by now. Claiming one race is superior to another is logically as offensive as claiming one race is inferior to the others. We should not demand higher standards of our sportscasters than we do of our Supreme Court justices.

We have learned to despise racism and bigotry because we revere the dignity and humanity of all people, regardless of their skin color or religious beliefs. We even extend this reverence to religions that are hostile to our common culture, or wish to segregate themselves from it, provided they respect our laws and the rights of fellow citizens. We have also learned that language plays an important role in shaping ideas and behavior. We insist on using terms like “African-American” because we understand the importance of addressing people with dignity and respect. I doubt many of us are under the illusion that such polite language completely erases bigoted thoughts from people’s minds – how many of us could honestly say we go through our adult lives, or even a single day, without having thoughts which are unworthy of expression through public speech? Everyone occasionally has feelings as unpleasant as the garbage floating around in Megan Fox’s head… but most of us would know better than to pour them into microphones.

We are a culture that swims in an all-encompassing ocean of media. Every waking hour is filled with light and noise from televisions, computers, and radios. Our commitment to the freedom of speech should be matched with a commitment to the quality of speech, to keep that ocean of media as clean as possible. Because we rightly recoil from the idea of using government censorship against anything except the most vile profanity, it’s up to private citizens to raise their voices against those who assert the power to strip political opponents of their dignity and humanity, or those who believe the poisonous doctrines of racial superiority are less toxic for certain races. A cretin like Dave Letterman is free to tell all the rape jokes he wants, but no one should be pointing a camera at him, or handing him a paycheck for doing it. In a nation committed to keeping the government from policing our speech, while embracing technology that can make anyone’s voice heard in millions of homes, intolerance is our only effective weapon against bigotry. We should use it more often.

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