I must confess I’m a bit bewildered by Ken Parish’s argument over at Troppo. Ken is writing about Andrew Sullivan’s piece on the pulling of the Southpark ep which lampooned scientology. Somewhere along the line, perhaps with the intention of lampooning it himself, he slips into a discussion of whether Scientology is a “real religion”. It seems to me that this raises a question which is fairly narrowly framed considering how religion could be defined, but then makes a rather tenuous jump to the RWDB favourite, Victoria’s Religious Vilification laws.
I’m counting Ken as an occasional honorary RWDB here, by the way.
This goes to the question of “freedom of speech” generally. On one hand, we have RWDBs lauding TEH WEST as the incarnation of freedom, except when they’re claiming that the evil state is taking away such freedoms (… never shall the ideological invocation of liberalism clash with the political reality, one might speculate). On the other hand, they, and this is where I’m roping Ken in, seem blind to paramaters imposed on what can be said by noisy interest groups or powerful corporate interests.
Which is odd, because, you know, they do seem to believe in mythical PC police, and surely the whole discourse of PC is an example of structural constraints on what can be said in practice?
But, strangely, there’s a huge disparity in the willingness of righties to criticise state-sponsored limitations on speech and their unwillingness to criticise those imposed by markets, conformism, corporatism, and just plain cowardice and cupidity.
NB: For the record, I’m a First Amendment kinda gal and oppose the Religious Vilification laws.
Seems iffy that after all the episodes that they have aired making fun of any number of religions, they decide to pull an episode that happens to tell the truth about scientology (and it does… I’ve seen it).
Chef also quit over this episode. Again… didn’t seem to have a problem with South Park dissing Mormons… portraying ALL Catholic priests as paedophiles etc etc etc… not to mention Cartman’s incessant anti-semitism.
And of course the infamous “bloody mary” episode.
Kim
This is certainly one of your more bizarre posts. If you read Troppo (and I know you do), then you would be well aware that I essentially don’t hold any of the stereotypical views you ascribe to RWDBs viz “unwillingness to criticise [limitations on speech] imposed by markets, conformism, corporatism, and just plain cowardice and cupidity.” In fact I oppose religious vilification laws on what would appear to be exactly the same grounds as yourself. What basis do you have to think otherwise? Or was I just a convenient strawman for a bit of late night condescension?
More of a jumping off point, Ken, or a hook.
Apologies, Ken, I didn’t mean to be condescending.
I do think the argument in your post is a little unclear, so perhaps the feeling is mutual.
I’m with Ken. An odd post, Kim. I couldn’t make head or tail of your argument except you seem to be squashing a RWDB toe into a very ill-fitting boot.
I think the point is that limitations of speech imposed by “markets, conformism, corporatism” (to use Kim’s words) managed to get the rerun of SP canned by its network — but things might have been much worse in Vic where the power of legislation might have been used to get the episode permanently banned and its makers heavily fined, if the show had been made in Vic.
In other words, this goes to prove the (RWDB?) point that the sins of the market, while real and serious, pale in comparison to the sins of the State.
To even further muddy the waters - Kim’s post raises for me also the interesting question of how a religion is defined - by the state and then by the wider community. Groups such as Scientology by virtue of their legal status as a religion are then able to gain tax-free status & other goodies deemed appropriate. Including the rather bizarre occurrence involving recognition of educational facilities then run. A number of years ago, the old Brown St public school site in Rozelle became vacant when SCA moved onto the Callan Park campus. Tenders were called for leasing the site to be used for educational purposes. Two applicants were received - the Montessori school squeezed on their Anne Street campus & the Scientologists wishing to open their first school in NSW. According to the tender documents, the Minister would decide on a number of factors, including the contribution the educational model would make to educatonal standards in the state. Motherhood statement but nevertheless indicating some recognition that pedagogy should play some role in the decision making process. Scientology teaching staff are not required to have recognised qualifications in education, not even a Dip Ed, but rather MUST have been trained within the Church to a certain level. Guess who won the tender, largely on the basis of providing a religious education for thier own community.
Its one thing for the state not to interfere in the freedom of religious expression, but I’m not quite so comfortable with the state supporting opportunites for organisations were there would a conflict between community expectations of educational outcomes & the organisation’s own aims & beliefs.
None of which has anything to do with South Park other than I have no problem whatsoever with them lampooning anyone & everyone - why privilege one group as to be above their relentless bad taste & often heavy handed satire? I’m still coming to terms with Mr Hanky, the Christmas Poo.
That’s very interesting, Bernice. Without actually knowing anything about it, I’d have thought the state would still require basic teacher training / qualifications for teachers in accredited schools of whatever variety, since I don’t see how that basic training in pedagogy could conflict with Scientology teachers’ ability to teach Scientology-specific stuff. (I’m assuming the Scientology school is for kids of compulsory school age?) Is there a comparable lack of regulation over the quals of other private / religious education providers?
I haven’t read Sullivan’s original piece nor the Troppo post, but as Radio National reported the story, it wasn’t just Scientology that the South Park episode made fun of, but Tom Cruise in particular - is that accurate?
Clarification - Scientology teachers are required only to have in-house training so to speak - yes state regulations require a minimum no. of qualified teachers on staff as per ratio to student numbers - apparently in this situation only some of the face-to-face staff are ed. dept qualified & others aren’t. & given that there is room for anti-discrimination legislation not to apply to religious organisations, this is the tactic used for avoiding compliance.
OK, I understand better now, thanks.
I haven’t seen the ep, Laura, but I gather Tom Cruise was represented as coming out of a closet.
That was the problem, he wouldn’t come out of the closet.
While I wouldn’t recommend it for all purposes, wikipedia is sometimes very useful - an episode summary is here.
Actually, I think Tom refuses to come out of the closet, despite everyone asking him to.
Goddam weird linky shit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trapped_in_the_Closet_%28South_Park_episode%29
I can manage to post a link everywhere else but here. It’s not just me is it?
I thought the southpark ep, which I actually saw, was less about scientology and more about religious belief? ie the stupidity of it and how the ‘rationality’ of the religion is constructed from it. Similar to last night’s ep on Mormons. The mormon one was interesting because the mormon’s were partially self-reflexive and understood other’s anxieities around their ‘religious belief’.
dumdumdumdumdum
smartsmartsmart
lol! and very nietzschean
indeed in the end the little mormon kid told stan he was a dickhead (or soemthing) and that he (the mormon kid) would continue being a mormon kid cause it made him happy. positive affect (spinoza) and affirmation (neitzsche). This was a better outcome for the organised religion than in the scientology episode (rendered equally as stupid), because the mormon’s were doing it for happiness, not money.
It seems to be a continual issue of southpark creators to use the ‘innocent’ logic of the kids to point out the stupidities in the world, including organised religion.
all we need is for the southpark crew to do an ep explicitly on the delirium of the capitalist market and everything would be sweet.
So how would Kenny die in the capitalist-delirium episode?
Paulus has how I read Ken’s post right. Obviously late night posting didn’t quite enable me to translate thoughts into words, though.
Can you give me an example of a limitation on speech that is imposed by a market or a corporation?
I severely doubt it, because there is no such thing. The only person who can legally limit your speech is the state. Even in the case of copyright infringement or defamation, it’s the state who is going to put you in jail if you ignore them. Coca-Cola Inc. does not operate prisons.
As for “conformism, cowardice, and cupidity”, these are limitations that are imposed by your own self, and therefore not limitations at all.
So would you like us RWBDs to apologise for the destruction of Alderaan, the rise of Sauron or any other fictional things while we are it? It would save time.
So, confirming the hypothesis that it is irrelevant to the cause of free speech that certain things can’t be said in mass media?
Yes, Kim. It’s irrelevant. “Free Speech” by definition means speech that is proscribed by government. The right to free speech doesn’t include the right to make everyone hear what you say.
If you can’t get what you say onto the TV, that’s just tough luck. You don’t own the “mass media” and have no right to compel those who do to air your views if they don’t feel like it.
You can, however, stand in the street and yell it at the top of your lungs. (or you could if you were in the USA, where they do actually have the right to free speech. Australia has no such guarantee).
I guess it depends whether you support freedom of speech just because you dislike Governments tellling you what to do/ not do.
If you support freedom of speech because of the benefits it provides in a free society then the distinction regarding whether the lack of freedom comes from threat of gaol or inability to be heard due to lack of money or power matters less than the fact that some ideas aren’t being heard.
Yes, exactly, Anna, the classical Millian defence of freedom of speech was that all ideas should be heard because the truth would emerge from sifting them. Not this modern day alleged libertarianism Yobbo style which is really anti-statist corporatism.
Kim, ‘Yobbo-style’ libertarianism is not that distant from what the Founding fathers had in mind when they wrote in the First Amendment. They were pragmatic enough to realise that insofar goverment was one institution that was capable of doing a lot of damage in curbing free speech, that some mechanisms could and should be put in to prevent that scenario.
As for private restrictions on free speech that becomes more problematic. What are you going to do? Have a court case everytime Joe Bloggs can’t launch a TV program on Channel 9? Have a court case everyime Woolworths prevents the neighbourhood nazi from handing out pamphlets at their entrance? Even if you don’t accept the premise that government-restrictions on free speech are going to be a whole lot worse than anything a private entity can do (simply because government is the one with by definition a monopoly on violence in the territory) you should be able to see the sense of priorities. Nothing can be done about private restrictions on free speech which are not costly in terms of introducing other laws which invite endless litigation over someone’s property rights and can range from the profound to the nuisance suits. On the other hand, a government can and should tie its own hands because it has been conferred an awesome responsibility.
All this is of course quite a different issue from citizens being entitled to kick up a fuss and boycotting corporatons which act dickhead-like. But I fear you are conflating the two issues.
In Australia we don’t even *have* anything like a first amendment. Instead we have some piss-weak jurisprudence about freedom of ‘political speech’ (i.e. the privileged speech of articulate and already well resourced policy wonks). I know where my political priorities lie.
Jason, but the opportunity costs of getting your message out there were a lot less in the 18th century. Having said that, there were obvious limitations regarding literacy, gender, income etc. It is a thorny one but I do think that there should be concern about the monolithic nature of corporate permitted speech, and also the manouvring of interest groups behind the scenes.
I’d like someone to explain to me how a hypothetical Muslim group putting pressure on a Danish newspaper not to publish cartoons lampooning the big M differs from scientologists putting pressure on tv networks not to broadcast an animated series lampooning scientology.
It seems to me to be consistent to assume that if the first is a threat to free speech (remembering that the Danish government sided entirely with the paper) then the second must be also.
You’re right, Jason. But since when did the fact that a problem is difficult to solve mean that we can’t label it a problem, and continue searching for solutions?
Is ‘corporate’ supression of free speech a problem? There does not seem to be a systemic trend to me.
Government restrictions on free speech are harped upon by liberals because whenever government has a power available to use it, the politicians in charge will either use it for political gain or they will be pressured into using by some influential group.
Corporations are out there in civil society like everyone else - they can not only be boycotted, but political threats can be made against them. Laws which are used to ‘force’ corporations to give platforms to people can be abused by … governments (and the influential lobbies which have politicians’s ears). If a corporation is going to have the power to suppress speech on its own turf, it is going to have just as much power to lobby governments and make use of whatever instruments are there to infringe on others’ property rights.
Apart from this South Park episode what other examples are there of corporate suppressed free speech? And is it really more difficult to get your message out? Any fool can set up a blog (and I hasten to add, many have).
Does the fact that an anti-scientology message doesn’t make it into South Park that important in the scheme of things when there are heaps of anti-scientology sites around? Is the impact of Scientologists on South Park more important than the impact of governments through anti-terror or internet censorship laws? How important is ‘mass media’ anyway? I haven’t owned a TV for 2 years, I only buy the Saturday SMH. Most of mainstream media is increasingly irrelevant to our generation (I know it is to me), and we know where to look for alternative points of view.
“I’d like someone to explain to me how a hypothetical Muslim group putting pressure on a Danish newspaper not to publish cartoons lampooning the big M differs from scientologists putting pressure on tv networks not to broadcast an animated series lampooning scientology”
The difference is that there were violent riots on the streets with Muslims not only ‘pressuring’ the newspapers not to publish the cartoons but making death threats and *calling for laws* against blasphemy. It’s really unfair to compare a bunch of silly deluded Scientologists with too much money to waste to the riots on Denmark. But you’re right, if all they were doing was peacefully boycotting the newspaper I for one wouldn’t have got stuck into them.
Jason, there weren’t violent riots on the street for a long time after the cartoons were published, as you well know.
Would your view on the Southpark ep be materially altered had the Church of Scientology called unsuccessfully for a law against blaspheming them? That would be the only difference.
“Would your view on the Southpark ep be materially altered had the Church of Scientology called unsuccessfully for a law against blaspheming them? That would be the only difference. ”
As in, would I have written a blog post about it like I did about the Muslim cartoons? Yes.
What exactly are the point of these hypothetical questions? All they seem to go back to are what I would do as a private citizen. That’s all a matter of individual taste and priorities/
I would still continue to adhere to the view in all cases, Muslim or Scientologist, that the greatest threat to free speech comes from governments and would favour First Amendment like treatment of government restrictions but I would continue to find the idea of a constitutional provision ‘forcing’ corporations to provide a platform to be basically unmerited and unworkable.
It seems to me, Jason, that the mere call for government sanctions suddenly activates your concern whereas otherwise you’re prepared to argue that it’s not a free speech issue and it’s up to corporations to self-regulate.
I know it’s more complex, but I’m just trying to cut through a bit of that to get to the logic of your position.