Comments on: Conservatives For Speech Codes?

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 16:18:04 +0000

Milhouse: I don’t know how Gutmann would react to a guy dressed up as a Klansman at Halloween, nor do I much care. If your speculation is correct, she’s a hypocrite. If it’s not, she’s not. Either way, Gutmann’s hypothetical hypocrisy does not diminish the very real hypocrisy of those who generally decry campus speech codes, but now whine about the absence of one where it would be expedient. You can’t have it both ways. Either campuses should be bastions of free speech, where students are free to offend or be offended as they see fit, or they should not be. Which is it?

By: Milhouse

Milhouse — Fri, 10 Nov 2006 15:15:20 +0000

That’s all very well, provided that she would have the same reaction to someone going around in a KKK costume, carrying a noose. If she’d truly allow that person to remain at the party, and not take any action against her afterwards, then she’s justified in taking the same attitude here. And she’d get my applause for standing up for free speech, and defying the inevitable barrage of demonstrations and PC pressure she’d be under.

But somehow I doubt that this would be the case. I think that if the student had been dressed in such a way, he’d very soon be made to regret it. And it’s the disparity between how she did react in the current situation and how I think she would have reacted in that hypothetical, that makes me support the condemnations.

By: Xrlq

Xrlq — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 04:44:08 +0000

I think it’s a tragedy + time thing. Dressing up as the terrorists of yesteryear, the pirates of the Carribean, is fine. Dressing up as the pirates of today, al-Qaeda or Hamas, not so fine. Dressing up as Jack the Ripper? Fine. Dressing up as the uncaught version of Jack the Ripper from today? Not fine. Seeing as the suicide bombers haven’t exactly stopped, I’d say this student definitely crossed that line. Nazis are a harder one, as they’re really passe these days, but we keep forgetting that because the liberals insist on comparing conservatives to them. I threw a “communist party” in 1988, less than a year before the Berlin Wall came down, and no one seemed to take offense because it was clear I was making fun of the commie bastards, not expressing any sympathy with them (we had guys at the door with water pistols to shoot anyone who tried to leave early).

But my greater point is that the line between what you can and cannot do at Halloween is fuzzy, and it’s almost a given that some people will cross it every now and then. It’s OK to object when they do, but it’s NOT OK to go around the bend, as Malkin and Myers did in this instance. And it’s even less OK to go after UPenn’s president not for crossing the line herself (at her age she’d be fair game if she did), but simply for not coming down hard enough on a young and stupid 20-year old college student who did. That crosses a different line, IMNSHO.

By: Doc Rampage

Doc Rampage — Thu, 09 Nov 2006 04:35:43 +0000

Although I agree with you that this is a lot of todo over not very much, I think your statements that you are supposed to dress up as something scary is a bit simplistic. Why not dress up as a Nazi SS officer? What about a KKK member in white sheet with a noose? Or suppose there was currently an uncaught serial child-rapist/killer running around your city that had been described in some distinctive way, would that make an acceptable Halloween costume?

I think the answer is “no” for all of those. And I can’t tell you precisely what the criterion is, but it’s clear that there is some distinction to be drawn between the merely fearsome and the hideous. And I think any reasonable person would put the suicide bombers on the side of the hideous.