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Offend No One But the Truth: The Second Half of 2023 Offend No One But the Truth: The Second Half of 2023
Jethro K. Lieberman
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Part of the First Amendment Commons
Offend No
One But
The Truth:
The Second
Half Of
2023
December 31, 2023
2197 words
Offenses of the Month, June – December 2023
June
Self-Cancel Culture: The Author Shreds Herself
Elizabeth Gilbert, an author most popularly
known for the best-seller Eat, Pray,
Love, canceled herself in June, withdrawing
before publication her latest novel, The Snow
Forest, a story set in 1930s Stalinist Siberia.
The ostensible reason was the sensitivity of her
Ukrainian readers. Claiming “an enormous
massive outpouring of reactions and
responses” that expressed “anger, sorrow,
disappointment, and pain about the fact that I
would choose to release a book into the world
right now . . . that is set in Russia,” Gilbert
averred that “it is not the time for this book to
be published.” (In fact, its publication date was
to be February 2024, not June 2023.)
What stirred her to action, according to Kat
Rosenfield in Pirate Wires (in an article
reprinted in The Free Press), was an
orchestrated campaign on Goodreads that
yielded 533 one-star ratings by “readers” who
almost certainly had not read the book. The
offended non-readers seem to have objected to
a nearly century-old Russian setting because
Russia, after all, is the place where Vladimir
Putin is currently waging an obscene war
against Ukraine. In Rosenfield’s nice phrase,
it’s a “fourth-degree connection”—like
complaining about a book set in New York City
during the Depression because Rudy Giuliani
was once mayor of the city and he has been a
vociferous backer of the potentially nation-
destroying lie by Donald Trump that the 2020
election had been stolen from him.
Unlike earlier instances of authors yielding to
critics with malign motives, Gilbert’s groveling
apology earned her little sympathy. Said
Rosenfield: “Her video [announcing the
cancellation] registers less as a brave and
thoughtful act of altruism than as a very
particular brand of cringe.” Rather than
sympathizing with Ukrainians, an anti-Stalinist
story that is pulled from the shelves seems
rather to be a sop to Russian readers, among
whom Gilbert has been an extremely popular
author. On the bright side, it’s one less book
you’ll need to think you ought to read.
July
The Ad was Unorthodox, Its Withdrawal Quite
Conventional
Brandeis University halted a light-hearted
national ad campaign celebrating its 75th
anniversary after offended Orthodox Jewish
students protested. The ad appeared in The
New York Times Magazine on June 25 with this
line: “Brandeis was founded by Jews. But, it’s
anything but Orthodox.” [Note to line editors:
Yes, you’re right; the comma is surplusage.]
Brandeis President Ronald D. Liebowitz
apologized via email to the Brandeis Orthodox
Organization on June 30, and the student
groups appeared to have accepted the apology
in early July. According to the Boston Globe,
Shoshana Soloman, VP of the Orthodox
Organization, said she felt “the university was
genuinely apologetic for the harm the
advertisement made to some, including myself.
I feel that Brandeis has seriously listened to the
communal outcry and has immediately begun
working to ensure an incident like this will not
happen again.” While the willingness to accept
an apology is refreshing, Soloman’s claims
seem dubious. As is so often the case, the
“harm” is far from evident and left unexplained,
and the optimism that “an incident like this” will
never recur seems refreshingly naive.
August
It’s Not Brainwashing, It’s Social Media Training
Jordan Peterson, the curmudgeonly Canadian
psychologist, media darling, best-selling author,
and self-help guru, was ordered to sit for “social
media training” or forfeit his license to see and
treat patients. Peterson calls it “forced
reeducation.” Not because of malpractice or
patient abuse but almost certainly because of
his social and political views that offended his
fellow practitioners, as Abigail Anthony detailed
at length in a piece in The Free Press.
The College of Psychologists of Ontario (CPO),
a professional licensing group for clinical
practice (consisting of fellow psychologists),
had investigated him in 2020 after receiving
complaints about comments he aired on social
media and in podcasts. The investigation
concluded without discipline but with the
suggestion that he conduct himself in “a
respectful tone in order to avoid a negative
perception toward the profession of
psychology.” Public perceptions of the
profession, though often the concern of
licensing bodies, are almost never legally within
the purview of public authorities, at least not in
countries with a free speech tradition—
especially when those entrusted with authority
are one’s fellow practitioners. (The squelching
of political views by professional licensing and
ethics boards is an old story, one that I told
more than 50 years ago in The Tyranny of the
Experts: How Professionals and Specialists Are
Closing the Open Society.)
In 2022, the CPO opened a new investigation,
following more complaints, apparently, again,
about Peterson’s worldviews, not his treatment
of patients. (In fact, he had discontinued his
clinical practice in 2017.) One of the complaints
was that he referred to the actor Elliot Page as
Ellen, the name the actor had been known by
earlier in his career; Peterson also used
feminine pronouns for Page, who now identifies
as “nonbinary.” Peterson expressed his views
of other people in a less than complimentary
manner on a Joe Rogan podcast, for example,
calling an Ottawa City Councillor an “appalling
self-righteous moralizing thing.”
The CPO concluded that Peterson’s various
comments were “degrading, demeaning, and
unprofessional,” posing “moderate risks of
harm to the public.” What harms? According to
the CPO, Peterson’s comments potentially
“undermin[e] public trust in the profession of
psychology, and trust in the College’s ability to
regulate the profession in the public interest.”
Peterson asked the Ontario courts to review
the order directing him to undergo mandatory
media training. In August the Ontario Divisional
Court sided with the CPO. The court said the
CPO “order is not disciplinary and does not
prevent Dr. Peterson from expressing himself
on controversial topics.” Peterson called the
court’s conclusion “comical,” since the order
came, after all, from a disciplinary board with
the authority to issue such orders and assess
fines (indeed, the CPO levied a $25,000 (CAN)
fine against him). Expressing his opinions is
what put Peterson in the soup to begin with. He
pledged “war,” presumably meaning an appeal.
There, as far as I can tell, the matter sits, at
least for now.
Well, that’s Canada. Couldn’t happen here,
could it?
September
Your Bluejeans Hurt My Feelings
Going out tonight? It is New Year’s Eve, after
all. Perhaps you’ll show off that new Shetland
sweater ($100 from Brooks Brothers) or those
Prosecco Gold Vincenza silk pants ($275 from
Ravella) topped with just the right cashmere.
Yes, of course I looked it up; I can’t vouch for
those prices after today. You’ll wear them to
please your spouse, right? Or your date? Or
your friends at the party. But wait, have you
thought about who will be at the party? Maybe
not a good idea to parade your finest before the
boss’s eyes. Maybe that pal of yours from
across town will mock you all evening at the
sight of your Bass Weejun tassel loafers (prices
vary). You think about these things, don’t you?
I’m sure you do. But I’m betting that whoever
figures in your concern for the appearance
you’ll make, you won’t be worried about hurting
the feelings of your fellow citizens or sweating
the impression you’ll be making on the cab
driver, the parking lot attendant, or the cash
register guy at the local package store. Who
would?
You would, if you were in China and the
government has its way.
In September, the Chinese government issued
a draft law (not yet enacted) that could result in
fines and even jail time for “wearing clothing or
bearing symbols in public that are detrimental
to the spirit of the Chinese people and hurt the
feelings of Chinese people.” No joke. The
Chinese have a history of such control, and
journalists report that there have been
numerous incidents of ordinary citizens, and
more ominously local officials, who have
harassed ordinary people for their offensive
clothing choices. In one widely-circulated video,
police last year detained a woman in Suzhou
for wearing a kimono, a traditional Japanese
costume, in public. A month before the draft law
was announced, people wearing “rainbow print
clothing” were turned away from a concert in
Beijing.
The draft law prompted something of an uproar,
with critics attacking it on social media, calling
out both its absurdity and the real potential for
police overreaching and abuse. The law does
not limit its sour gaze to clothes or emblems. It
also forbids “insulting, slandering or otherwise
infringing upon the names of local heroes and
martyrs.”
Among the many things we’ll need to worry
about here at home in 2024, this won’t be one
of them.
October
If You’re Fond of Spouting Invective, Stay Clear
of Switzerland
Be careful where you insult someone. Alain
Soral, a 65-year-old rabble-rousing right-wing
Swiss writer, actor, and film maker,
was sentenced to 60 days in jail for calling
Catherine Macherel, a Swiss journalist, a “fat
lesbian” in a Facebook video that aired two
years ago. A Swiss law (approved by a 2-1
margin in a 2020 public referendum)
criminalizes denigrating, discriminating, or
stirring up hatred against another person in
public on the basis of sexual orientation. Soral
didn’t help his case when he added that, as a
“queer activist,” Macherel was “unhinged.”
Soral is no stranger to such laws; as a serial
Holocaust denier, he has been convicted of
violating a French ban on Holocaust denial,
and in 2019 was sentenced to a year in prison
(though he was saved from serving the time
after the Paris prosecutor’s office set aside the
sentence). It shouldn’t need saying, but I will do
so anyway for the record that under a long line
of precedents in the U.S., such a law would be
struck down under the First Amendment. Also
for the record, Barron’s reports that the Swiss
jail sentence was overturned.
November
Think Hard before Saying the Sky Is Blue
Beyond the actual deaths and devastation
wreaked on Israel by Hamas in early October
and the resulting deadly counterattacks in
Gaza since then, the Mideast war has also
loosed serious free speech controversies that
will take a long time to resolve, as was briefly
noted a few days ago in my post Tale of the
Three Unwise Women. Perhaps predictably, it
has also led to hallucinatory claims to, well,
someone, over, well, something. For
example, British retail giant Marks & Spencer
was assailed in November for running a pre-
Christmas TV clothing commercial that
contained a scene showing a fire reflected in
an actress’s eyes, which were highlighted by
blue eye shadow. The sight unnerved various
U.K. social media critics who accused M & S of
referencing the Israeli flag in the shade of her
eyeliner, which, they thundered, proved that the
department store had sided with Israel (even
though the commercial was filmed months
before the Hamas attack). Fearing the
consequences, M & S quickly deleted the
scene from its advertisement. I suppose that’s
one way to shorten commercial interruptions.
December
The Civil War? You’re Asking What It Was
About? Hmm, Maybe, about How to Cook
Grits?
Never offend anyone. Just the ticket to get on
the ticket. Or so, apparently, thought Nikki
Haley, former governor of South Carolina and
now on the hustings seeking the Republican
nomination for president. At a New Hampshire
town hall meeting a few days ago, she was
asked to explain what caused the Civil War. As
has been widely reported, she marshaled a
series of possibilities, none involving the taboo
word “slavery.” No need to rile up the masses.
In her widely noted, and ridiculed, opener, she
said: “I think the cause of the Civil War was
basically how government was going to run—
the freedoms and what people could and
couldn’t do.”
After Gov. Haley wandered around in a verbal
thicket, throwing out lines like “We need to
have capitalism” and “[government] was never
meant to be all things to all people,” the voter
who asked the initial question said he found it
“astonishing” that she had omitted the word
“slavery.” She replied: “What do you want me to
say about slavery?” His response: “You’ve
answered my question, thank you.”
Almost immediately, everyone took a swipe,
even (especially) her rival, Florida governor
Ron DeSantis, himself no master of eloquence
or clarity, who critiqued her Civil War remarks
as “incomprehensible word salad.” The next
day Gov. Haley scrambled to regain her
footing from the avalanche of criticism that had
rolled down on her. “Of course the Civil War
was about slavery,” she conceded. She hadn’t
said so the day before because it was “a
given.” (“I didn’t say I love you, dearest,
because I thought it was a given.”)
Another former governor, and also a claimant
to presidential candidate status, Chris Christie,
remarked that Gov. Haley’s contorted answer
shows that “she’s unwilling to offend anyone by
telling the truth.” That’s almost wholly correct.
More than ever, the prime rule for our sad times
comes down to this:
Thou shalt offend no one but the
Truth.
Happy New Year, but likely not.
