What they don't want you to hear
Mike Marchand
Questionable Freedoms 2000
In these very pages, much ink has been printed concerning "Yo Mama's Last Supper," the painting displayed in New York which portrays Jesus as a naked black woman. Like clockwork, Mayor Rudolph Giuliani attacked the piece as anti-Catholic. Just as predictably, critics, including in The Observer, excoriated Giuliani for attempted censorship. Those anti-censorship hawks may want to examine a couple of recent events.
A private group that has borrowed audio excerpts from a Dec. 1962 speech by John F. Kennedy for use in radio ads in support of President Bush's tax cut plan has drawn ire from, predictably, Senator Edward Kennedy. Teddy lambasted the group, Issues Management Center (IMC), for appearing to put words in JFK's mouth. However, because the President was his brother, Teddy feels comfortable committing the same sin: "If President Kennedy were here today, he would vigorously oppose President Bush's irresponsible tax scheme."
Senator Kennedy believes IMC is practicing political grave robbing by invoking the Kennedy name to try to cash in for George W. Bush. Sounds like a reasonable consideration, but it's a ruse to cover up the dirty little secret: JFK's tax plan was more generous to the wealthy! Kennedy proposed reducing the tax rate on the wealthiest Americans from an outrageous 91 percent to an only-slightly-less outrageous 65 percent, for a near 30 percent cut.
By comparison, the Bush plan drops the top rate from 39.6 to 33 percent, just a 17 percent reduction.
It is true that more of Bush's plan is devoted to the wealthy than Kennedy's; however, there are many more rich people than 40 years ago. In addition, the numbers for the Bush plan are skewed since W wants to eliminate the confiscatory estate tax. But even then, today we're looking at budget surpluses — since Kennedy proposed his bold plan in the midst of a federal deficit, wouldn't his be the more "irresponsible scheme" by Teddy's terms?
The plain and simple truth that Teddy Kennedy doesn't want you to know is that his brother was a good, old-fashioned, jolly-rockin', supply-sidin' tax slasher. His speech bears out the fact that he was more in the vein of Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush than his own brother is today. It wasn't always that way: In a twist of delicious irony, when Lyndon Johnson proposed a modified version of the Kennedy plan which reduced the top rate from 91 to 70 percent in 1964, Senator Kennedy voted for it. How times have changed.
Times haven't changed too much, however, at the University of California-Berkeley, the venerable institution that has trained young minds to be top-notch protesters for decades. Most recently, angry students stormed the office of the UCB newspaper, The Daily Californian, and threw a tantrum. Others spread out across campus and swiped any issues of the Daily Cal they could find.
What provoked such a drastic response? The Daily Cal and a handful of other college newspapers printed an ad authored by left-wing-radical-turned-right-wing-radical David Horowitz called "Ten Reasons Why Reparations For Slavery Is A Bad Idea — And Racist Too." The essay, clearly demarcated as a paid advertisement and not an editorial, was provocative, but remarkably civil and surprisingly cerebral. And recent polls suggest that a vast majority of Americans do not support reparations. However, those are of little consequence to the protesters, who found the ad ideologically offensive and attempted to censor it as much as possible.
The difference between now and the hey day protests of the '60s is that now the fight is to destroy free speech and open discourse. These people would probably support something as blatant as "Yo Mama's Last Supper" as worthy of discussion. Like it or not, Horowitz's ad deserves that same treatment in the arena of ideas. But instead, the protestors took it upon themselves to silence a viewpoint they didn't like. And, unbelievably, the Daily Cal capitulated, not only issuing an apology, but berating itself as "an inadvertent vehicle for bigotry." By summarizing the ad as "bigotry," The Daily Cal effectively cosponsored the censorship of Horowitz's views.
Thankfully, the Daily Cal is receiving its own backlash, spearheaded by Horowitz, who was a Berkeley graduate in its halcyon days of protecting outrageous speech. But even those who were offended joined the traditional anti-political correctness crowd in defending Horowitz's right to express his beliefs. In another good sign, the journalists of Brown University's Brown Daily Herald and the University of Wisconsin's Badger-Herald stood up for the First Amendment and held their ground against similar reactions as the Berkeley protesters. Brown's administration and student American Civil Liberties Union (hardly right-wing apologists) condemned the activists who stole copies of the Daily Herald.
Censorship does not always come from neo-fascists, and it may be cloaked in rails against indecency and racism. But it is still silencing of people who deserve to make their point. But if you don't hear these views, you can't believe them. That's what the censors are betting on.
Mike Marchand is an off-campus senior English major who wants to create a Bookstore Basketball team named "Our Points Are Bent To The Right." Interested players who don't mind public embarrassment can e-mail him at Marchand.3@nd.edu.
The views expressed in this column are those of the author and not necessarily those of The Observer.
All Viewpoint Stories for Monday, March 26, 2001
