We can cuss but not say God
My husband received the following letter from a waggish friend:
“I just wanted to wish you and yours a happy holiday. I’ll leave it at ‘holiday’ to avoid running afoul of the ACLU …
“On second thought, I withdraw ‘holiday.’ It derives from ‘holy day,’ which clearly presents problems. And ‘season’s greetings,’ a well-known dodge, suggests other difficulties. With global warming, what is a season? So I’ll just say, ‘Timely greetings to you and yours.’ Uh, wait. ‘Yours’ implies possession of the female. Maybe it should be, ‘Timely greetings to you and those who, through their own free choice, the same choice we cherish in Roe v. Wade, choose to be associated with you.”
Everyone has a war story from the yuletide front, where Christmas comes under such heavy fire that Americans wave the pre-emptive white flag of “Happy Holidays” to avoid giving what is known as “offense” and receiving what feels like censure. Not that “Christmas” is the ultimate unmentionable. A story recently made the rounds about a Virginia teacher who spoke the utterly non-denominational (in fact, traditionally superstitious) injunction “God bless you” over a sneezy student. Said student proceeded to inform on the teacher for this act of New Blasphemy, for which the teacher was, incredibly, reprimanded.
Such developments make New York Gov. George Pataki’s posthumous pardon of Lenny Bruce’s obscenity conviction all the more, well, offensive. Lenny Bruce, of course, was a comic celebrated since his fatal drug overdose for being the first performer to stand on a stage and give voice to all of those words that are usually represented in print by typewriter symbols. (He also found fun in St. Paul’s sex life, Eleanor Roosevelt’s anatomy and Jacqueline Kennedy’s reaction to her husband’s assassination.) Pataki saw fit to call the pardon “a declaration of New York’s commitment to upholding the First Amendment.”
What is there to say when four-letter words get a commitment to uphold the First Amendment, but “Merry Christmas” (not to mention “God bless you”) is an offense punishable by sensitivity training?
Confusing? The reaction to the Bruce pardon by Ronald K. L. Collins, a First Amendment scholar and pardon proponent, is unlikely to clarify things. “You see, there is a God,” said Collins to The New York Times upon hearing the news. The New York Times, by the way, has practically run more stories on the Bruce pardon than on the capture of Saddam Hussein.
It took the New York Post’s Deborah Orin to report in any detail on the “X-rated, epithet-ridden” comedy fundraiser held for the Democratic front-runner last month in New York City. The event included Judy Gold calling President Bush “this piece of living, breathing s—“; and Janeane Garofalo deriding the Medicare prescription-drug bill Bush recently signed as the “you can go f— yourself, Grandma, bill.”
Dropping the n-word for blacks, David Cross “joked” that Republicans are racists, while Vice President Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary was derided as “a big lezzie.” Dean, “fuming,” according to his aides, did nothing to stop the session.
The fact is, censorship is no less a part of our society because comics are free to cuss and soil. With four-letter-language – and insults against Republicans – you’re on firm ground. When it comes to holiday greetings, you’re on your own.
(Diana West is a columnist for The Washington Times. She can be contacted via [email protected].)