Is free speech always absolute?
When the roiling edges of popular culture saw into the mythical world of mainstream America, the explosion rattles across the country. Two examples show how much the national media can focus their 24 hour news cycles: college sports and Janet Jackson.
I teach a course on freedom of expression and I love the course because I learn from the ever-changing student body their thoughts, limits, and belief structures as they start to tackle tough current issues.
You’d be surprised, unless you have the joy (and it is joy) of being with students, at how the boundaries shift back and forth over legal and moral limits. They are the children of our cultures and it shows up in all the varieties known.
Take an issue: Dixie Chicks. Deeply concerned because many of them are recording majors, correct? Beep. Wrong. Chicks make $61 million on tour, the majority said, and publicity matters. How about freedom of speech, an issue? Nope, said the majority. How about patriotism? Nope, that is blind allegiance to the government (which many do not trust, at all). It just got the rednecks mouthing on talk radio.
There is a difference between public speech and private speech, a bright young woman majoring in photography opined. She drew immediate support.
This brings us to the most current crisis: live TV coverage of college basketball. Colleges are struggling all over the country as the home teams chant the f-word to visiting team players as they go to the foul line (pardon the pun). Should not the university put a stop to such embarrassing demonstrations?
Well, maybe yes, maybe no. University of Maryland students told USA Today they have a constitutional right to talk dirty in public and shout obscenities anytime they choose at a game. The athletic officials at the university -?a top drawer institution by any measure – said they were bound by the First Amendment because they are at a public institution and a game is a public event.
In the meantime, coaches and university presidents are meeting. Maryland basketball coach Gary Williams is now asking students before every home game to avoid using foul language.
The Big Ten Conference is the most actively involved in the issue. It has a three-part system, where the commissioner warns a university about obscenity first in private, then in public, and then the third time the university is ordered to disband the student section.
That approach should have no problem passing a legal challenge, because, as Commissioner Jun Delaney argued, “No one has a constitutional right to attend a basketball game.”
Oh, and about Janet Jackson’s stunt. At the Federal Communications Commission, responding to the religious right and the White House, the Super Bowl’s halftime show is now being investigated for violation of the decency standard.
Michael Powell, the biggest political hack to serve as FCC’s top man in history, already pre-judging the FCC’s decision, is proclaiming the event may mean that he can finally “clean up” the networks. I wonder if he ever watches cable TV, which plays by very few rules at all about programming.
Crass commercialism? Sure. Care for the civil culture? Ah, naw. And Michael must remember another truth: the big nets all give big bucks to the GOP. In this year, most of all, he had better bury the issue by a long, long review that will not be made public until, well, let’s say March 2005.
(Ed Kimbrell is a professor in MTSU’s School of Journalism.)