Freedom of Speech and the Age of Irresponsibility

Freedom of Speech is the rallying cry of pretty much any group with anything to say – good, bad, or indifferent. On the one hand, I’m not a big fan of censorship. On the other hand, though, I am a big fan of consequence. And I do notice that the ones screaming about their right to say what they want the loudest are usually the same ones using their words as a club to bludgeon someone else.

In the internet age we all have the ability to create a platform. To be heard, and to have our opinions and views counted by more people than we could have reached without the support of the media in years past. This can be a great thing for people who otherwise had no voice.

There are two local cases here that have me thinking a great deal about what our rights are, what the boundaries of our speech should be, and what the general perception of the term ‘Freedom of Speech’ is, as opposed to what it is in reality.

In one case, a politician for a town’s local government was getting skewered pretty good on one of the small paper’s message boards. This is par for the course, but there was one user who never failed to comment and was pretty derogatory... all of which is fine, she’s a public official and it kind of goes with the job description for a political career. However, the user decided to go after her 15 year old son in a fairly vulgar way.

The politician sued to have this user’s true identity released (presumably to go after charges or at least file an order of protection). I can’t say I blame her. It’s not a large town and the user was taking things a little too personally not to live there... which means he was some anon. web person who was scaring a 15 year old boy and probably lived within a few miles of the boy’s home. The politician won the motion to have his name released, but the anon. internet person is appealing.

There was a huge hubbub over this that she didn’t have the right to get his real name. That it infringes on the internet user’s right to privacy. But to me, hiding behind a screen name doesn’t give you the right to say anything you like. Certainly not to a child, and it was clear that the anon commenter knew he was speaking to a 15 year old. To me, that’s like saying if you wear a ski mask while you rob a bank, no one has a right to find out who you are. Just because you wanted to do something anonymously, doesn’t mean you have the right to do it.

Another case just made the news yesterday. A teenage boy got suspended from high school because he made a fanpage on facebook calling one of his female teachers a ‘lewd’ name. The whole fanpage was set up to call this teacher a name so bad that the news wouldn’t even print it. Okay, color him stupid... along with the thirty-something other kids who signed up as fans.

So why was this news? Because the mother is suing the school district stating that they didn’t have the right to suspend this kid because of something he did outside of school. Excuse me while I bounce my head off the desk.

So, instead of taking this situation and letting the kid, I don’t know, learn something maybe. His mother is basically showing him that he can do anything he wants and there shouldn’t be any consequences. So, if he does something equally stupid and disrespectful to say a future boss, then the boss would be WRONG to fire him.

I’m not a proponent of suing, but I almost wish the teacher would sue the kid and his family. I mean, how the hell is she supposed to teach these kids, if they’re all laughing at her and treating her without respect? And then you’ve got this idiot mother telling them that it’s ‘their right’... Oy. Worse than that though, if she keeps coddling this kid and telling him he’s not doing anything wrong – what happens to the kid when he’s 35 and he gets fired for pissing off the boss? What happens when his parents are gone and no one else is around to take his consequences?

There seems to be some consensus of people who think that freedom of speech means that you’re allowed to say whatever you like and no one is allowed to punish you for it. Nice theory, I suppose... except nothing in this world comes without consequence. The right to state your beliefs is an absolute, but the backbone and courage to do so has to be powered by the speaker. The state can’t give that to you and neither can the government, and there are consequences. It might be as insignificant as turning some people off who might have otherwise been friendly to you – it might be as large as losing your job or creating very real enemies. If you want to shout something from the rooftops, go right ahead. But the responsibility for dealing with the fallout that might be thrust on your life is all yours, my friend. So pick your battles wisely. And if you’re going to whine about the unfairness of the consequences, maybe you didn’t earn the right to speak in the first place.

How about you guys? What do you think the parameters are on freedom of speech? What is your take on the anonymous commenting and is it a right to stay anon no matter what you say?

I’m Not Screwing Off Online... It’s Research

The Internet is a beautiful thing for writers. Jumping into initial research has never been easier. Remember when you actually had to go to the library or bookstore before you could even start your research on any given topic? Now you can get loads of information and even narrow your search for the sources you’ll want to check out.

Of course, research is just the tip of the iceberg, there’s also networking, the latest publishing news, and constantly updated submission guidelines and listings. Woo Hoo; used to be we had to rely on months old copies of one of the market guides.

Good Internet what’s chained at my wrist that I key into with the same verve as a crack addict hitting the pipe.

And really, without it, how would I ever be bent over laughing hysterically by the news that, yes, EVERYONE no, seriously, everyone, is writing a book?

Without it, how would I find fantabulous new authors to stalk, er, umn, watch, oh – that’s not good either... admire? Yeah, that’ll work. Or new industry blogs for to amuse me:

That particular post was on writers using a typewriter, rather than word processing system – my favorite bit was this:

...Will Self says that with a typewriter, "You don't revise as much, you just think more, because you know you're going to have to retype the entire fucking thing." (I, and several of my fellow editors, believe that since the word processor came into widespread use, the tendency of manuscripts to balloon to excessive lengths has become more pronounced.)

See, all good stuff. Me thinks I do protest too much.

Here’s what I’m noticing in my own online time – it’s never flippin’ ending. I check my email whenever I’m near the computer... and being that I’m trying to write, I’m near the computer an awful lot. I check my facebook, pm people, and whenever I see something in my inbox, I have a compulsive need to take care of it, or at least read it and mentally note that I have to take care of it... and blogging, I can kind of stay away from it for days, weeks, even. But once I’m there, I follow links, check all the industry blogs... yada... fine, at least it’s productive in the sense that I get to talk to people who I like, and learn a few things, and keep up on new events in publishing.... BUUUUUUT (you knew one of those was coming, right?)

I keep getting sidetracked by stupid people. Yes, stupid. I’m not linking any of them, because they’re stupid, infuriating, annoying, dead wrong, or just toxic. (And no, I’m not talking about anyone I regularly follow or who is on my sidebar, if you made my linky list, odds are good that you rock out loud.)

Seriously, though, I do this stupid thing. Yes, I’m occasionally stupid. I run across a blogger or blog that irritates the living hell out of me. Usually it’s an ism, elitism is probably my biggest pet peeve. At one point it was a blogger who did nothing but slam the industry and individuals in it. It’s been atheists who slam people of faith, people of faith who slam every person on the planet that won’t drink their particular brand of kool-aid, pompous nitwits who denigrate anyone and everyone...

Sometimes I will comment. Sometimes I just find myself stopping in to read what’s being said. And I don’t do this all the time. One particular venue will raise my ire for a little while and then I’ll eventually stop going there to annoy myself... and then I find another one...

So here’s the thing, here’s my early New Year’s Resolution, no more procrastination by annoyance. When I find another blog that’s, full of shit, purposely inflammatory, or just generally run by someone you can’t possibly have any type of thinking discourse with – even though they swear up and down they’re the most intelligent and open minded people on the planet (sorry, eternally annoyed by this type of silliness), my aim and goal is to move on. Not to comment. Not to bookmark or check back or even participate in any way. If it incites me to that extent, I can write my own article or blog on the subject – gee, like this one.

What I realized was this was my own little sick and twisted form of procrastination. I have work to do, and when I do find time to tool around on the internet, I’d rather spend it visiting bloggers I like.

How about you guys? Do you find yourself getting off track by this lovely little demon we call progress? How do you keep yourself from time-wasting for too long?

Where for art thou, Shakespeare?

Okay, I’m about to get off on a rant about the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’... You’d look at the topic here and think it otherwise, but essentially, I think a great deal of humanities disagreements boil down to economic bigotry, so why should this surprise me?

I ran across an article online about a set of scholars questioning the true identity of Shakespeare. Fun topic, thought I, let’s take a gander. I’m a huge Shakespeare fan, as uncommon as that is among most of my generation – I love seeing the plays performed live and I looked forward to covering them in class from my first introduction to Romeo and Juliet in Eighth grade. I still remember it, the teacher was bright enough to have us read both Romeo and Juliet and Westside Story to compare and contrast the two. We watched the latter to keep us interested, and I was hooked. I couldn’t even tell you how many I’ve read or adaptations I’ve seen, but I can recall being one of the only students not to groan at the thought of doing a paper on anything the great bard had wrought.

So there’s a little background for you – add to that the fact that I’m about to start reading Interred With Their Bones, which looks to be along the lines of The DaVinci Code for Shakespeare fans. I thought a post about the topic would lend to a nice little tie in to the book review that will appear on my blog later this month. Sounds nice and simple right?

Doubt about Will is the site where these scholars have put together a nifty little declaration on why they don’t believe the man credited with Shakespeare’s work could possibly be the true author. The point, I gather, is that the material and historical evidence should be openly discussed, rather than the current orthodox teaching that questioning his legitimacy is neither relevant nor called for...

I’m a fan of open thought. I’m a large fan of questioning. Tip my hat to anyone who uses their mind to reach further than what’s set out before them. Really, that’s not the problem. And they do offer a large selection of quotes by men they claim did not believe Shakespeare to be the true author. I’ll say the same thing here that I ventured to all of the claims that DaVinci really did believe the Magdalene theories – even the most brilliant men alive are not infallible. If they did believe this theory, it doesn’t necessitate that they were correct.

So how did I get started on the whole ‘have’ and ‘have nots’ bit? A large portion of the evidence that leads this society to believe the man from Stratford-Upon-Avon could not be our beloved Shakespeare depends on the fact that he was born of the lower class. Most of these assertions pertain to the fact that these scholars believe a man born where he was, who was not by any record University educated, could not possibly write these works. They point heavily to knowledge contained in the plays about life in the noble class and higher learning which would not be available to a man born into this writer’s circumstances.

They point to the fact that this man’s parents were not literate by any records they can find. Personally, I have a problem believing records of such a thing would still exist from this time period. They also point to the fact that both of his daughters were illiterate, as there are two documents found in which they signed their names with an ‘x’ – which begs me to question how the society knows who the signature belonged to, but I’ll digress. Note, for those of you keeping score, it was very uncommon in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for women to be literate, possibly women of the elite, nobility, but Shakespeare was not of that class and neither were his daughters. I have to put in here, because it annoyed me that in their whole ‘logical, in search of truth and knowledge’ declaration they never thought to include the other side of the debate – which begs me to wonder whether this is more about overeducated cynicism than truth seeking. Is this, perhaps, a flexing of the intellectual biceps? Is this a show that they are more intelligent than the orthodox scholars who currently set curriculum and those who have come before? In the heat to show their educational superiority, perhaps they missed a few things common to humanity.

The biggest supposition here is that even if the man was a genius, he could not have written so accurately about a class of which he did not belong without leaving significant evidence of his life. That’s it in a nutshell, if Shakespeare didn’t leave breadcrumbs for the pseudo-intellectual elitists of the twenty first century to follow, he must not exist.

Snarf. I don’t actually mean to be this snippy but I find the whole premise to be terribly pompous. Could the Shakspere from Stratford really be the wrong Shakespeare? Certainly. Is it worth looking into? Yep. But if the only solid reasons for forming this formidable record of ‘proofs’ that it is logical to question is that these bunch of overeducated twits find it impossible to believe that an author might accurately capture lives that are foreign to their own, perhaps they should spend less time drafting declarations and more time in a fiction writing class.