This post from “LauraJMixon,” in the comments at Electrolite, has stuck to my mind since I read it:
The thing is, nothing has ever been sacred to Rick. I remember him showing us one time, gleefully, that a post-doc publication of his on ancient history had a reference in the index to the famous Greek philosopher “Testicles.” He used to jog in sumo wrestling garb.
He’s just a really smart and incredibly eccentric guy whose humor is usually right on target. It can be annoying at times, but he had made a career of skewering institutions and people who badly needed skewering — he’d been a huge positive influence on many student’s lives — and then he made one stupid remark at a bad time, and the resulting firestorm that came down on his head has pretty much ruined his life.
I suspect that Mr. Berthold is someone who often wishes life had a “rewind and redo” button. It’s true, I believe, that we are all more than our worst moment; it’s unjust to have one’s entire life defined by a unwise three-second quip.
If everybody who made an unwise three-second quip along the lines of Berthold’s lost their careers over it, most of my friends would be out of work right now.
There’s an incredibly wise analysis that lies behind that bad quip. Many folks do that kind of analysis as their daily work year in, year out. If more people were listening to them ALL of the time, not just when they make a tasteless slip, things like 9-11 might be far less likely to occur in the first place.
The intensity of the censorship in the days following 9/11 alarmed me. Having a dark sense of humor in no way means that someone wishes death on others, in fact it’s usually quite the opposite. Case in point–one of my best friends works in forensics. She and her coworkers make jokes so dark that it makes us normal people flinch. Does this mean that they don’t care about the people whose dead bodies they have to handle?
No–DUH. They are the ones on the front line trying to bring justice about for murder and accident victims. If they didn’t care, they wouldn’t do it.
“Nothing has ever been sacred” meaning “He has a long history of shooting his mouth off and damn the consequences, so this one was nothing special”?
There’s a time and a place for everything, including dark humor. If this man’s quip had remained among close friends, it might have provoked nothing more than chuckles over what a lovable rogue he is. It was his misfortune to have the remark hit the public at a time when people are hurting.
It may be, too, that referring to “the Pentagon” makes it easier to conceive of the damage having been done to a faceless institution or just a building. I’d like to think that if the remark had popped into his head as “Anybody who blows up fifty people in the Pentagon gets my vote,” he would have rejected it.
Also, I’m not sure that this sort of sensitivity is necessarily unique to 9/11. Even with all of the violence in our society, I think there are still some lines that most people don’t like to see crossed. If someone remarked in public that “Anybody who blows up an abortion clinic gets my vote,” I really think (or at least would like to think) that he would face the same storm of outrage. On the other hand, that idiot college coach still has his job in Colorado, so maybe I’m wrong.
This guy gets harassed to no end, but Ann Coulter gets hired by USA Today.
I can only shake my head in shame. This country has gone to the dogs…
Was he fired? What negative consequences has he suffered other than being shamed for being an uncompassionate clod?
(Seriously if there has been censorship I want to know.)
Sebastian:
http://www.dailylobo.com/global_user_elements/printpage.cfm?storyid=163586
Those in the Pentagon are guilty of murder of tens of thousands of innocents the world over. Blowing it up would be a just act. However, voting for someone who proposed it would be throwing away your ballot seeing as how the general populace wouldn’t recognize the wisdom of the proposal. The citizens of this country are suffering from the delusion we’re a bright, shining light on the hill. The terrorists are merely meting out punishment for the hundreds of criminal acts this nation commits daily in pursuit of money, oil, and other people’s possessions. We’re all collectively culpable.
He has been shamed and is still teaching. Is that horrific? He feels like people hold that over him. Is that inappropriate?
And he still doesn’t seem to understand why people had a problem with it: “It was an offensive remark, but let’s keep it in perspective,” Berthold said. “It’s not like I was applauding and dancing around because Americans were blown away or stood there and said, ‘Let’s kill more Americans’ or ‘I’m in favor of all terrorism.’ No, it was a stupid, sarcastic remark, and I’m done apologizing. I’m done eating crow.”
He said “anyone who can blow up the Pentagon has my vote” which is frankly saying “I’m in favor of terrorism against the US” even if you can’t insert the word all in there. I mean he might not want to nuke Washington DC right? And unless he thinks that people who work in the Pentagon aren’t American, his claim that his comments didn’t suggest killing more Americans is wrong too.
The only defense I can see for him is that we don’t really expect university professors to be aware of consequences because we insulate them so much.
Sebastian, the guy said an ass-holish thing, was called out on it, and has apologised. That should be an end to it, surely?
Others continuing to make completely out-of-proportion comparisons between the original asshole remark and terrorism have just jumped the shark. He absolutely did not say, “I’m in favor of terrorism against the US”, and it’s delusional to say that he did. If this is an example of the kind of thing Berthold’s been suffering, no wonder he’s peeved.
Enough, already. Find a new scapegoat.
How is holding somebody accountable for his own words “scapegoating” him?
Imagine if he had responded to Matthew Shepard’s killing by saying “Anybody who removes another faggot from the world has my vote.” Or to Eric Randolph’s capture with “Anybody who blows up an abortion clinic has my vote.”
We’d all be willing to drop the whole matter if he apologized, right?
Mythago, he has apologised, so that should be it. If he’d made a similar remark about gays or abortionists, and apologised for the same, the situation would be exactly the same.
Why do so many strangers each feel it necessary to personally make sure that Berthold be held accountable?
Honestly, having him whipped round the fleet would be a more proportionate response.
Yes, it would.
I don’t think it’s appropriate for the university to sack him unless this was purely a straw-that-broke-the-camel’s-back incident (in other words, he’s been a problem in areas other than ‘free speech’ for a while now and this was the last straw). An apology followed by behavior demonstrating the sincerity of the apology ought to be sufficient.
From the article linked above:
“Think before I speak,” Berthold said. “That’s certainly a lesson right there.”
Well, no shit. It took him until this late in life to figure that out? Even given the way that professors are insulated from real critical feedback…