Thursday, May 31, 2007
With key facts still in dispute, I hesitate to judge the conduct of public health officials in the case of the man with drug resistant TB who flew back and forth to Europe in early May. But there seems to be no dispute that the man had been informed of his diagnosis and advised not to travel before he boarded the plane, so I don’t hesitate to blame him for knowingly exposing other people to infection.
Virtuecrats may attribute his behavior to what is often (and sometimes rightly) critiqued as a cultural ethic of self-centeredness, but getting on a plane knowing you have drug resistant TB requires a malevolent thoughtlessness in which passengers who bellow banalities into their cell phones may never indulge.
The irony is that, from a civil liberties perspective, there are far fewer objections to cell phone bans on planes than to strict quarantine laws. It’s true that cell phone abusers could assert a First Amendment right to use their phones, but their interest in free speech is weightless compared to the liberty interests apt to be violated by quarantine laws.
Quarantines involve very difficult conflicts between liberty and public health, which I do not propose to discuss, much less resolve here. I just wonder whether any laws can save us from the selfish stupidities of others, especially when the laws themselves are likely to be administered by people who are no better, if no worse, than the miscreants they seek to control.
Monday, May 28, 2007
Even free speech absolutists ought to sympathize with abortion providers and patients who want to prohibit anti-abortion protests in close proximity to clinics -- especially in Massachusetts. In 1994, when John Salvi shot up two local reproductive health care clinics, killing two people and wounding five, he left more than grief and carnage in his wake; he also left behind fear and a sense of vulnerability among people who continue to provide and seek abortions today.
That fear has not been sufficiently alleviated by the 18 foot buffer zone around clinics mandated by the Massachusetts legislature shortly after Salvi’s rampage. The law also provides for a 6 foot “bubble” around individuals within the 18 foot buffer zone: you may not knowingly approach within 6 feet of anyone within 18 feet of a clinic entrance without her consent. This law has been in effect since 2000; the Supreme Court has declined to hear an appeal from a federal appeals court decision that rejected a constitutional challenge to it.
Pro-choice advocates and law enforcement officials complain that the buffer zone has proved difficult to enforce. NARAL alleges that these violations by protesters are common:
“Dressing up as Boston Police officers and asking for patients' names and contact information
. Blocking access to the front door
. Consistent screaming at patients/employees inside the "bubble zone.” Touching arms, shoulders, or backs of patients or employees
. Standing in front of cars and/or the keypad to block patient/employee access to the garage
. Photographing and filming into patient/employee cars
. Throwing anti-choice literature and pamphlets in cars entering the garage.”
So with the support of Governor Patrick and Attorney General Coakley, nearly 100 members of the Massachusetts legislature are co-sponsoring a law that would prohibit anyone from protesting, or simply standing around, within 35 feet of clinic entrances. At a hearing on the bill last month, the Attorney General and other law enforcement officials offered public policy arguments in support of the bill; survivors of the ’94 shootings, including the brother of Shannon Lowney, the Planned Parenthood receptionist killed by Salvi, made a strong emotional appeal for its passage.
Then, I was the bad guy who testified against it, on behalf of the Defending Dissent Foundation, a civil liberties group dedicated to protecting the right to protest and dissent from government interference. Here’s what I said:
I appreciate the desire to alleviate harassment of patients and personnel at abortion clinics. But the proposed 35 foot buffer zone wouldn’t simply regulate or attempt to regulate harassment; it would outlaw political speech. The case against the bill is simple: it would impose a prior restraint on speech, prohibiting peaceful, even silent protests within 35 feet of clinic entrances and driveways – where the protests might be most effective. It would also effectively impose different restrictions on protesters at different clinics, given their different physical configurations.
This is a overly simple solution to a complicated problem – the reported difficulties of enforcing the current law and the tendency of some protesters to engage not just in protests but in harassment of individual patients and providers. But laws restricting speech should be difficult to enforce; if drawn with respect for the First Amendment and prohibitions on prior restraints, they are naturally difficult to enforce. Obscenity laws, for example, can defy enforcement, to the dismay of some and delight of others. It would be easier to punish obscenity if we simply created a sort of buffer zone around discussions of sex. It’s easy to police harassment of delegates to a political convention when we create buffer zones around entrances to convention halls, corralling protesters into "free speech" zones. But it should never be so easy to restrict political speech.
I understand the anger at protesters who abuse their rights. I understand the impulse to protect patients and clinicians from being intimidated or upset as well as criminally harassed. But protecting people from intimidation or emotional turmoil is no justification for restricting speech. We don’t have a right not to be upset, even when seeking medical care. We do have a right to protest state sanctioned medical procedures. Imagine how vigorously pro-choice supporters would protest outside clinics that engaged in mandatory sterilization, if it were legally permissible, as it was once, in the early 20th century. Would you pass a law to restrict those protests, even if clinicians felt intimidated or upset by them?
Protesters sometime abuse their rights to speak, of course; virtually all rights are bound to be abused on occasion, just as legislative power is bound to be abused – sometimes with the best intentions. Please don’t let abuses of rights by some individuals persuade you to deny those rights to all.
Finally, this bill is, at the very least, arguably unconstitutional. The U.S. Supreme Court has upheld buffer zones around clinic entrances, so long as they did not include categorical prohibitions on all protests within the zone -- the sort of prohibition included in this bill. In 2000, when the Court upheld a Colorado statute imposing a 100 foot buffer zone around clinic entrances, it stressed that the law “allows a protester to stand still while a person moving towards or away from a health care facility walks past her.” The law only prohibited “knowingly approaching” within 8 feet of another person without consent. In other words, the Court allowed significant restrictions on First Amendment rights in the Colorado buffer zone case, but it did not allow the blanket prohibition on speech included in this bill. It would be a sad day for civil liberty if the Massachusetts legislature became less protective of individual rights than the U.S. Supreme Court.
Friday, May 18, 2007
In 2005, when the Bush Administration pressured the Public Broadcasting System into dropping an episode of a children’s show with a sympathetic view of a gay family, liberals rightly yelled censorship, decrying the Administration’s bullying and PBS’s failure to resist it. This month, when the Congressional Hispanic Caucus pressured Ken Burns into “amending” his upcoming PBS documentary on World War 11 to include interviews with Latino veterans, many liberals barely seemed to notice.
Burns’s troubles started when University of Texas journalism professor Maggie Rivas-Rodriquez, who directs a Latino oral history project, noticed that his new documentary did not acknowledge the war effort of Latinos. Protests by Latino groups and boycott threats followed. The Hispanic Association of Corporate Responsibility lobbied Burns’s corporate sponsors, General Motors and Anheuser-Busch, threatening them with reprisals if they did not withdraw support. “They should not be associated with this documentary,” Association chair Manuel Mirabal remarked. “If they plan to do so, to put it bluntly, they will not be held harmless.”
If Mirabal’s approach is unapologetically thuggish, at least he can claim to be exercising his own First Amendment rights as a private citizen. While consumer boycotts can pose de facto threats to a diverse and lively marketplace and rightly concern free speech advocates, at least they don’t pose threats under color of law. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus, however, has no equivalent right to blackmail PBS or its sponsors. It has government power, which it boldly abused in this case.
Members of the caucus also threatened Burns’s sponsors. After meeting with General Motors, Anheuser Busch, and Bank of America, caucus chair Joe Baca (who had not seen the film) declared to the New York Times, “We will not settle for separate but equal treatment in this documentary.” (Burns had offered to include stories about Latinos in supplemental material to his film.) Congressman Baca reported that caucus members told the sponsors “We just hate to see what happened with national boycotts in the past.”
This unveiled threat apparently worked. At first, according to the Times, public broadcasting officials issued a statement that “reminded Congress of the editorial independence that was guaranteed in the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967.” Ken Burns vowed that he would not re-edit the documentary: “It would be destructive, like trying to graft an arm onto your child. It would destroy the film.”
A few days later Burns caved, understandably. Perhaps he decided that it was better to destroy his child than deprive it of corporate sponsors and undermine Congressional support for PBS. He promised to amend the film. In a news release jointly issued with two Hispanic groups Burns stiffly said, “The role of Hispanic Americans veterans in WWII is one that lends itself to the universality of this film and merits being included in my film.”
Like Joe Baca, I have not seen the documentary, but, unlike Baca, I have no opinion on the merits of the dispute about it. I would not discourage any interest group from complaining about its contents or even personally lobbying Burns and PBS to make changes, although I would encourage them to use reason instead of threats. As ACLU policy on private pressure groups states, “The right of protest is an essential element of the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of expression and is entitled to legal protection whether engaged in by an individual or an organized group …”
But, as this policy also notes, “private pressure group activities” are “inimical to civil liberties” when they effectively “restrict a free and diverse marketplace of ideas.” In these cases, the ACLU should object, the policy suggests. Still, the organization has been quiet about the threats posed to a “free and diverse marketplace” by the pressuring of Don Imus’s corporate sponsors, resulting in his firing, or the rash of firings and suspensions of other radio show hosts that have followed, or the threatened boycotts in the Burns case. (The National Coalition Against Censorship, however, has objected, explaining "what the chocolate Jesus and Don Imus have in common" and what “we lose when we suspend free speech principles for expression considered by many as beyond the pale.”)
Reasonable civil libertarians will differ about the threats posed by different private pressure groups and different tactics. But none should hesitate to condemn government officials who join private groups in protesting speech they don’t like and extorting its amendment. ACLU policy accepts as a given that the ACLU will “of course challenge any complicity by government in anti-civil liberties activities of private pressure groups.” If the ACLU is going to challenge the strong-arming of PBS and Ken Burns by the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, now would be a good time to do so.
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The mourning period that followed Ronald Reagan’s death three years ago, in which even his fiercest critics agreed to temporarily bite their tongues, clearly won’t apply to the recently deceased Rev. Jerry Falwell. His corpse had barely turned cold before the media erupted into a debate over the demagogue’s true legacy. But all of these retrospectives, from the various “good riddance” columns circulating the blogosphere to the flattering and selective obituaries featured in some Southern newspapers, neglected to mention one of the Falwell’s most important contributions to our country, albeit an entirely inadvertent one. I am referring, of course, to his loss in the case of Hustler v. Falwell – surely one of the most unequivocal and forceful First Amendment rulings in the Supreme Court’s history.
For those too young to remember the case: Falwell sued our favorite pornographer and free speech gadfly, Larry Flynt, along with Flynt’s Hustler Magazine, in the federal court in Virginia for libel, invasion of privacy, and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The trigger for this flurry of legal claims was a parody in Hustler’s November 1983 issue of a popular advertisement at the time for Campari Liqueur. The Campari ad campaign featured some well-known public figure being interviewed about what he (or she) remembers about his “first time” – a double entendre referring to the first time he drank Campari but also to possibly more intimate activity. The Hustler parody featured Rev. Falwell discussing what Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the full court, delicately described as Falwell’s “first time,” namely his “drunken incestuous rendezvous with his mother in an outhouse.” “The Hustler parody portrays [Falwell] and his mother as drunk and immoral, and suggests that respondent is a hypocrite who preaches only when he is drunk,” wrote the Chief Justice.
As the case wended its way through the courts during the mid-eighties, the libel claim fell away (because the parody obviously was not claiming that the orgy actually occurred), as did the invasion of privacy charge (since the parody was obviously not true, no privacy was invaded). But the “intentional infliction of emotional distress” claim – and jury verdict of $150,000 – survived until the case made its way to the Supreme Court. Flynt, after all, intended to inflict emotional distress upon the good reverend, and he apparently succeeded.
Criticism of public figures, noted the high court, need not be polite, even-handed, subtle, reasoned, nor moderate. The First Amendment protects criticism that is “vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp.” The court noted that “in the world of debate about public affairs, many things done with motives that are less than admirable are protected by the First Amendment.” The court predicted that were it to rule otherwise, “there can be little doubt that political cartoonists and satirists would be subject to damages awards.” Even the nastiest of such attacks is constitutionally protected, said the high court: “The appeal of the political cartoon or caricature is often based on exploration of unfortunate physical traits or politically embarrassing events…. The art of the cartoonist is often not reasoned or evenhanded, but slashing and one-sided.” Such caricatures and exaggerations, noted the court, are “weapons of attack, of scorn and ridicule and satire.” They are effective to the extent they are vicious. “It is usually as welcome as a bee sting and is always controversial in some quarters.”
And so the good reverend’s major contribution to American liberty lay not in his sermons – indeed, he usually argued for less rather than more freedom – but rather in his most famous legal defeat. If today’s plague of censorship from both the intolerant culturally conservative right and the intolerant and politically correct left is defeated, it will be in large measure because of Rev. Falwell’s eponymous court case.
Falwell became more outrageous, it seemed, as the years passed. Most recently and famously, he attributed the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, to those whose lifestyles and politics he loathed, claiming that “the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'” This attack, for which he was forced (by outraged public opinion) to apologize, probably represented the low point of a career that spun steadily downward over the years.
When I heard that Falwell died, my mind turned immediately and reflexively to another pious but intolerant man of the cloth who left much damage in his wake, William Jennings Bryan. Although not as hateful a man as Falwell, Bryan too made a fool of himself and his cause when, toward the end of his life, he acted as prosecutor in the infamous “Scopes Monkey Trial” that convicted a Tennessee public school science instructor of teaching evolution. More specifically, I recalled the remarkable obituary of Bryan penned by H. L. Mencken, in which the acerbic journalist and essayist offered this assessment of the famous reverend: “Bryan lived too long, and descended too deeply into the mud, to be taken seriously hereafter by fully literate men, even of the kind who write school-books. There was a scattering of sweet words in his funeral notices, but it was not more than a response to conventional sentimentality. The best verdict the most romantic editorial writer could dredge up, save in the eloquent South, was to the general effect that his imbecilities were excused by his earnestness.”
Mencken concluded his homage to his antagonist with this tribute, which seems eerily applicable to our contemporary political culture engendered, in part, by Falwell and his allies: “Such is Bryan’s legacy to his country. He couldn’t be President, but he could at least help magnificently in the solemn business of shutting off the presidency from every intelligent and self-respecting man. The storm, perhaps, won’t last long, as time goes in history. It may help, indeed, to break up the democratic delusion, now already showing weakness, and so hasten its own end. But while it lasts it will blow off some roofs and flood some sanctuaries.”
History does indeed repeat itself.
The next time “progressive” students at Tufts, Brandeis and other schools try to censor speech they consider harassing, abusive, or otherwise harmful psychologically, they might want to consider this lawsuit recently filed in Cook County, Illinois:
“A girl and her grandparents have sued the Chicago Board of Education, alleging that a substitute teacher showed the R-rated film "Brokeback Mountain" in class,” the Associated Press reports. “The lawsuit claims that Jessica Turner, 12, suffered psychological distress after viewing the movie in her eighth-grade class at Ashburn Community Elementary School last year.”
How much damage did Jessica allegedly suffer? $500,000 worth, according to her grandparents, who assert that she was traumatized by seeing the film.
Campus “progressives” will no doubt scoff at Jessica’s claim, condemning the homophobia it reflects. But what underlies this lawsuit is not homophobia so much as the speech-phobia that Harvey Silverglate and I so often deplore -- the belief that showing a movie (telling a joke, or publishing an article) is the equivalent of a physical assault on people who object strongly to the ideas that the movie (joke or article) convey. Some conservatives have been infected by this phobia (or try to exploit it,) but “progressives” are responsible for its spread. Supposedly progressive students who complain of the traumas inflicted on them by unwelcome speech and administrators who punish parodies of affirmative action, among other articles of their faith, or mere advocacy of unpopular, conservative ideas, have more in common with Jessica Turner and her grandparents than they know, or are willing to acknowldedge.
Wednesday, May 09, 2007
According to the Washington Post, revelations of warrant-less wiretapping by the Bush Administration have provoked dozens of lawsuits against phone companies charged with unlawfully cooperating in violating the privacy of their customers. Verizon has come up with a novel and nervy defense, arguing (with a straight face) that the suit against it should be dismissed because it violates the company’s First Amendment rights to convey information to the government.
This is not a joke. Verizon does not appear to be engaged in self-parody, at least not intentionally. And, indeed, there’s nothing funny about its decision to collaborate with the Administration’s illegal wiretapping and data-mining program, targeting millions of ordinary Americans. There’s nothing constitutional about it either. Verizon essentially acted as an agent of the government, voluntarily; and the government doesn’t have constitutional rights. It has constitutional powers and obligations. The people have rights that restrict the government’s power and help define its obligations.
Verizon’s absurd and cynical defense seems unlikely to prevail. The presiding judge in its case, Federal District Court Judge Vaughn Walker, has already declined to dismiss a similar lawsuit against AT & T. But, as the Washington Post reports, the Bush Administration is seeking to shield Verizon and other companies from liability. Its 2008 intelligence bill includes a provision that would deny people the right to sue the phone companies (or anyone else) for sharing customer information with the government, in order to aid in alleged anti-terrorism initiatives. If this bill were to pass, it would not simply deny individuals and classes of individuals remedies for gross violations of their privacy; it would cut off a promise of judicial inquiry into the government’s spying program. From the Administration’s perspective, what we don’t know can’t hurt them.
It was bound to happen. Whenever the nation experiences an orgy of hypocrisy and self-righteousness like the Don Imus affair, it so often turns out that a leader of some holy crusade lives in the proverbial glass house.
And so it was when the nation’s self-appointed religious maven from the left, Rev. Al Sharpton, seeking as always to outdo the fundamentalists on the right, found himself in precisely the same boat in which he’d placed, just a few short weeks ago, the hapless radio shock-jock. According to a blog item on The New York Times Web site, then reported by the Associated Press, our favorite race-hustler, the Rev. Al, said in a debate with Christopher Hitchens: “As for the one Mormon running for office, those who really believe in God will defeat him anyways, so don’t worry about that; that’s a temporary situation.” The debate took place, ironically, in the exquisite building housing the main branch of The New York Public Library, one of the nation’s prime monuments to free speech, free thought, free belief, and tolerance.
Some criticized Sharpton for suggesting that Romney’s distinctly minority view of the Diety is somehow inferior to the traditional Christian view from which Sharpton has managed to make a quite decent living over the years. Sharpton’s defense of himself, remarkably, was that he was not criticizing Romney’s Mormonism but, rather, Hitchens’ atheism! (Now, there’s a principled distinction some of us can live with, but some can’t. I’m with the latter. Imagine: Defending against a charge of anti-Mormon bigotry by claiming to have been engaging in anti-atheist bigotry instead!)
But coming on the heels of Sharpton’s successful assault against Imus for insulting the African-American members of Rutger’s women’s basketball team, one would have thought that His Holiness’ hypocrisy might have attracted more attention. It didn’t, of course, because of the double standards in which we engage in this country with respect to “hate speech” – it matters when the speaker is taking on politically-incorrect issues involving race and gender. To insult a religious person or an atheist is, it seems, always fair game. How else to explain Sharpton’s status as “civil rights leader” in spite of his long history of thinly veiled anti-Semitism?
As a man of the cloth, the Rev. Al must be familiar with Jesus’ saying, “He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword” (Matthew 26:52). If only this Biblical injunction applied to pundits like Sharpton and others of his ilk, the public discourse in this country would be far richer and infinitely more honest.
It would be better, of course, to have a single-standard: Either we are tolerant of speech that disturbs us (including so-called “hate speech”) in the public arena, or we apply consistent standards in seeking to censor both the politically correct and incorrect. The former is the only solution for a free society, but I have a feeling that if we insisted on a single rather than a double standard, eventually tolerance of dissenting points of view would become the rule.
Monday, May 07, 2007
“When does free speech become hate speech?,” a Fox News correspondent asked recently in a reviewing yet another free speech controversy at Tufts University. The question itself reflected the common misconception that speech rights do not or should not include the right to engage in whatever is popularly considered hate speech. “I’m not in favor of censorship but...” is a mantra of censors on college campuses who aim to outlaw speech they deem offensive, all the while proclaiming their adherence to free speech and the marketplace of ideas. (You have to wonder what they imagine as the purpose of free speech guarantees if it’s not to protect the rights of offensive speakers; inoffensive speakers protect themselves with their own inoffensiveness.)
Campus crusades to silence “offensive” speech have been the subject of parodies and sharp critiques for years now, but the crusaders have been undeterred. Indeed, opposition seems to have emboldened them; restrictions on speech are increasingly arbitrary and unpredictable, as definitions of verbal harassment and discrimination become vaguer and more expansive. The most recent, hard to believe case of campus censorship, which threatens to cost a faculty member his job, comes out Maricopa County Community College District in Arizona:
There, on November 22, 2006, math professor Walter Kehowski posted George Washington’s 1789 Thanksgiving Day Proclamation to a district-wide list serve. Kehowski’s email contained a link to Pat Buchanan’s website, which included Buchanan’s criticism of U.S. immigration policy. Five MCCCD employees filed harassment complaints, asserting that the email was hostile and derogatory, because of the Buchanan link. As a result, Kehowski was placed on administrative leave, with a recommendation that he be dismissed for violating the district’s anti-discrimination policy as well as its policy on emails unrelated to MCCCD business, a policy that does not appear to be generally or consistently enforced. (Update, June 25: Kehowski successfully settled this case; the charges aganist him have been dropped and he will return to teaching in the fall of '07.)
It’s hard to know which is worse: punishing Kehowski for Pat Buchanan’s speech, or equating Buchanan’s speech with acts of harassment and discrimination. Kehowski is appealing the decision against him; his case will be heard before a three person faculty panel on June 5th. He should prevail, at least eventually: Maricopa County is bound by the First Amendment, which clearly protects his e-mail. But even if Kehowski’s persecutors eventually lose this battle, they may have won the war by chilling politically controversial speech, which is precisely what the First Amendment is supposed to protect.
I wish I could characterize Kehowski’s case as an anomaly, but you’ll find others like it described at thefire.org, the website for The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. (Harvey Silverglate is a co-founder of FIRE, and I serve on its advisory board. FIRE has publicized and intervened in Kehowski’s case.) Consider the recent controversy at Tufts University, which prompted Fox News to wonder about the difference between free speech and hate speech:
A conservative student magazine, The Primary Source, parodied affirmative action in a Christmas carol entitled “O Come All Ye Black Folk.” Affirmative action remains controversial on and off campus, which should make it an ideal subject for debate and satire; but, on some campuses, students who mock or otherwise challenge affirmative action risk finding themselves charged with speech crimes. According to Fox, a Tufts student asserted that the mock Christmas carol was harassment, stating, “Clearly the carol (constituted harassment) by intimidating African-Americans at Tufts and inferring (sic) they are unintelligent and inferior.” (Have I harassed any readers by including a link to Fox News?) The Primary Source followed this offense with publication of an attack on Islam during Muslim Awareness Week, naturally prompting complaints from the Muslim Student Association.
So, in this fearful new world, in which students are taught to feel oppressed and assaulted by words, The Primary Source was hauled before a disciplinary board last week on charges of harassment and violation of community standards. (Update: The Primary Source was found guilty of harassment by the Committee on Student Life.) Speaking to Fox, Tufts faculty member Tobe Berkowitz characterized, or mischaracterized, the choice facing the Tufts community: “Are we going to put free speech first? Or are we going to put what we consider a good environment for our students first?” Remarkably, at this respected university, creating a “good environment” is considered in conflict with nurturing respect for political speech.
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
It may not be news that public officials sometimes use escort services and enjoy extra-marital perks; but a Washington D.C. madam (or, rather, alleged madam,) outing her clients is not the “non-story” that Harvey considers it. Hypocrisy among public officials is usually worth reporting, however unsurprising it may be. Personally, I want people to know when high ranking appointees in an Administration that advocates abstinence education and opposes family planning, sexually explicit speech, and prostitution are caught patronizing escort services.
So, while I lament the anti-libertarian biases of our culture that support the Administration’s positions on sex and sexuality, (and the criminalization of prostitution,) I can’t summon up much sympathy for now disgraced, former deputy Secretary of State Randall Tobias. Before being appointed to his recent, late position in the State Department, Tobias was the Administration’s AIDS “czar,” and, as such, he advocated demonstrably ineffective abstinence strategies in the fight against AIDS, instead of striving to increase condom use. He also opposed prostitution. According to ABC News, he was responsible for enforcing Administration policy requiring recipients of AIDS funding “to swear they oppose prostitution and sex trafficking.” (You have to wonder if he signed a similar pledge or made similar assurances as the recipient of coveted political appointments; this is, after all, an Administration not averse to loyalty oaths.)
Hypocrites are often cowards, and Tobias seems to be no exception, offering the laughable defense that he had only paid for massages from his escorts, not sex. At least this may be helpful to alleged Madame Jeane Palfrey, who has cleverly threatened to name clients so that they can come forward and support her claim that she was selling fantasies and other legal services (like massages,) not sex. Prosecutors have called this blackmail. I call it only fair.
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
“Ducking for cover,” roared the headline on page 3 of the May 1st Boston Herald. It would have been an appropriate headline for a story on the state of daily life in Baghdad, where a slew of recent bombings claimed the lives of more than 1,600 Iraqi civilians. Instead, the headline refers to the dozens of disgraced D.C. lawmakers, administrators, power-brokers, and perhaps even ordinary bureaucrats who might be forced to resign now that previously convicted madam Jeanne Palfrey, apparently as part of her defense to federal prostitution charges, has turned her client list over to ABC News.
Millions of viewers are expected to tune into ABC on Friday to watch Palfrey name her clients in a much-hyped “Dateline” interview. One is reminded of those ancient orgies of public shaming when crowds would gather at the public square to watch a caning, whipping, or hanging for some offense against public decency and morals. Ignore for a moment the inherent national embarrassment in the fact that what is essentially a non-story (is anyone surprised that some Capital Hill denizens engage in occasional extramarital peccadilloes?) has eclipsed the growing international instability and the death toll in Iraq as the top news story in the country. Even more troublesome is the fact that the “DC Madam” scandal may lead to the forced resignations of some of the country’s more capable business and political leaders.
The affair has already prompted its first resignation: Ambassador Randall L. Tobias, who reported to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as Director of U.S. Foreign Assistance, who insists that he only used the agency for an occasional massage – no sex involved. Tobias is married, making his situation particularly damning in the holier-than-thou Bush administration.
By most accounts, Tobias was more than just a cut above the usual Bush Administration hack. He earned considerable respect as a corporate leader, helping turn around AT&T International in the 1990s before becoming a top executive at Eli Lilly and Co. during a time of unprecedented innovation and growth. He has won numerous humanitarian awards and honorary degrees for his second career as a central figure in AIDS awareness circles. His nonprofit, The Randall L. Tobias Foundation at Indiana University, has distributed over $10 million in grants and charitable gifts to education-related organizations and institutions since 1994. Given the dearth of real talent in the Bush Administration, one should not be filled with glee at the fall of one of the better ones.
I am reminded of an earlier reprise of the age-old conflict between America’s Puritan heritage and the biological realities of real life. When I was a college student in the 1960s during the Cold War, some sex scandal would periodically break out somewhere in the Foreign Service. One year it was a series of American ambassadors and other diplomats serving abroad in Iron Curtain nations who were discovered to be involved in sexual liaisons with Eastern Bloc women suspected of working for one or another Communist intelligence service; they were all recalled and fired. The following year an American embassy official was found in a liaison with a local male suspected of being an agent; this official, too, was dismissed from the Foreign Service.
At this point, James Wechsler, the legendary editorial-page editor of The New York Post, at the time a journalistic bastion of traditional liberalism owned by the family of Dorothy Schiff (1903-1989), wrote a commentary that claimed that the State Department’s foreign service was in a crisis. The year before, the department fired a slew of heterosexual ambassadors. The following year, he noted, they began going after the homosexuals. Pretty soon, Wechsler concluded, the State Department will run out of enough eunuchs to fill all of our ambassadorial posts.
Sex endures, while history does indeed repeat itself.
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