In perusing the headlines of this past week, The Hot Screen has descried an unholy trinity of news stories that remind us of the importance of and ever-present battle for free speech rights. Getting the most play is Stephen Colbert’s joke on “The Late Show” that Donald Trump’s mouth is Vladimir Putin’s “cock holster” — a line that’s received fire from both Trump supporters and those who say the line was homophobic. The Federal Communications Commission has received complaints, and is looking into whether the material was “indecent” or “profane”; if it finds this was the case, CBS may be hit with fines.
As is all but inevitable when television is involved, vital context has been lost here, especially pernicious in a situation like this when context is everything. Go ahead and listen to Colbert's entire monologue, and then consider whether it’s at all possible or even rational to attempt to separate criticism of this single line from the rest of the bit. The first part intertwines Colbert’s mockery of Donald Trump with excerpts from recent interview of the president; Trump manufactures the rope with which Colbert proceeds to hang him. The president sounds like an idiot and a liar based on his own words, with Colbert hilariously savaging the ignorance and lies. Colbert shows the clip of the end of one of the interviews, in which Trump dismisses CBS's "Face the Nation" journalist John Dickerson when the president doesn’t want to answer a question about Trump’s accusations that President Obama had him wiretapped. We have seen such Trumpian behavior before, but The Hot Screen still found it somewhat shocking; like a squid squirting ink to escape danger, Trump emits a cloud of bluster, then scuttles behind his presidential desk like that same squid hiding behind a coral reef. The president then proceeds to shuffle through and read the papers on his desk, like a bad impersonation of a busy businessman, in an obvious continuation of that same bluster.
But then Colbert reveals that even this was not the worst moment that journalist Dickerson had to endure, running a clip in which Trump sneers that he calls Dickerson’s show “Deface the Nation.” Dickerson may be held back by his personal dignity and journalistic ethos from responding, but Colbert, says Colbert, is not. He then unleashes a paint-blisterer of a tirade against Donald Trump, as if what came before had only been a warm-up, though we also realize that the mockery up to now has also been driven by his outrage over the treatment of Dickerson. And it is this context of a self-consciously delivered verbal beatdown of the president that the “cock holster” line is delivered.
The unwitting meta-joke/deadly serious point that surrounds the FCC investigation of whether Colbert’s words were “indecent” or “profane” is that Colbert resorted to such language in his effort to communicate the idea that Donald Trump’s actions are indisputably both indecent and profane, that this dunce’s presidency is an obscenity. Colbert used foul language because that’s what he judged necessary to communicate the reality of a foul politics. It’s a testament to his wit that this was the only point he crossed an obvious linguistic line; but it’s also clear that he knew the importance of hitting Trump hard with shocking and graphic language. It’s not the job of comedians not to go too far; in fact, going too far is an occupational hazard and occasional necessity. But it IS their job to try to tell the truth of things while making us laugh.
In a neat bookend to the Colbert kerfluffle, a protestor at Jeff Sessions’ confirmation hearing in January has been convicted of. . . laughing at Jeff Sessions. Desiree Fairooz guffawed after Senator Richard Shelby praised Sessions’ “extensive record of treating all Americans equally under the law”; now Fairooz has been convicted of unlawful conduct for disturbing the proceedings, though she contends she only emitted a “reflexive noise.” Whether or not this charge was technically correct, the idea of convicting someone for laughing at a politician is, well, laughable. This is a judgment that only a totalitarian would love.
And finally, the story completing the sad anti-free speech absurdity of the last week: The Republic of Ireland is investigating whether comedian and actor Stephen Fry blasphemed when he responded to an interview question in 2015 about what he’d say to God if he had the chance. Fry faces possible charges under a law passed in 2009, although it sounds like such charges are unlikely.
His answer included the following lines: “How dare you create a world in which there is such misery? It's not our fault? It's not right. It's utterly, utterly evil. Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid god who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?" Far be it from us to judge Ireland’s particular mix of religion and free speech, but clearly Fry raised the most basic of theological questions — why is there evil in the world? — for which punishment seems nonsensical.
Along with the cases of Colbert and Fairooz, we are seeing attempts to limit speech allegedly to protect the sanctity of some public good — television broadcasting in the case of Colbert, a Congressional proceeding in the case of Fairooz, the beliefs of the Catholic Church in the case of Fry — when in fact the larger purpose is to limit challenges to the prerogatives of the powerful to propagate a world view of their choice. This trio of heavy-handed anti-free speech incidents may be only incidentally linked, but they remind us that claims of indecent, inappropriate, or blasphemous language often serve to obscure a reality that the powerful would rather keep unexamined.
2017 is shaping up to be a hell of a year for our sense of humor.
