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Free
Speech and Cheap Talk
By
Joshua Citrak
Free speech is guaranteed by the US Constitution – even if it’s offensive. But the folks on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors think they’re smarter than our Founding Fathers.
Government’s purpose should be to enact laws making the governed reproachable for their own actions, not passing laws that protect people from that responsibility. It’s a sentiment I’ve echoed often within these monthly posts, one based in common sense that is depressingly uncommon in the dense governmental chain. Self-accountability doesn’t even apply to balancing a checkbook any more, because the freedom to speak out and be wrong and not apologize has been legislated and litigated away.
Now while the filter from brain to mouth doesn’t exist in some people, most of us have a sense of the appropriate without having to consult the local law books. It comes from our parents, our upbringing and decries that everything that is thought doesn’t need to be spoken, much less held as truth. Why then, on Tuesday May 10th, did the San Francisco Board of Supervisors waste valuable city time debating and ultimately enacting a meaningless and obtuse
resolution
on language deemed offensive or discriminatory?
“The intent of this resolution is to make a clear statement that discrimination and harassment on the basis of race, religion, color ancestry, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, weight, height or place of birth will not be tolerated in San Francisco city government,” Board President Aaron “the angry dwarf” Peskin succinctly put it.
The resolution stems from an April 4th meeting of the Building Inspection Commission in which Joe O’Donoghue, head of the Residential Builders Association, made insensitive comments to acting director Amy Lee about her pregnancy.
This is not the first time we have seen the Residential Builders Association, a powerful city group, run roughshod and use intimidating tactics to get their way. The RBA, specifically O’Donoghue, and the Board of Supervisors have been fiercely jousting over issues for years – many centering on which organization, the RBA or the city, will receive most of the spoils from artificially inflating the San Francisco housing market or from the renovation of the deteriorating downtown residential hotels.
So perhaps this resolution is a political move marked to punish a bitter rival.
Peskin, however, insisted that, “We must make every possible effort to maintain basic decorum and integrity in our public forum.”
Ok, so that sounds admirable until you realize the Supervisors are dealing on the level of subjectives and trying to place them in objective light. Speech discriminatory to whom? Every individual person has a different sensitivity to insulting words. Who can intelligently and fairly police “basic decorum” once you take away personal responsibility and place the burden of enforcement onto a public entity, in this case the Board of Supervisors?
Idealism has its place, but it isn’t in government. I mean, maybe I blinked and MUNI is running like a well-oiled machine and San Francisco’s $59 million deficit was actually an accounting error the surplus of which we’re planning to turn into a new stadium for the 49ers, but the oft repeated question must be, ah,
repeated- don’t they have more important things to do?
In fact, government isn’t a place for any ideals at all. Government is a place where tough issues and hard choices must be debated and made. Decisions on which hinge jobs and health and life and most importantly, money. However despicable it is to get the
proper decisions made – whether someone’s enemy must be compromised with, someone’s hairy palm has to be greased, someone’s back has to be rubbed or someone’s welfare has to be threatened- it must be done with the benefit of the citizens who voted the politicians into office in mind, not creating a safe environment for sensitive lawmakers. The problem with government, specifically the Board of Supervisors, is that it has grown squeamish. It has rendered itself incapable of deciding anything meaningful because any choice represents an offense to the opposing viewpoint. So what we have is a Board of 12 ideologues who can do nothing else but promote their own subjective agenda and can neither compromise or communicate with the remaining eleven members.
But on a choice between hate and limited speech, even the venerable Chris Daly can begrudgingly go along with the latter. Daly, an O’Donoghue ally, and a known
offender
of “basic decorum”, was thinking of proposing another resolution including other people he thought worthy of condemnation.
“The list is quite long,” Daly, who is known to never, ever, ever forget a grudge, said.
But he voted yes, along with other members including Michela Alioto-Pier, who last year attempted to put the same censure O’Donoghue got to Supervisor Daly because he had “threatened” her and used foul words in chamber.
“I still consider him a friend,” she was quoted as saying.
Daly knows that this resolution may be the end of his brand of smash mouth politics; he is a prime candidate to feel the wrath of its rebuke.
He cautioned other Board members against, “Opening up floodgates on whom we condemn and whom we don’t.”
More nice words, but ask yourself if anyone really gives a damn who the San Francisco Board of Supervisors likes or dislikes? Again,
this isn’t the purpose of government. We complain when the national government tries to “legislate morality”, by censoring movies, music and the like or by funding “faith based initiatives” in which both sides of hotly contested issues such as abortion, sex education and evolution don’t get a fair shake- the Supervisors resolution is a chicken from the same egg. By giving into subjective idealism and delegating it to a universal truth/law we cheapen our own individuality, negate personal responsibility and lessen the extent to which it is possible to experience new things and ideas. An open and free government isn’t about clamping down on things it finds offensive. That is the job of decent people within a decent society.
Copyright © 2005 Joshua Citrak
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