Threat of Violence Is Still the Most Powerful Censor

The president of the California State Bar says that lawyer-bashing must stop. He calls it hate speech and says that it’s hurtful, and not funny, and can get out of hand. He points to the massacre in a San Francisco law office that took nine lives.

He says there ought to be a law: Commit a crime against an attorney and pay an additional price. He reminds us that lawyers, just like police and judges, are representatives of our judicial system, worthy of special respect.

You listen to this man’s argument and you understand his line of thought. No class of people “deserves” to be the butt of jokes. No class of people “deserves” to be victimized. And certainly other groups have successfully argued that their well-being should be sanctified in law.

Everyone from civil rights activists, to feminists, to protectors of pork, have figured out the game plan long ago. Organize, agitate, lobby or schmooze. This is American democracy at work. Let your voice be heard!

(Or if not quite your voice, then someone who promises to sound just like you. Please check the appropriate box and mail in your check.)

So where do you draw the line with this that’s-not-funny-that’s-a-violation way of thinking? And who should draw it? You or Uncle Sam? Increasingly, American society is drawing the line in the sand. It shifts.

We are a land of disparate standards, a byproduct of local rule. “Will it play in Peoria?” is becoming moot in this era of cable TV. The mores of San Francisco, or Sioux Falls or St. Petersburg are what count.

All of which is fine, to a point. And chances are good that my point may not be the same as your own.

I might be sexually harassed in California, but maybe I just need to loosen up down South. Or I might “disrespect” someone in a neighborhood not far from my own and he might disrespect my life.

And would anyone care if two gay men were turned down for an apartment rental in, say, a stronghold of the Mormon Church? What if they were black?

What I’m saying is that standards do vary, and some standards are clearly more important than most. The federal government has traditionally, and rightly, seen to that: You don’t trample on anybody’s civil rights.

That used to be pretty simple. But now it’s a can of worms.

For as long as I can remember I’ve heard that you can’t legislate morality in America, even as you teach your own version at home and in church, and that speech will always be free, even if you don’t happen to like the message yourself.

But damned if these axioms don’t get turned on their heads.

Just think of the Supreme Court’s decision on Rust vs. Sullivan. That was the one two years ago that told the Bush Administration its “gag rule” at federally funded health clinics was fine. Even if a patient requested information on legal abortion, health care workers were required to zip their mouths.

(President Clinton rightly overturned that with an executive order as soon as he could.)

Now the president of the California State Bar, Harvey Saferstein, has upped the ante another notch. He wants to outlaw unfunny lawyer jokes. He suggests there’s a difference between humor and plastering a sign on somebody that says “Kick Me Right Here.” (There is.)

And although Saferstein concedes that he knows of no evidence linking lawyer jokes to crimes against the same, he says the jokes “could have an effect on a fringe case.”

Yes, they could.

Certainly anyone in the public eye has worried about this too. This is why lottery winners like to keep their identities unknown. This is why actors are not listed in the phone directory. This is why newspaper columnists scrutinize the profane scrawlings that arrive in the mail. In other words, you never know . . .

A sad commentary? Certainly. So what else is new? The threat of violence, implied or otherwise, remains the most powerful censor there is.

(That’s why Salman Rushdie, the author who continues to publish despite the Islamic threats to his life, is a hero to so many writers today.)

But back to the shifting line in the sand. Mean lawyer jokes might not be funny. Just add them to the list of others that denigrate women, and gays, and blacks, the disabled, the old, and the list goes on, and on. It probably always will.

Just remember that humor will always be subjective. You can’t, and shouldn’t, ban it. But you don’t have to laugh.