Free Speech That’s Costing Congress a Lot : Politicians who are discrediting the institution they serve

Whatever its lasting legislative accomplishments, the 104th Congress has already won lamentable recognition as a place where vulgar and insulting speech threatens to become the norm rather than the exception. One might well have to go back two generations, to the era when vicious racist rhetoric routinely oozed from the mouths of segregationist Southern legislators, to find an analog. A Congress already held in low regard by vast numbers of Americans only invites further contempt by this coarsening and disgusting display of intolerant speech.

The latest to join the ignoble parade of foul mouths is Rep. Randy (Duke) Cunningham (R-San Diego). Orating from the House floor, he characterized opponents of revisions to the Clean Water Act as “the same ones who would put homos in the military.” Later, in a statement that sought to deny any intended bigotry, Cunningham said he had used a “shorthand” word for homosexual only because he was “under time pressure to complete my statement within the allotted time.” The transparent dishonesty of that claim only adds to the shame the representative has brought on himself. Friday he apologized.

The Cunningham incident comes a few months after the even uglier exhibition staged by Rep. Dick Armey (R-Tex.), who in a radio interview referred to Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who is homosexual, as “Barney Fag.” Armey similarly offered a weak excuse for his insult, contending that he simply had tripped over his tongue and meant no disrespect. But when words like those used by Cunningham and Armey slip out, it’s odds-on that they are in the forefront of a vocabulary commonly if usually more discreetly employed, and not an innocent slip.

The venom has by no means been limited to slurs against homosexuals. There is, for example, Sen. Alfonse M. D’Amato (R-N.Y.), who, uniquely in this world, regards himself as an amusing fellow. D’Amato insulted Americans of Japanese ancestry along with tens of millions of their fellow citizens who value good taste with his abysmal attempt to mimic Judge Lance A. Ito. And, of course, there’s California’s own Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), who lost his speaking privileges for a day after suggesting in a floor speech that the President of the United States is a traitor.

Ill-mannered, deliberately hurtful political comment is of course not new in our national experience, and certainly, whatever its most recent examples suggest, it’s not unique to the far right. The radical left is by no means lacking in practitioners of hate speech and similar verbal filth. What is unusual and disturbing is the re-emergence in Congress of the kind of casual, hate-based verbal abuse that, so we would like to think, our national legislators had long since moved beyond. Speech, however repugnant, is a protected right. But in the chambers of Congress certain rules of civility are also meant to apply. That’s why the presiding officers of those chambers ought to act immediately to gavel into silence those who, while making asses of themselves, simultaneously discredit the institution they serve.