In the past, I've derided the opponents of such laws, who tend to repeat the inane fundamentalist argument that such a bill would jail pastors who denounce homosexuality from the pulpit. Not bloody likely.
Still, this British precedent does give some reason for worry: Michael Forsythe, an Irishman living in Wales, got into a dispute with a woman over a scratched car; during their argument, he called her an "English bitch."
The 55-year-old former lorry driver was found guilty of racially aggravated disorderly behaviour, and received a ten-week prison sentence suspended for 12 months.I hope that here in America, I'll always have the right to use terms like "English bitch," especially if I think that said bitch is harming the cause of a Democratic win in 2008. And if Mr. Forsythe ever comes to southern California, I'll happily buy him one of our piss-golden beers while calling him a Mick bastard -- not out of malice, just to prove that we can still say such things here in Freedom's Land.
What if I wanted to fill this blog with epithets like "nigger" and "kike"? That's my right. You'd be a fool to come here to read such trash, but that doesn't mean I don't have a right.
Back to the American bill. Here's what a writer named Jacob Sullum has to say:
But it's not a stretch to say that hate crime laws, by their very nature, punish people for their opinions. A mugger who robs a Jew because he's well-dressed is punished less severely than a mugger who robs a Jew based on the belief that Jews get their money only by cheating Christians. A thug who beats an old lady in a wheelchair just for fun is punished less severely than a thug who does so because he believes disabled people are leeches.The counter-argument is that the law currently takes state-of-mind into consideration, and has done for many years. An accidental homicide is not a murder committed in the heat of passion, which is not a premeditated killing.
Still, we are getting close to a nightmare scenario in which the state criminalizes not just certain behaviors but certain thoughts. This situation reminds me of a couple of scenes from Truffaut's underrated adaptation of Fahrenheit 451. Early on, Julie Christie -- a pretty ninny-noodle -- sits on her sofa watching a wall-sized TV screen while a talking head firmly instructs the viewers to "Hate hate! BE MORE TOLERANT -- TODAY!" Later, our hero is told by his boss: "This is why we must burn the books, Montag -- all the books." At that moment, boss-man holds up a copy of Mein Kampf.
Well, the day of the wall-sized TV is here; fortunately, Montag can't incinerate the internet. The film's message should be obvious: Saving the books, saving free speech, means protecting all the books, protecting all speech. Freedom has no meaning if it does not include our freedom not to be tolerant. To love hate.
7 comments:
What makes you think Truffaut's "Fahrenheit 451" is underrated? (N.b.: the kindling point of paper isn't 411 degrees, you confused the temperature at which Cheney and Bush's pants catch on fire.) Because it doesn't have English subtitles? The French don't care for it because it has French subtitles? All of Truffaut is underrated. It's like he never existed. He never made a bad movie, not even a mediocre one. You can say that also about Terrence Malick, but no one else. Except Malick only made four flicks (a fifth is on the way!), and Truffaut made that many every year.
Jacob Sullum writes like a jerkoff and a worse hypocrite. I mean, why did he write "disabled people" when he could have written 'cripples'? He, along with some others I won't name, seems to be confusing hate crimes with PC silliness. Calling a homosexual man a queer isn't PC, but 'rolling a queer' (formerly a popular sport) ought to be criminalized -- assuming the queer would not have been bothered for any other reason.
You know how costly it is to fuck up the KKK and their ilk and to try to put them out of business? The laws have to infiltrate with snitches and steer clear of entrapment; or they have to bring IRS cases. Hate crime laws are cheap by comparison.
Besides, Europeans eat a different kind of grits than we do. We're not class conscious like them unless we're white trash. We're only money conscious here. Anyone remember the furniture store owner in France who went to jail for not removing his sign that read "Showroom" in English? Yeah, the French law prohibited using English when a French (50-word) term exists. No, he didn't go to jail for using English, he went to jail for refusing to remove the sign, and for refusing to pay the fine for refusing.
This one you don't remember because it wasn't reported: A kid was being tried for assault with intent to commit murder, he called the victim a 'motherfucker', one thing led to another, and the defendant shot the victim. This is a true story. The judge wanted to know if the kid was remorseful. The kid didn't quite understand. His lawyer leaned over and explained. The kid told the judge "I'm sorry I called the motherfucker a motherfucker". Documentation upon request via PayPal.
Sorry for the typo; I fixed it.
I don't know why Truffaut seems to have lost his appeal. I saw one of his final films, "The Green Room" twice. The second time, the lady accompanying me acted as though I had forced her to have a root canal.
More recently, my ladyfriend had a hard time sitting still when I insisted on catching "Jules and Jim" -- which had not seen since I was quite young. That slo-mo shot of the car going into the drink scared the hell out of me when I was young. I guess I took it as a prophecy that I'd one day have to deal with a girl who was that nutty. That prophecy came true -- twice.
Glad you like Malick. I'm a big fan of his.
He's the reason I didn't get into UCLA film school. As part of the application, students were asked to write an essay on a film considered great. I chose "Days of Heaven" (at the time, a rather recent film) -- only to learn, much later, that the film instructors at UCLA loathed that movie.
Well, I still recall it quite fondly, although I haven't seen it for many years. I've never seen a non-70mm print, and I refuse to do so.
I really liked "The New Land," and appreciated the unusual use of Wagner toward the end. Now, a mere two years later, Malick has a new film in production. I'm worried. If he starts grinding them out like sausages, the quality may suffer.
I've rambled, haven't I?
By the way -- is "queer" still a bad word? I seem to recall that there was or is a group called "Queer Nation." Or is this one of those cases where the in-group can use the term but the out-group can't?
No, 'queer' isn't a bad word, although 'Queer Nation' doesn't use it as a noun. Remember, in Diner Paul Reiser said he's uncomfortable with the word 'nuance'. The gay community (btw, I loathe 'community' that way) seems to have triumphed over language anxiety. It doesn't matter to them how you talk about homosexuality until you treat them second- or third class, like pariahs. Fucktards like the Limbaughter and Imusss are exceptions and rightfully contemptible. You maybe still think heterosexual behavior is different from homosexual behavior, so you wonder about in-group/out-group distinctions. I figure if you're neutral or positive it can't matter. When anyone gets flaunty I'm uncomfortable, but that's my problem. Funny, though, you better not call my girlfriend a pecker smoker.
You meant The New World but wrote Jan Troell's "The New Land" from the Platinum Era of Movies. Two shots that are seared forever: Liv's character in Zandy's Bride on the swing and the back-bowed Talking Heads back-up singers slowly rising up to vertical in Demme's Once in a Lifetime from Stop Making Sense. I saw Days of Heaven at a retro/repertory house in 35mm way ago in 1980 or so, only the one time. Am I recalling right, didn't Gere mime "Are you talking to me?"
If someone says The Thin Red Line is a masterpiece, I couldn't disagree, and I'll never plow its depths no matter how many times I see it. That very early 'off-screen' (Sean Penn's) Zippo click in the ship's hold I could lecture on for two hours. It's not often you get an auditory pun in this life, and also one that sparks the intellect for how to watch the rest, the turning of every war-movie (and war-story) cliche outside-in. Hmm, I guess it would be a two-second lecture.
I don't think Catherine was nutty. If she had showed up in The Tin Drum she'd be nutty. Or in Repulsion. How can you still go to the movies? Any movie not worth seeing twice isn't worth seeing once. No exceptions unless you're Anthony Lane and swallowed your brilliant meds before writing about it. And just because a movie doesn't outright suck is no reason to praise it.
I drove 300 miles to Toronto to see the 4-city unique North American showing of Apocalypse Now. I drove for an hour to see Bonnie & Clyde after it tanked in its first-run showings. I don't talk about stuff like that anymore, least of all at Oscar Night wager parties. Those GenWhatevers look at me like I'm Abe Lincoln in the snow returning a book.
You reminded me of an essay by a woman who litmus-tested her dates by their movie tastes and reactions. That was before blogs, when you could read stuff more than once, or at least once.
It's my day for movie typos.
I can top your Apocalypse Now story. (Did I spell THAT right? Seems I did.) Half a year before the film opened, there was a legendary preview screening of what was billed as a "working" cut of the movie, run interlock at the Bruin theater near UCLA. Not a huge theater, it was chosen because it was one of the few that would do interlock.
EVERYONE in Hollywood was there. I waited in line nine hours, only to be told that they had miscounted the number of seats and thus would have to wait another four hours for an impromptu second screening at midnight.
The man who had arranged this event was legendary rock and roll promoter Bill Graham -- and he personally went up to everyone in line to explain and to apologize. Watching him speak to others, I could see that he was very excitable.
So I decided to fuck with his head.
(Hey, I deserved some entertainment. After all -- I had had been waiting for HOURS.)
When Graham finally got up to me, I turned into THE dumbest rube in the history of the world, intentionally "misunderstanding" everything he said, no matter how many times he said it or how simply he put it.
Oh man -- you should have seen it! The guy's face turned red. He was pounding the sidewalk. "WHY CAN'T I MAKE YOU UNDERSTAND...? THERE AREN'T ENOUGH SEATS!"
"Uh, okay." I said, doing an impersonation of Lenny from "Of Mice and Men." "But I still don't see why we can't go in and..."
I could hear the pop pop pop of blood vessels going off all over the poor man's body. I was staring straight into the bloodshot eyes of a man who literally wanted to KILL ME. He screamed and screamed and SCREAMED!
I kept this going for about twenty minutes. Finally I took pity on him and let him do his show for the folks ahead of me.
Oh...the movie. It was pretty much exactly what was released. As I recall, none of the extra stuff we later saw in "AN Redux" was in that print. Neither was the legendary final airstrike sequence.
At the time, we were all pretty sure that opening titles would run over the opening "The End" montage. But that didn't happen!
Re: J&J. Catherine was definitely nuts. When I dated a "Catherine" I made sure not to let her drive -- ever.
By the way, I should mention that the lady I took to "The Green Room" spoke French as her native tongue. I've found that most visitors or transplants from Old Europe have a fondness for garish American pop culture, and they don't much care for anything arty or solemn.
Get outta town! My native French girlfriend was/is named Catherine, sometimes cross-eyed but never nuts, and had that Gallic dark hair. We went to the movies in Paris countless times, fewer times in the States. The French retell, including gestures, the entire movie to their friends. It was a riot watching her retell Psycho II to Corrine. I was in Paris when One From the Heart showed there, when it wouldn't show here. Catherine wore a summer dress and suggested we not wear underclothes. Eventually (after several years) she dumped me only because I was poor (so was she). I still love her but don't miss her. Your Bill Graham story -- that had to be a riot. While I was reading it, I thought you were going to write that you started to move like the Playmates in the movie until I realized you hadn't seen it yet! I do a genteel very dumb rube thing every time I go to the movies, but I feign sophistication: I always give a wrong but close-enough title for the movie. The Third Miracle: "Two for The Third Miracle on Fourth Street". "Two for A Pox on Your Lips Now". John Sayles movies are the funnest for some reason. The only movie title I blanked on was Time Code. I couldn't think of anything, plus my girlfriend (much more recent and with fire-red hair) had come to love these stupid title dramas and the denouement, and she could tell I was going to crash this time for the first time. "Two for Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Code", and I'm still ashamed. The only time a ticket vendor was clueless and wholly bereft of humor was when she must have got confused because it was just me and the redhead: "Three for Two Kings". The last movie I went to (a year ago!!) was The Good Shepherd, and since The Good German was showing around in the previews...
Hate crime legislation is a liberal enforcement of the 13th amendment proscription of the badges and incidents of slavery. There is a huge amount of racial, ethnic, and gay-directed violence in this country. On the other hand, when the V Tech shooter said he hated rich people, he was not targeting a suspect class. If hate crime legislation can reduce racial violence, then that benefit outweighs any infringement of on the First Amendment.
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