A Cautionary Tale: The First Amendment, Good Taste and Writers’ Rights

This arti­cle is a cau­tion­ary tale for all bloggers.

Back­ground

A sit­u­a­tion in the blo­gos­phere sad­dens me, but illus­trates, yet again, the need for blog­gers to deal with each other in good faith and with integrity and respect. This is a topic I wrote about recently, con­clud­ing that we all have a respon­si­bil­ity to post respon­si­bly.

I recently sub­mit­ted “Thir­teen Rea­sons I Wish You Could Have Known My Father” to a blog car­ni­val. I pre­vi­ously par­tic­i­pated in one of the “proprietor’s” car­ni­vals, e-mailed casu­ally with him on a cou­ple of occa­sions and recently, as you saw from the “sticky” post that appeared here for a few days, agreed to host an upcom­ing edition.

Last evening, I received an e-mail from the indi­vid­ual host­ing the cur­rent edi­tion of the car­ni­val, let­ting me know that the post announc­ing the car­ni­val had been pub­lished. So, anx­ious to read all of the entries, I vis­ited the host’s blog. I was stunned when I saw the intro­duc­tion to my arti­cle. It bore no resem­blance to the ver­biage I included when I sub­mit­ted my entry and was, in fact, com­pletely nonsensical.

So I politely e-mailed the host and said, “I am con­fused by your descrip­tion of my post … I have no idea what the rest of that ver­biage means.”

I fully admit that I was not pre­pared for his hos­tile and defen­sive response. He also let me know that he changed the intro­duc­tion to my arti­cle to read as follows:

Col­lo­quium is the site of JHS, Esq., from Liv­able, Lov­able Lodi, Cal­i­for­nia. Thir­teen Rea­sons Why I Wish You Could Have Known My Father is her meme. My answer to this ques­tion, if I were doing this meme, would be that if you knew my father you would know why I think he was a spine­less [vul­gar­ity deleted].

I jok­ingly tell peo­ple that, given my pro­fes­sion, not much shocks me. But I was taken aback when I saw what that intro­duc­tion to my memo­r­ial trib­ute to my father.

Con­trol­ling Principles

I believe in and and am sworn to uphold the First Amend­ment. I would “defend to the death” any blogger’s right to free speech.

How­ever, not all rights are absolute. Rather, the exer­cise of cer­tain rights must be tem­pered by rea­son­able­ness which is why, for instance, although Amer­i­cans pos­sess the right to free speech, you can­not law­fully yell “fire” in a crowded audi­to­rium nor can you joke in the secu­rity line at the air­port about high­jack­ings or ter­ror­ist acts com­mit­ted upon airliners.

Writ­ers also have rights and when we sub­mit our posts/articles to the var­i­ous blog car­ni­vals, we need to be clear about what we will and, most impor­tantly, will not allow to be done with our writ­ten product.

The two com­pet­ing rights at issue — blog­gers’ First Amend­ment right to free speech vs. the right of car­ni­val par­tic­i­pants and guest blog­gers to retain con­trol over their writ­ten prod­uct, as well as the man­ner in which that prod­uct is advertised/promoted — are of equal value and importance.

In this instance, the car­ni­val rules were brief, but included this state­ment: “[N]o pro­fan­ity in blog titles.” There­fore, it never occurred to me that pro­fan­ity would be uti­lized in the blurb intro­duc­ing my submission.

I am not a prude, but I sim­ply will not tol­er­ate hav­ing my writ­ing — or my par­ents’ mem­o­ries — asso­ci­ated with what I deem to be filth. That is my right. And this is where the “good taste” com­po­nent comes into play. Don’t ask me to define “good taste” because to do so is as dif­fi­cult as nail­ing Jell-O to a wall or herd­ing cats. (You will recall that the U.S. Supreme Court could not define “obscen­ity.”) “Good taste” is a com­pletely sub­jec­tive and fluid con­cept, chang­ing and evolv­ing in accor­dance with the par­tic­u­lar­ized cir­cum­stances being evaluated.

In this instance, I sub­mit­ted a post that I drafted in honor of my father on the occa­sion of the fif­teenth anniver­sary of his death. I wrote from my heart about a man who, as I described therein, was “a gen­tle­man who would never use foul or dis­taste­ful lan­guage in the pres­ence of his wife or daugh­ters — or allow any­one else to do so.” In fact, my arti­cle includes the fol­low­ing story:

I remem­ber once bring­ing a video­tape of “The Ver­dict” over to my par­ents’ house. I really thought they would enjoy watch­ing it. But the begin­ning scene is the last one they saw. When Jack Warden’s char­ac­ter comes to the office of Paul Newman’s char­ac­ter to find him passed out and late for a court appear­ance, Jack War­den drops sev­eral f-bombs in the process of rous­ing Paul Newman’s char­ac­ter. My father got up, pulled the tape out of the vcr, and told me in no uncer­tain terms that we would not be watch­ing the rest of the movie because of that lan­guage. I was sur­prised and, at first, annoyed because they were going to miss one of my all-time favorite movies. But I respected his feel­ings on the subject.

Obvi­ously, were my father alive today, he would not, for a cou­ple of very spe­cific rea­sons, be pleased to have an arti­cle that was writ­ten in his honor entwined and asso­ci­ated with the com­men­tary included by the car­ni­val host.

The first is, of course, the lan­guage used. It is not, in my esti­ma­tion or my father’s, in good taste. It con­sti­tutes vul­gar­ity which is entirely gra­tu­itous. Blog­gers are free, of course, to use foul lan­guage or obscen­ity in their writ­ing. Read­ers are free to avoid the sites of blog­gers who do so. It is pre­cisely like the inci­dent I described with my par­ents: My father had every right to remove the video­tape and refuse to watch the movie in his own home where he estab­lished and enforced the rules. It’s a beau­ti­ful sys­tem, isn’t it?

I am of the opin­ion that writ­ers too-frequently use pro­fan­ity and vul­gar­ity because they either have lim­ited skills and are inca­pable of con­vey­ing their thoughts with­out using such ter­mi­nol­ogy as a crutch or, worse, are lazy and can’t be both­ered express­ing them­selves in a more sophis­ti­cated man­ner. Either way, I am not inter­ested in read­ing such writ­ing and will not have my efforts asso­ci­ated with such writing.

Sug­gested Guide­lines for Blog Car­ni­val Hosts

What is the role of a blog car­ni­val host? If you host blog carnival(s), do you spell out the duties of the host and host site? Do you have spe­cific para­me­ters gov­ern­ing the man­ner in which sub­mis­sions are to be han­dled, i.e., what kinds of posts will or will not be accepted, how the car­ni­val host should han­dle submission(s) that he/she feels are not in keep­ing with the stan­dards and guide­lines he/she main­tains for his/her own site, how the car­ni­val will be publicized/promoted?

It is my belief that the pur­pose of a blog car­ni­val is to spot­light writ­ers’ efforts. There­fore, although blog­gers have the right to speak freely, it is the blog host’s job to sac­ri­fice, for that one post only, his/her own plat­form in favor of pro­mot­ing — in a wholly pos­i­tive and empow­er­ing man­ner — the work of the car­ni­val participants.

I do not believe it is appro­pri­ate for a car­ni­val host to inject his/her opin­ions, feel­ings or crit­i­cisms when intro­duc­ing the car­ni­val sub­mis­sions. Those blurbs should be drafted so as to encour­age read­ers to visit the par­tic­i­pants’ sites and read what they have to say. There­fore, they are adver­tise­ments and should be drafted as such, reflect­ing respect for and under­stand­ing of the arti­cle being high­lighted, as well as the author(s). When an adver­tis­ing agency agrees to design a pro­mo­tional cam­paign for a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct, the focus is on that prod­uct. There is no dis­cus­sion of how the agency’s per­son­nel feel about the prod­uct or any com­peti­tors in the mar­ket­place. The agency is hired to do one thing: Come up with a cam­paign that will make the pub­lic want to buy the prod­uct. So it is, in my opin­ion, with blog car­ni­vals: It is the host’s job to make his/her read­ers want to read the par­tic­i­pants’ sub­mis­sions. Noth­ing more. Noth­ing less.

I found the blog host’s intro­duc­tion to my trib­ute to my dead father, which demon­strated only dis­re­spect and con­tempt for his own father, to be in extremely poor taste. Worse, it detracted from and demeaned not just the pur­pose and intent of my writ­ing, but of the blog car­ni­val itself. That is my opin­ion and it will remain so no mat­ter how many insults the blog car­ni­val host and “pro­pri­etor” wish to fling at me or how many vile and vul­gar names they choose to child­ishly call me via e-mail or on their own blogs.

Civil­ity, Respect for Each Oth­ers’ Dif­fer­ent View­points and “Blog­ging Responsibly”

Unfor­tu­nately, when I insisted my sub­mis­sion either be removed from the car­ni­val or the offen­sive ver­biage (cited above) deleted, the host devolved into insults and name-calling. How­ever, to his credit, he did remove any ref­er­ence to me or Col­lo­quium from his blog which is a com­pletely sat­is­fac­tory result.

And what of the blog car­ni­val “pro­pri­etor”? I thought that, after read­ing the host’s deri­sive e-mails to me, he would agree that the host was out of line, abu­sive and unprofessional.

Sadly, that individual’s behav­ior was less hon­or­able than that of the host. He saw fit to post “Com­plain­ing, Whin­ing And [sic] [offen­sive, gender-specific, misog­y­nis­tic term deleted] About A [sic] Car­ni­val Post Like A [sic] Spoiled Brat. Don’t Do It. I Don’t Want To [sic] Hear About It.” In addi­tion to the hate speech included in the title, the body of the post con­tains vul­gar­i­ties that will never be pub­lished on this site.¹

Sug­gested Guide­lines for Blog­gers When Con­tem­plat­ing Whether to Par­tic­i­pate in a Blog Carnival

Blog­gers should exer­cise cau­tion when sub­mit­ting orig­i­nal work to var­i­ous blog carnivals.

* Visit the host site at least a cou­ple of times and make sure that you will be com­fort­able hav­ing your name, site and writ­ten prod­uct asso­ci­ated with and linked from that blog.

* Con­tact the host if you are the least bit uncom­fort­able with his/her phi­los­o­phy and/or the host site’s con­tent. Express your con­cerns in a con­sid­er­ate and respect­ful, but firm, man­ner to assure that he/she under­stands and will respect your perspective.

* Set lim­its when sub­mit­ting your post to a blog car­ni­val. Set forth in details any lim­its you place upon the use of or link­ing to your work, politely advis­ing the host that, if the para­me­ters you have out­lined are unac­cept­able, he/she should decline to include your post in the carnival.

If, as the pro­pri­etor of the car­ni­val in ques­tion has now posted, the host advises that “[t]here is not and there will not be any limit on the free­dom a host has to cre­ate their car­ni­val,” you can make an informed deci­sion about whether or not you wish to risk par­tic­i­pat­ing, keep­ing in mind the twenty-first cen­tury ver­sion of the age-old pro­viso: “Buyer Blog­ger beware.”

My stan­dards and guide­lines here at Col­lo­quium are straight-forward and easy to fol­low. I strive, at all times, to blog respon­si­bly and chal­lenge all other blog­gers to do the same. There will never be any pro­fan­ity, vul­gar­ity, obscen­ity or hate-speech pub­lished here or in the com­ments. No excep­tions. I agree with David Culpep­per of Pure Blog­ging who, in estab­lish­ing guide­lines for guest blog­gers, clas­si­fies the use of pro­fan­ity as “unac­cept­able con­tent,” not­ing “You can make your point with­out the use of profanity.”

You have a right, of course, to define pre­cisely what “respon­si­bly” means for you and your blog, within the bounds of rea­son­able­ness, just as I define “respon­si­bly” in the man­ner I see fit. We don’t have to agree. We don’t have to define “good taste,” “vul­gar­ity,” “pro­fan­ity,” “obscen­ity” or any sim­i­lar terms in the same fash­ion. We can agree to dis­agree and co-exist peace­fully in the blogosphere.

I will sleep well tonight know­ing that my father would be proud and approve of my stan­dards and com­mend me for stand­ing up for them. In these mat­ters, thanks for your wis­dom, coun­sel and the quiet but clear exam­ple you set, Papa.

Track­posted to Out­side the Belt­way, The Vir­tu­ous Repub­lic, Right Truth, The Pet Haven Blog, Stuck On Stu­pid, The Amboy Times, Lean­ing Straight Up, Pur­su­ing Holi­ness, third world county, stikN­stein… has no mercy, Nuke’s news and views, Pirate’s Cove, The Pink Flamingo, Church and State, Right Pun­dits, http://morewhat.com/wordpress/?p=1805, 123beta, DeMe­di­a­cratic Nation, Adam’s Blog, On the Hori­zon, Weblog­gin, Cao’s Blog, The Bull­win­kle Blog, Con­ser­v­a­tive Cat, Diary of the Mad Pigeon, The Crazy Rants of Saman­tha Burns, The World Accord­ing to Carl, Blue Star Chron­i­cles, High Desert Wan­derer, Gone Hol­ly­wood, and The Yan­kee Sailor, thanks to Link­fest Haven Deluxe.

1. Update: He has revised the post a few times and each time it becomes more vile, serv­ing only to demean its author since it is noth­ing more than an ad hominem attack upon me and com­pletely devoid of any rea­soned argu­ment or asser­tion of well-founded facts. Therein, he calls me a liar, appar­ently for­get­ting that attor­neys pre­serve evi­dence which, in this instance, takes the form of e-mail trans­mis­sions read­ily avail­able for inspection.

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