LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
LETTERS to the Editor Readers Respond to Hentoff on Andy Rooney Nat Hentoff suggests ("Pyrrhic Victory," Who's on First?, May issue) that a person—Andy Rooney, for instance—has a First Amendment...
...Greg Gordon Los Angeles, California Nat Hentoffs commentary on the Andy Rooney affair contains the same factual errors about the institutional "gay" role in those events, and the same anti-gay bias, that have infected virtually all reporting and commentary about the issue in the non-gay press...
...James Madison, the architect of the First Amendment, was careful to allow for no exceptions...
...Would Hentoff defend Rooney if he made similarly ignorant and violence-inducing racist statements...
...While GLAAD was in the forefront of the attempts to defenestrate Rooney, a number of gays issued public protests...
...Where does Hentoff propose to draw the proverbial line between "free speech" and "incitement to violence...
...Freedom to perpetuate ignorance and incite violence was not, last time I looked, part of the Bill of Rights...
...Many people have spoken out in defense of Andy Rooney, but what about the rights of other accused "racists" or "homophobes" who don't have access to influential friends...
...By what analysis does a man who is militantly ignorant about gay people have an absolute right to a national television forum for spreading his ignorance...
...Of course, GLAAD should not sit on its hands when it feels an injustice has been done...
...Indeed, a recent ruling by New York's highest court reversed on First Amendment grounds the conviction of a young woman for using vicious language to a retarded woman and her retarded son...
...The ruling is that the advocacy of violence is protected speech—except when two conditions occur simultaneously...
...He spoke to Rooney and to a source at CBS...
...Andy Rooney is in a highly visible position, and what he says on CBS has far greater impact than what Hentoff or I may say...
...Both groups try to suppress speech they don't like...
...A.D...
...I did not call GLAAD because I had all of its press releases, I heard its representatives on television, and so I knew its approach—exactly as it is repeated here...
...It would be full of the kinds of qualifications suggested by Gordon, and the country would be very quiet indeed...
...I agree entirely with A.D...
...Would I have the constitutional right to demand equal time in GLAAD's publications...
...Civil libertarians (who are ready to support people accused of offending traditional values) stand impotent and terrified at the thought of offending a protected minority group (especially blacks), regardless of how dangerous and unconstitutional the lat-ter's demands are...
...While Hentoff is surely right when he asserts that the First Amendment imposes a general obligation on CBS and other media outlets to provide a forum for a wide variety of ideas, he is wrong when he insists that it specifically requires CBS to provide Rooney with a nationally televised forum for his militant homophobia...
...The new McCarthyism (in which "racist" replaces "communist") is a perfect instrument of oppression, enabling both government and private employers to get rid of labor activists, political dissidents, and others who make them uncomfortable...
...Yes, Hentoff would defend Rooney if he made racist statements...
...It had every right to try...
...The fact that homophobia is judged to be somehow "less offensive" than racism says a lot about how far our so-called civilized society has to go...
...Excusing the dissemination of harmful information under the guise of "free speech" is questionable, which may be why (as Hentoff laments) civil libertarians did not leap to Rooney's defense...
...It does not say except for ignorant speech or incitement to violence...
...Even before the suspension, GLAAD had reached an agreement with CBS to conduct seminars about gay and lesbian issues for its news staff...
...The First Amendment speaks of freedom of speech and of the press...
...I hardly treated the gay community as an undifferentiated mass, having printed the comment of the editor of the Advocate, the gay magazine that had printed the letter from Rooney which got him into so much trouble at CBS...
...Or sexist statements...
...I think GLAAD should have gotten equal time on CBS, but that decision is up to the editor—whether in broadcasting or print...
...Powell Madison, Wisconsin To borrow from Nat Hen-tofFs closing lines, it is Hentoff himself who might benefit from "some sensitivity training...
...But GLAAD did more than that: It tried to get Rooney off the air...
...That was what we did in the case of Andy Rooney, and we need make no apologies...
...There are many homophobes in these positions, however, and a massive imbalance between anti-gay messages and messages sympathetic to gays...
...But that's the way the free exchange of ideas works...
...A good deal of education was furthered, getting the point of view of gays across, and Rooney, to some extent, suffered from the looseness of his language and thinking...
...for one example, contributors to Out-week, the most influential gay magazine in the East...
...However, the First Amendment would never pass today as it was written then...
...According to GLAAD, that makes him a seasoned homophobic...
...All letters may be edited for clarity and conciseness...
...In any case, it makes no constitutional sense to suspend or fire anybody, since everybody who wants to can speak...
...The current intimidation and punishment of people for alleged "racist" and "sexist" remarks is a classic example of how well-intentioned censorship leads to "thought police" and "speech police...
...That editor was opposed to Rooney's suspension or any other punishment...
...By the time we met with CBS executives three weeks later, the situation had changed, and we did discuss suspension, but still only as a last resort...
...And why did Hentoff consider Rooney's apparently good personal record on race relations relevant to his piece, but not his long and easily documented history of homophobia...
...I guess I'd have to confess it has...
...To the extent that Rooney contributed to and indirectly encouraged homophobic abuse, he should be held accountable in some way...
...The gay community's institutional response to Rooney's televised misstatements about the connection between "homosexual unions" and AIDS was not spearheaded by "some gay organizations," as Hentoff claims, but by a single group, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), which has 10,000 members nationwide and chapters in eleven cities...
...This "right" means the speaker is accountable to no one and is exempt from penalty of any sort...
...Any lesser criteria would fill the jails—and not only with bigots...
...In that respect, GLAAD is not all that dissimilar from the Reverend Donald Wildmon and his American Family Foundation...
...Louis Worth Jones San Mateo, California Even Nat Hentoff doesn't know how extensively the First Amendment is being emasculated in the name of "minority" rights...
...Accordingly, we reject resorting to violence and intimidation, or appealing to government to wield its coercive power on our behalf...
...see the unanimous Supreme Court decision in this regard in Miami Publishing Co...
...On television, I heard a GLAAD spokeswoman unequivocally advocate that Rooney be fired...
...The trouble with "hate crime" statutes and university rules against "racist" speech is that they are vague enough to make a case against anyone...
...Or anti-Semitic statements...
...Enforcement becomes selective and political...
...Hentoff could have avoided the errors in his commentary by calling us...
...Rooney said that anal sex has something to do with AIDS among some people, and he found that form of sex distasteful...
...instead, we wanted a meeting with Rooney and either a public apology or rebuttal time from CBS...
...And they can try to stop what they consider to be lies...
...Currently, there is not one openly lesbian or gay national television commentator or syndicated newspaper columnist, and not a single non-gay commentator or columnist who is consistently sympathetic to the concerns of our community...
...In the meantime, it will sometimes be appropriate for us to attempt—within the limits of the law and without government help—to stop the lies people are telling about us...
...Without identifying us, Hentoff accuses us of launching a campaign to get Rooney fired...
...LETTERS to the Editor Readers Respond to Hentoff on Andy Rooney Nat Hentoff suggests ("Pyrrhic Victory," Who's on First?, May issue) that a person—Andy Rooney, for instance—has a First Amendment right to say publicly what he thinks, without regard to whether it slights or demeans another person and without regard to what one's television employer considers good taste...
...Jones is quite wrong in maintaining that only political speech is protected by the First Amendment...
...I call people when I figure they have information that has not come out...
...But we will not sit on our hands while the mass media blithely perpetuate the ignorance and prejudice against gay people that lead to violence and discrimination...
...I'm not surprised, for example, that Rooney had a history of labor activism that irked CBS...
...It is strictly a political relationship, that of constituent to the whole and vice versa...
...Some get chilled...
...In a speech to the Constitutional Rights Foundation in Los Angeles on May 7, Rooney said: "You may have wondered whether my experience has caused me to be more careful...
...Early on, we explicitly said we were not trying to get Rooney fired...
...Craig Davidson allots too much credit to himself and GLAAD...
...Failing or refusing to do so, he fell into patterns of conduct that regularly result in inaccurate and unfair coverage of the gay community by non-gay journalists: He treated our community as an undifferentiated mass, without individual or institutional identities, and he relied on non-gay sources (apparently mainstream news reports that were themselves inaccurate) for information about our activities and motivations...
...v. Tornillo (1974...
...Nat Hentoff New York, New York The editors welcome correspondence from readers on all topics, but prefer to publish letters that comment directly on material previously published in The Progressive...
...Contrary to Hentoffs baseless assertion, GLAAD is acutely awgre of the danger that legitimate efforts to reform the media may spill over into censorship...
...Instead of meeting with us, Rooney had sent to the Advocate, the national gay magazine, an obnoxious so-called apology to the lesbian and gay community, in which he described homosexual acts as repugnant and attributed homosexuality to genetic and mental defects...
...Homophobic statements, such as Andy Rooney's equating of "homosexual unions" with "premature death" in his year-end CBS-TV special, provide impetus for some, and justification for others, to physically or verbally assault lesbians and gay men...
...Does Hentoff think our constitutional rights were violated...
...GLAAD will continue to give top priority to addressing this imbalance by obtaining mainstream media access for our community...
...Constitutionally speaking, Rooney's claim to a CBS forum is no more legitimate than, say, GLAAD's...
...If he commits defamation, however, he is not exempt from penalty...
...Are the "liberals" who want to punish the "racist" Andy Rooney any less dangerous than the "patriots" who wanted to silence the "traitor" Jane Fonda...
...In a long list of cases, the courts have upheld the First Amendment rights of speech emanating from decidedly nonpolitical films, art shows, novels, etc...
...It has no relevance to the conduct of one citizen as regards another...
...American citizens are being subjected to a plague of laws and regulations that seek to outlaw any expression of "hate" and turn small confrontations into major crimes...
...Also, and I find this dismaying, Rooney became somewhat chilled...
...What the Rooney case classically illustrated is what happens when a lot of people do not sit on their hands...
...We have an office and a staff and several phones...
...Liberal guilt," especially in regard to race, has proved to be the most effective weapon the ruling elites of this nation have ever used to stifle dissent...
...GLAAD met twice with CBS executives prior to Rooney's suspension...
...His comments were denounced, rebutted, and otherwise skewered...
...why not to us...
...The line was drawn by the Supreme Court in a 1969 case, Brandenburg v. Ohio...
...This position was correctly reported on Entertainment Tonight and in TV Guide, but almost nowhere else...
...That is untrue...
...Our request for equal time was turned down...
...Craig Davidson Executive Director Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation New York, New York The author replies: As Louis Worth Jones says, I believe Andy Rooney (and everyone else) has a right to say publicly, or privately, what he thinks...
...The First Amendment deals only with rights and powers of the citizenry in relation to the governmental system of their own creation...
...Some don't...
...GLAAD launched the letter-writing campaign about Rooney...
...As for Rooney's "long and easily documented history of homophobia," that kind of polemics recalls Joe McCarthy's remarkable ability to find communists lurking in the shadows even when it was daylight...
...Powell...
...The first is that the speaker must be inciting to imminent violence (right then and there), and the second is that there must be people at the scene who are willing and able to commit that violence then and there...
...I submit that this is ludicrous and dangerous doctrine...
...Greg Gordon asks for the line between "free speech" and "incitement to violence...
Vol. 54 • August 1990 • No. 8
