A little less freedom of speech...

[Speedo]

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ed...s/2004/01/25/a_little_less_freedom_of_speech/

A little less freedom of speech

By Jeff Jacoby, 1/25/2004

IT DOESN'T take much to get slammed as a racist these days. Just ask Jennifer Cundiff.

Back in February 2001, the Southwest Airlines flight attendant was trying to coax passengers boarding a flight from Las Vegas to Kansas City to find their seats quickly so the plane could take off. "Eenie meenie minie moe," she said over the intercom, "pick a seat, we gotta go."

Cute and harmless, right? Not to two black passengers, it wasn't. Louise Sawyer and Grace Fuller, who are sisters, interpreted Cundiff's couplet as a racist insult and said they were sure it was meant to humiliate them. It was so upsetting, Fuller claimed, that it triggered a seizure and left her bedridden for days. Eventually the women sued, charging Southwest with violating their civil rights and inflicting physical and emotional distress.

If you're scratching your head in bewilderment, you aren't alone. Unless you're old enough to remember flappers and speakeasies, you probably don't know that the words that originally followed "eenie, meenie, minie moe" were "catch a ****** by the toe." Cundiff, who was 22, certainly didn't know. Like most of us, she grew up saying "catch a tiger by the toe" -- she says she had never heard the older, uglier version.

Ah, but innocence offers scant protection against contemporary racial victimology. Neither does common sense nor the right to free speech. Any of those should have been reason enough for US District Judge Kathryn Vratil to summarily bounce the lawsuit as frivolous. Instead, she ruled that Cundiff's little rhyme "could be reasonably viewed as objectively racist and offensive" and said a jury would have to decide "whether Cundiff's remark was racist, or simply a benign and innocent attempt at humor."

The trial took place last week. A jury of eight deliberated for less than an hour before finding Cundiff and Southwest innocent of racism. Of course, the stewardess and the airline will not be reimbursed for the lost hours and legal fees this preposterous lawsuit has cost them. And that isn't all that they lost.

Every time a case like this occurs -- every time someone is sued or punished or forced to hire a lawyer just for expressing an opinion or making a comment that someone of a different color finds offensive, all of us are left with a little less freedom of speech. Dismayingly, such cases seem to be occurring more frequently than ever. Now and then one of these incidents draws national scorn. A few years ago, a wave of ridicule forced the mayor of Washington, D.C., to rehire an aide who had been accused of racism and forced to resign for using the word "niggardly" -- a synonym for stingy.

But most of the time, these cases end with racial correctness trumping fairness and free speech.

Consider a story out of Omaha last week. According to the Omaha World-Herald, several students at Westside High School were punished after they "plastered the school on Monday" -- Martin Luther King Day -- "with posters advocating that a white student from South Africa receive the `Distinguished African American Student Award' next year." The posters featured a picture of junior Trevor Richards, whose family moved to Omaha from Johannesburg in 1998, smiling and giving a thumbs-up.

School officials tore the posters down, apparently in response to complaints from a few black students, and denounced them as "inappropriate and insensitive." Trevor was suspended for two days, according to his mother, and two of his friends were also penalized for helping to put the posters up. A fourth student, the World-Herald reported, "was punished for circulating a petition Tuesday morning in support of the boys. The petition criticized the practice of recognizing only black student achievement with the award."

The students were punished, in other words, for expressing an opinion -- that it is wrong to create an award for which only black students can qualify. That is hardly an outlandish point of view. There are 1,843 students at Westside High, of whom fewer than 70 are black. Why should 96.2 percent of the student body be barred from a school honor on the basis of their race? Isn't that just the sort of offensive racial thinking that Dr. King condemned?

A message is not "inappropriate and insensitive" merely because some people complain about it -- not even if those people aren't white, and not even if the message is politically incorrect. The real outrage at Westside High last week was that four students were disciplined for exercising a freedom guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. Other students may not have liked what they had to say. That didn't entitle them to suppress their speech.

The First Amendment says nothing about a right not to be offended. The risk of finding someone else's speech offensive is the price each of us pays for our own free speech. Free people don't run to court -- or to the principal -- when they encounter a message they don't like. They answer it with one of their own.

 

[FredLC]

While I too consider such lawsuit utterly ridiculous, I think making a case about people not suing when they feel abused "because the person may be over-reacting" is a foolish take on the issue.

If the person lacks the common sense to tell, pointing it to him/her is the very job of the trial. We cannoy decide previously that the opinion is so likely to be silly that we don't need to hear it. Specially because cases like this are all about the context.

Besides, the judge's acceptance of the case being portraited as lack of common sense is missleading to say the least. Truth is that, if USA legal system is anything like Brazilian, a judge will very rarely dismiss a case, on it's merit, whithout giving it a chance of trial. Specially in such a subjective case.

So I don't see the problem. A sad misunderstanding ends up in a frivolous lawsuit dismissed in less than one hour. Looks like the perfect functioning of a free legal system to me.

Yeah, because, you see... the right to seek compensation you don't deserve, and fail, is just like the right to say nonsense, and be considered a fool:

I disagree with those who do it, but I will defend with my life the right of doing so.

Regards .

 

[Shadylookin]

i always thought it was tiger, guess you learn something everyday. I think that would be more age discrimination if you were offended considering were going back to prohibition days. I always thought racist comments still were allowed under the bill of rights, but it goes both ways if someone is saying something that offends you, you can always offend them.

 

[eyrei]

Some people think they can get easy money if someone calls them a name, and are actually looking for it. Of course, they have reason to believe this, as it happens on occasion.

 

[Pongui]

Curse that poison spraying Jeff Jacoby! Killed those words for me, he did. That article does more harm than good.

 

[The Yankee]

Stupid. I heard about this some time ago. Very stupid. Sorry you had to go through the racism like that, but come on. Soon enough, all sentences starting with "Hey" will be outlawed because one person heard "Hey you .... (racist comment here)."

Perhaps the person filing the suit will have to pay all the costs....we can only dream in a case like this.

 

[amadeus]

Anyone who is that dumb should be kicked out of this country immediatley. I'm willing to bet their whole lives revolve around leeching off of other people.

 

[Speedo]

If the person lacks the common sense to tell, pointing it to him/her is the very job of the trial. We cannoy decide previously that the opinion is so likely to be silly that we don't need to hear it. Specially because cases like this are all about the context.

Why should the "accused" have to lose time at work, have to pay legal fees and etc just because someone lacks common sense?

If people want to let the court decide whether they're stupid or not, fine, but there should some penalty on the idiots.

 

[Goober]

Wow, I never woulda thunk about the "Eenie Meenie" thing. I mean, I learned it to be Tiger. Well, I do think that people have just gotta stop using the courts to solve ALL of their problems, we have gotta rely on other forms of conflict resolving. At this rate, there will be more lawyers then Humans (kidding, kidding . . . )

 

[The Person]

I wonder if anybody here at CFC will sue another CFC'er if he/she posts something offending here in OT... I can imagine the headlines...

 

[carlosMM]

Americans follow the letter of the law, not the intent. Why they do is a mystery to me. And they especially love to do it when they smell insults 8that often aren't there) or when they heard the 'clink, clink, rustle rustle' of bills and coins.....




as for the racism: many non-whites I met in the US actually DID feel inferior, and they DID smell racism everywhere because that was how they had been trained.

Do not think, cry foul! - how absurd!

 

[Aphex_Twin]

Well, of course Fred would not oppose a trial of such sort - it's his livelyhood


All that aside, political correctness is a two blade sword...

 

[Stapel]

Anything can be taken to court! But, hopefully, the court will conclude it is nonsense and tell the idiots to pay for the costs of the process (at least partially).

BTW: When I was 8 or 9, I knew a Dutch song:
Ienie mienie mannie moo, lalallalalala. As up today, I didn't even know it origined from English.......

What is the idea of the song anyway? Escaped slave hunters song?

 

[col]

I've never heard the tiger version. The song is used as a selection/elimination game.

 

[FredLC]

Originally posted by Speedo


Why should the "accused" have to lose time at work, have to pay legal fees and etc just because someone lacks common sense?

If people want to let the court decide whether they're stupid or not, fine, but there should some penalty on the idiots.

Most certainly. Here in Brazil, it's called "sucumbência", there is, the person that filled the lawsuit will pay for all it's costs. Also, the person who won can get a bonus called "lawyers pay" that can go up to 20% of the value required in the original lawsuit, depending on how much the judge consider to be rightful in each particular case.

Also, if proven that the person did know that he/she was wrong, and filled the lawsuit without any good faith, but only to use the legal system to purpooses to which it should not serve, a person can also get a penalty called "litigation in bad faith", that can also be as high as 20% of the financial value of the case.

So there you have it. Do not forbidden people from exercize their stupidity - as it's a thin line to also start forbidding people from exercizing their rights.

Just make sure that if they do, they will not get away that easily.

Regards .

 

[FredLC]

Originally posted by Aphex_Twin
Well, of course Fred would not oppose a trial of such sort - it's his livelyhood


All that aside, political correctness is a two blade sword...

Not really.

My life project is to become a judge, I am preparing to that.

Also, I work as employed lawyer to a bank.

Hence, I have a fixed pay regardless of what lawsuits I work on, and I don't plan to change that in my future (as judges pay are also fixed). Quite the contrary, if all the silly punitive damage cases I get to have to fight against were eliminated, my job would be damn easier.

I am shooting in my own feet here, not the other way around. I have never started a suit of this sort, I was in the defense every single time.

A price I pay for my intellectual honesty.

regards .

 

[Stapel]

Originally posted by col
I've never heard the tiger version. The song is used as a selection/elimination game.

My brain cells holding useless info from the old days send this info forward.

Iene miene mutte (that means nothing)
Tien pond grutten (ten pounds 'grutten', no sure what grutten are, I think it means 'stuff')
Tien pond kaas (ten pounds cheese, hey its a dutch version)
Iene miene mutte is the baas (is the boss).

This song is used among kids when they need to pick someone from a group. For each next word, point to the next kid in the circle. At the end the 'baas' (boss) is selected.

 

[WickedSmurf]

I just love reading about such silly law suits! "Land of the Free" only as long as you are politically correct IN ABSURDUM!

 

[Lifeblood]

You can't blame people for trying to make a quick buck. They just see other people winning these ludicrous cash settlements and subsequently jump like Flipper when opportunity presents itself. Why can't the accused just go ahead and countersue for all the cash they plowed into legal fees? Surely this can be done to discourage people from proceeding with insane lawsuits like this.

 

[Brewster]

Land of the free (money) and home of the lawsuit.

Freedom of speech (just watch what you say) - Ice T