Gruel

By Crispin Sartwell

"Martin Luther King was a ho."

That's one of the several extremely contentious statements made by Eddie, the curmudgeon played by Cedric the Entertainer in the wonderful movie "Barbershop." The movie has been condemned by Al Sharpton and spokespersons for Jesse Jackson ("f*** Jesse Jackson") and Rosa Parks ("Rosa Parks did nothing but sit her tired ass down.")

Eddie says that there are three things that black people have to admit: the Rosa Parks thing, that Rodney King deserved to be beaten, and that O.J. did it.

He is roundly hooted down by the whole cast.

The range of opinions that can be expressed in the media, even in a fictional context, is tiny. In a country that supposedly will fight to the death for freedom, the actual constraints on speech and are extreme.

There are certain pieces of common wisdom, certain mechanical forms of words that are chanted in praise of figures such as King, that are absolutely required out of every person, as though we were muttering phrases out of Mao's little red book.

These catechisms are inculcated starting in kindergarten, as our kids run through the gauntlet of pc history months and ridiculous hagiographies.

I am going to try to get through this article without autonomically disavowing Eddie's sentiments. But even to report in quotation marks the remarks of a movie character is very nearly impossible in a daily newspaper. And even if I defend the movie, I will be expected to distance myself from the sentiments expressed.

What I'm saying is this: you can enforce conformity, stupidity, mediocrity by means other than government censorship. You can cut off debate, and hence preclude arriving at truth, by informal constraints. You can silence people for no reason at all other than your demand that they agree to mutter your pet cliches.

That progressives are at least as narrow-minded, humorless, and dictatorial at heart as conservatives is obvious. The pincer effects a narrowing of public debate to nearly nothing. Acceptable opinions on most issues are nearly identical to one another and are infested by a deep fear and emptiness.

Now I find *that* offensive. When a newspaper, in a series of bromides drawn from his own speeches (which are in turn written by pollsters), endorses Al Gore, I am offended. When everyone condemns Eminem for speaking his mind, I am offended ("Now the FCC won't let me be or let me be me."). When Trent Lott gets up and mutters his claptrap, I am offended. But I expect to be offended, and no one has the right not to be offended.

And I do not demand that these people shut up. If you want to intone the common wisdom in exactly the same words as everyone else, go for it. If you stopped thinking twenty years ago, I can't jumpstart your brain.

The teaching of American history and social science to schoolchildren has been reduced almost entirely to gruel, usually disingenuous. And then that sort of dishonesty is enforced on adult discourse on every possible subject, to the unspeakable impoverishment of public discourse.

Show a little guts. Stop telling people what to say.

Crispin Sartwell teaches philosophy at the Maryland Institute College of Art.