So many people have raved about Jon Stewart's and Stephen Colbert's "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" in Washington, D.C., that it might appear unseemly to criticize it -- but a few have done so and I must join that group. There is nothing in principle wrong with their goals, but their efforts suffer from one serious flaw: they fetishize "civility" and seem to be trying to place it above all other possible values. That's not merely mistaken, it's ultimately immoral.
Civility is important, but it's not more important that basic moral decency. Criticizing the "incivility" of those who fight against unethical, immoral, illegal, and unjust practices makes one complicit in those practices. You can't fight indecency with civility; when you place civility above moral decency, you cease being part of the solution and become part of the problem. Which do Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert want to be?
In his original call to action, Stewart lumped together the Tea Party Movement with 9-11 Truthers and anti-war groups like Code Pink. Later Stewart dubbed Belgian protesters demonstrating against state austerity measures "lunatics" on par with Tea Party activists who screech from the screen, "The only good communist is a dead communist." But by equating high-pitched tone with extremist politics, he plunks an unreasonable correlation at the center of his plea for reason. This logic touts the tone and tactics of the messenger in order to discount the message.
Apparently, if you sport a suit and advocate unequivocally unreasonable practices like waterboarding, but do so in a friendly, down-home way using "your indoor voice," you may well escape Stewart's incisive wit. However, should you dip your hands in fake blood and attend a congressional hearing in order to make the completely reasonable argument that foreign wars are wasting precious lives and squandering scarce funds, you can expect to have the comedian slot you in the nutjob category.
Actually, there are quite reasonable reasons why protesters have become louder and more creative with their tactics. Over the last few decades, the slow, cold institutionalization of protest has dulled the knife-edge of dissent. Obtaining permits to exercise one's First Amendment rights have become par for the protest course. Mass mobilizations on the National Mall have fallen into the humdrum rut of gathering, rallying, marching, and scattering.
Meanwhile, the wheels of democracy have been greased by an ever-increasing flow of special-interest cash, proliferating the perception that our elected leaders have become pawns to their donors. In order to get attention from these leaders-as well as from the mass media-activists have been forced to amp up their volume and their innovation. After all, if it isn't new it isn't news. All this has led to the high-decibel activism Stewart and his supporters have come to loathe.
Source: Common Dreams
Civility is simply politeness -- being civil means not using rude, coarse language, personal attacks, and so forth. Decency is a matter of upholding minimal moral standards. Although there is much disagreement on moral issues, there is usually widespread agreement on moral minimums which constitute basic decency: don't spread lies about people in order to ruin their reputations, don't cause unnecessary suffering in others, etc.
Atheists are uncivil for arguing that society might be better off with less religion or even no religion, but religious believers can defend the indecent proposition that religion and theism are somehow critical for morality, civic ethics, and democracy. Progressives are uncivil for pushing for an end to imperialism, war, or the corporatization of politics but conservatives are acceptable if they defend torture and poverty with a "civil" tone of voice. Abu Ghraib wasn't a failure of civility, it was a failure of decency. Assassination programs don't suffer from a lack of civility, they suffer from a lack of decency.
I don't think it's a coincidence that atheists are targets of similar complaints to what we see directed at political protesters: both are lambasted for their "incivility" when they seek challenge the status quo, undermine popular consensus, and introduce unpopular ideas. Instead of rallying on behalf of "civility," Stewart and Colbert probably should have held a rally for "decency."
I think what everyone seems to be forgetting is that Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are comedians.
Austin says, ‘Stewart and Colbert probably should have held a rally for “decency.” I think that would have made their rallies not funny and not tongue-in-cheek which I think was their intent.
I disagree, Victoria. There are plenty of good comedians who can be funny and still express a strong political message. Stewart and Colbert seem to do this often, which is why this rally seems so strange to me.
On a somewhat related note, I’m bugged by the fact that they got Yusuf Islam to perform on stage. The guy has some very illiberal beliefs, including the belief that Salman Rushdie ought to be put to death for blasphemy. There’s certainly no civility in that.
Austin,
Not only do I join you in your criticism of the Stewart/Cobert pretense, I do so enthusiastically and unequivocally. I see no point in mincing words: the focus of the rallies was at its best misplaced and at its worse intentionally obtuse.
As a liberal, I am constantly astonished with the lengths to which other liberals will go in drawing false equivalencies between the utter nastiness displayed in conservative circles and the much milder invective displayed by liberals in order to stake out some imagined moral high ground “in the middle”.
From the Common Dreams article:
“In concocting a “Million Moderate March” Stewart has clumsily conflated volume with content, style with substance.”
It is ironic that the fake news shows that rake news outlets over the coals for these sorts of mistakes should be so blind to their own behavior.
One party that deserves a lot of the blame for incivility in modern discourse is the media, and I’m not just talking about idiots like Glenn Back and Rush Limbaugh.
In the 1980s, media conglomerates formed and corporations began silencing reporters. One study on NBC, after it was purchased by General Electric, was that the number of negative news items about GE dropped by half – not in a single year, but over most of a decade. It wasn’t a blip, it was a long term trend.
There are two old sayings that apply:
“If you want freedom of speech in the media, buy one.”
“The media is as liberal as the conservatives which own them.”
The phrase “the fourth estate” used to mean an independent and objective party, and later came to refer to journalism as an objective eye on society, a truth teller.
Today, the “fourth estate” refers to the winter mansions of billionaire media owners as compared to their spring, summer and fall mansions.
The media used to be watchdogs with a sacred trust. Today, they’re lapdogs that protect the sacred cows of the wealthy.
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Austin is correct here – festishizing ‘civility’ usually means kowtowing to the powerful.
In my own country, the nostrum of ‘politeness’ is often applied to the left and ‘liberals’ to stifle robust debate – meanwhile, the attack dogs of the right bay loudly and without restraint, in the name of ‘free speech.’
When Dubya visited Australia in 2003 and addressed the parliament, several politicians turned their backs while he spoke. Never mind that ‘Shrubby’ (Baby Bush) was a war criminal, the back-turners were excoriated as ‘unpatriotic’ (we’re the nation that went “all the way with LBJ”), but the ‘charge’ which stuck was that of being ‘impolite’!
But we have a long tradition of this sort of class-biased ‘politeness’ here. In about 1937 the ‘Women’s Weekly’ did a feature article on Adolf Hitler, telling women what a ‘charming man’ der Fuhrer was (the bourgeoisie of all Western countries thought the Hitler was doing a ‘good job dealing with’ Communists), while at the same time lovingly recounting the ‘barbarities’ of Stalin.