One of the finest comedy movies ever made was the Mel Brooks classic “Blazing Saddles.” It’s a cult classic that’s still aired on TV today. The film’s dialogue is riddled with racist, sexist, bigoted speech. The “N” word is used 17 times. Yet, 36 years after the film’s debut the “N” word is “bleeped” whenever it’s broadcast on television. It isn’t because the movie was insensitive to racism in 1974. Quite the opposite. The bigotry is an intentional punch line at the expense of the bigoted. Sensitivity to mere words has neutered an extraordinarily important commentary on race in film.
Mel Brooks, like so many entertainers of his era made his living skewering racial, religious, ethnic, and social mores. Brooks, a Jew, was quite fond of poking fun of his heritage. His movies have lampooned Hitler, Nazis, and the Holocaust. It makes the “N” word seem like Sesame Street.
Have you ever watched or listened to the Friar’s Club or Dean Martin celebrity roasts? One of the most famous “roast masters” was legendary comic Don Rickles. While roasting then Governor Ronald Reagan, Rickles proclaimed it was “his people” that got Reagan elected. When roasting Sammy Davis Jr. he said “We all have our differences. Dean’s Catholic, I’m Jewish, Sammy, you’re black. I’m sorry.”
Again, these are tame examples, mind you.
One of my favorite recordings is “Frank, Dean, and Sammy Live at the Sands” during one of their famous club appearances in Vegas. Martin lifted Davis in the air and thanked “the Jews for this award.” Yes, Sammy Davis Jr. was not only black, but also Jewish which meant twice the punch lines. In the same show Frank asked Dean, “How do you make a fruit cordial?” “I dunno,” replied Dean. “Be nice to him I guess.”
For better or worse, you couldn’t perform as a mainstream entertainer, musician, or filmmaker and get away with many of these punch lines today. Remember, I didn’t say cable. I said mainstream.
In the last couple of years, in fact, words have become heavily scrutinized. What’s the context? Is it funny? Is it inappropriate? Who gets to decide? It’s gone beyond what the late George Carlin called the “seven dirty words.” Just about any physical anomaly, condition, religion, or description is receiving heavy scrutiny. For a talk show host and columnist like me, that’s a troubling trend.
Anyone with an appreciation of our freedom to speak and write must be cautious. Our discomfort cannot manifest itself into censorship. Even if we detest what we hear.
The recent comments of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel were infuriating to many, but for different reasons. For Sarah Palin, Emmanuel’s use of the word “retarded” elicited an emotional response. The mother of a child with Down syndrome, Palin’s heart leapt in defense of her child and a special needs community she feels she represents. It was an understandable, though perhaps hasty reaction.
When the Fox animated sitcom “Family Guy” wrote an entire episode based around a character with Down syndrome, Palin was pulled in further. She was boxed in. She’d already addressed Emmanuel’s comment, and now she was being pushed to comment on a sitcom plot. Palin criticized the show. Days later, it was revealed the voice actress that played the animated character actually had Down syndrome herself. The actress spoke out in the New York Times telling Palin to “lighten up” and that she did not speak for everyone with special needs. The entire episode was a brilliantly orchestrated trap by the “Family Guy” staff, and unfortunately, Governor Palin took the bait.
Harry Reid’s recent “off the record” comments calling President Obama a “light skinned” black man with “no negro dialect,” was another test of the speech police. This time, Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steel, a black man, called for Reid’s resignation. Most liberals including the President rushed to defend Reid and the episode is already history.
For most people, it’s not simply the words of Emmanuel, or Reid, or sitcoms that offend. It’s the double standard. It’s the spirit in which they’re indented. Reid was cynically calculating and using race as an election ploy. Emmanuel was mean spirited, branding his critics “retarded.” Family Guy was trying to pick a fight with Sarah Palin for publicity, not to be funny. (And the show was not funny, incidentally.) The left calls Americans who assemble to protest big government “tea baggers.” This is a vulgar sexual term used by the left to marginalize and attack those with whom they don’t agree politically. Not good natured ribbing.
I don’t use “retarded,” “N-words,” or “teabagger” in my vocabulary. I personally find them objectionable and uncomfortable. Unlike the left, however I’m fine to simply ignore them. Liberals words shouldn’t be banned. No words should. The maddening hypocrisy, of course, is the sanctimonious crusade in which the left engages when one of their political enemies runs afoul of their “approved words” list.
Conservatives aren’t in the word-censorship business. We’re content to let one’s character do the talking. Americans are savvy and can hear the intent of words. They know when they’re meant to make you laugh or inform you. They know when they’re meant to be cynical and deceptive. And they know when they’re used to be hateful.
Mel Brooks used free speech to ridicule free speech. Hate speech, turned on itself though ridicule, is the strongest, smartest kind of free speech.
36 years later, liberals insist Brooks’ speech be censored as to not offend. It is weak and it is certainly not smart.
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