Can College Kids Take a Joke?
Plus, the location of this attempt at pre-emptive censorship is particularly ironic: Berkeley is where 1960s campus activism was launched with s student-led "Free Speech Movement."
A half-century later, the age of cellphone cameras and online petitions has brought a new wave of protests against speakers before they have a chance to speak -- as if people should be deprived for the own good of their right to judge speakers for themselves.
This retreat into paternalism seemed to reach a new low at the University of Virginia last weekend. Sororities went along with a mandate from the National Panhellenic Conference to avoid the weekend's fraternity activities to protect their "safety and well-being." The women went along with it but, by all reports, were not happy to be told they couldn't judge such matters for themselves.
I have long been annoyed by the notion that women and minorities are too fragile and vulnerable to laugh at themselves or advocate for themselves in a free-flowing spirit of democratic debate and conversation.
We should respond to objectionable speech with more speech, not by trying to silence speech with pre-emptive censorship before any speech can be delivered.
Chris Rock says he began to notice about eight years ago that comedy on campus "is not as much fun as it used to be."
Media interviews with other stand-up comics found some similar reactions, particularly on such sensitive topics as race. White people, men and Christians tend to be safe targets. But, as one comedian told the Christian Science Monitor, to talk about sensitive topics like minorities, "a comic has to earn it."
Public tolerance was tested past the breaking point when cellphone video of Michael Richards' impromptu N-word tirade at a Los Angeles comedy club wound up on YouTube, ruining his career.
But as Rock says, comedy is the one art form that is being created, polished and refined even as it is being performed. Great art often comes from very raw beginnings. We lose something valuable in our society if we forget how to take a joke.
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E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.
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