Bob Barr

Careful what you say
Since when did nasty words become a war crime?

by Bob Barr as published in the Creative Loafing
Thursday, December 11, 2003

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never hurt me.

My mom repeated the old adage with some frequency during my formative years (we won't get into how long ago that period lasted). Usually, she said it when one of my siblings or I had been the target of teasing.

After a period of adolescent soul-searching (also known as pouting), I came to appreciate the wisdom of the saying: Actions are more important than words, and mere words, even if designed to cause pain, don't rise to the same level as acts of violence.

That was then -- back when common sense prevailed, "political correctness" wasn't even a gleam in the eye of some Ivy League sociologist, and "sensitivity" was a term used exclusively by scientists to describe how certain substances responded to certain physical stimuli.

This is now -- when every word used by every person, no matter how young the user and no matter the context in which the words are uttered or the location of their utterance, must be parsed by ubiquitous language police to determine if they meet the strict but always evolving demands of political correctness and sensitivity.

And it doesn't stop at national borders.

In the world of 2003, unlike the world of 1953, words aren't just being used as the basis for punishment. In a recent decision by a United Nations tribunal, words have become the international legal equivalent of a crime. And not just any crime, but a "war crime."

A little-noticed decision by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda held last week that "hate speech" itself -- in this case, words allegedly broadcast over a government radio station urging the killing of rival tribes -- constituted a war crime. While the facts of that particular case very properly should form the basis for a prosecution for inciting murder or conspiracy, the holding went much further by focusing on the words themselves as constituting the crime.

"Whoa. Hold on here," you might say. "Since when did words get lumped together with genocide and torture?" The roots of the answer to that question lie not in some far off land such as Rwanda, but here in America, in our communities and schools.

Just the other day, a 7-year-old boy in Louisiana was punished for using the word "gay" (to describe a lesbian relationship involving his mother) during a recess discussion with one of his classmates. Leaving aside the question of why our 7-year-olds even know about homosexual relationships and why they are discussing such things during a recess, why should a kid be punished for using such a word?

You also might recall the 14-year-old student near Atlanta, who recently was suspended for writing in her personal diary about a dream involving a school shooting. The diary was snatched from her, read by the teacher and considered by the school administration, which then meted out the severe punishment of suspension (rescinded only in the face of public outcry).

Cases involving school kids being punished for what they say in private, on their personal computers, after school hours and not on school property, are making the news with increasing frequency. But it's part of a larger epidemic. This new pastime of government -- to use its power to browbeat, punish, silence and even imprison individuals of all ages for using the "wrong" language -- represents a frightening effort to intimidate the discussion and spread of ideas. And it's exerting an insidious dumbing-down of Western civilization.

With today's expanding list of prohibited words, would William Shakespeare have a chance to awe audiences through his liberal use of bawdy dialogue and sonnets? With the power granted school boards (and the groveling for dollars practiced by major textbook publishers), will students ever again learn the evils of slavery by reading Huckleberry Finn?

If present trends continue, potential Steinbecks, Salingers and Sinclairs won't get to paint word pictures of the good, the bad and the ugly. The words they'd choose to describe the bad or the ugly would be deemed "inappropriate," no matter the context.

This is not to say that some words, when used to incite or to deliberately move others to commit physical acts of violence, shouldn't form the basis for prosecutions. But the notion that the use of offensive words themselves is criminal takes us down a far different and very close-minded path.

Here's the irony: Even as language police vigilantly snoop in students' book bags, books and computers for bad words or references to bad thoughts, the commercial airwaves are filled with the raunchy, obscene and frequently violent words of such cultural icons as Ozzy Osbourne, U2's Bono and rap music's Eminem. Their utterances, no matter how provocative or profane, are deemed protected speech.

Thank goodness we have our priorities straight.