Couldn't Bring Myself To Make the Joke

Last week when I saw the headline Sex offender yells ‘Go Cowboys!’ as he’s executed, I bookmarked it instinctively, with the idea of writing some biting snark about my old home state of Texas, and the bizarre confluence of its twin addictions to football and executions.

But then I read the story, and couldn’t bring myself to make even bitter humor out of such a monstrously sad tale of loss and waste.

I’ve been thinking about it again today, because I’m proud to note that my state seems on the verge of repealing its death penalty law. Why would the story of Jesse Joe Hernandez, who murdered a 10-month-old boy and savagely beat his 4-year-old sister, and who was separately guilty of child sexual abuse, wife- and girlfriend-beating, and drug possession, and who seems to have exemplified the most irredeemable of human behavior… why would that story move me to look favorably on the repeal of the death penalty? Surely if anyone deserved to die for the way he lived, it was Jesse Joe Hernandez, right?

Except that the story of his execution doesn’t feel like a triumph for justice… not a victory for Hernandez’ victims, nor any sort of redemption. Instead, his last moments, as the lethal drugs flooded his body, were simply pathetic — “I can feel it, taste it. It’s not bad.” — and ultimately banal — “Go Cowboys!” Howevermuch Hernandez may not have deserved to live, it’s hard to see anything other than tragedy and error in his death.

And so I thank our legislators for the courage and leadership required to, in the face of the people’s emotional clinging to a false sense of retribution, turn away from the death chamber. I commend their actions to their counterparts in Texas, and in every place where the executioner still plies hir¹ trade.


¹ Not a typo; my version of a gender-neutral third-person possessive pronoun.

Arizona Blues, Part 2

Another post cribbed from my comments at Pharyngula:

Hmmm... I want to comment on some of the conversations I've seen around the web about violent imagery:

I have problems with the many "Democrats do it too" and "everybody does it" rejoinders I've heard, on a couple counts —

First, many of these arguments are based on the preponderance of military metaphors and similes in ads, speeches, and political commentary, but I think there's a material difference between standard military imagery and the very particular, personal, and specifically gun-oriented rhetoric we've been seeing from the right recently. We have a long tradition of using war and military operations metaphorically in English, not only to describe political campaigns¹, but in all walks of life. Frequently these metaphors get mashed up with sports metaphors (many of which are themselves military metaphors). Perhaps the pervasive use of military metaphors doesn't say anything too complimentary about our culture, but it's hard to argue that such commonplace, everyday usages amount to incitement: Nobody's going to shoot up a crowd because Chuck Todd says Democrats are focusing on battleground states, where they're raising armies of volunteers, using these troops (among whom I myself have occasionally been a footsoldier) in tactical assaults on key swing districts. Nor will Rachel Maddow saying that House Republicans "have chosen Health Care repeal as the hill they want to die on" likely drive the gunmen into the streets. These bits of common, well accepted figurative language are not the same as the much more indivdualized rhetoric we've observed recently, which names names, implicitly suggests specific sorts of assaults on specific people, and features not the broad conglomerative language of armies, but the particularized language of individual hunters, killers, and their very personal weapons. Even the word targeted has a very different resonance when it's used in a strategic analysis of a campaign than when it's paired with a gunsight image and the name of a targeted individual. Context matters!

And that's my second objection: Many of these "y'all do it, too" arguments neglect context. At the surface level first: I've seen clips of a Democratic campaign spot that briefly uses what many claim is a gunsight superimposed over the opponent's photograph... but the context (the ad copy, the other images in the ad, the theme of the ad) makes it abundantly clear that it's really intended to be a focusing reticle on a surveillance camera, a visual representation of the Justice Department investigation the ad references. Even though some may think it looks like a gunsight, a gunsight would be a total non sequitur in this context. Conversely, many try to exonerate Sarah Palin's website target map by claiming the symbols there aren't really gunsights but surveyors' map symbols... and it may, in fact, be true that that's what those specific markers were published as. But in the context of Palin's website, and the general themes of her discourse, it's clear they were intended to be seen as gunsights. They were understood as gunsight symbols at the time (including, chillingly, by Rep. Giffords herself), and AFAIK neither Palin nor any of her associates disavowed that interpretation (though they may have by now, IMHO disingenuously if so, in the wake of the shootings). Surveyors' marks in that context would've been as much a non sequitur as a gunsight would've been in the previous example.

But I'm not naive enough to assume that people on "my side" of the political aisle are all innocent, and I'm sure some Democrats have crossed the line into inappropriately violent campaign rhetoric. But here again, context matters: A Democrat whose ads seemed to be soliciting violence against an opponent would be an outlier (and, I hope, would be condemned, or at least corrected, by his/her fellow Democrats), because there has been no general tendency on the left² to promote gun culture or images of personal violence as part of its electoral strategy. There has been such a tendency on the right³: There has not been just one appeal to "Second Amendment solutions" or "the blood of patriots and tyrants," nor just one candidate featured in ads with a gun in his hands, nor just one campaign event involving shooting, nor just one person showing up at a rally with a gun strapped to his leg. Instead, gun rights, gun ownership, and the relevance of guns to political action have been broad themes of political discourse on the right.

And in that context, putting a gunsight on a map or exhorting your followers to "take out" your opponent is vastly more toxic and risky than the same communications would be without such a violence-oriented rhetorical backdrop.

More censorhip is not — must not be — the answer. Instead, the answer must be for all of us to be more conscious of the rhetorical context our own metaphors create, to be more openly critical (and consistently so) of our fellows who cross the line, and, as voters, to absolutely stop rewarding this sort of campaigning with our votes. I think that's what Keith Olbermann was getting at in his special commentary Saturday, and many others have echoed.

I said I wasn't naive about my fellow Democrats; I am naive enough to hope this horrific tragedy will serve as a wakeup call. I don't want political discourse that's more "civil," in the sense of backing down from an honest contest of ideas and ideologies, but I do want a political discourse that's less reliant (preferably not at all) on images of personal violence. It may be that only crazy people would act on those violent images, but even if that's so, it's incumbent upon the vast majority of us who aren't crazy to stop giving them ideas.


¹ As an aside, while I haven't looked up its etymology, I suspect the word campaign itself, in its political context, is a military metaphor.

² Yes, yes, I know what passes for the left in the U.S. isn't so leftish by international standards.

³ No, I don't mean to be tarring all Republicans with this assertion. I imagine moderate Republicans (if they're not extinct in the wild) and even mainstream conservative Republicans are chagrined by the naked appeal to violence adopted by many of their more radical colleagues.

Reverse Blogwhoring: Arizona Blues, Part 1

I've been spending a lot of time on Pharyngula since the shootings in Arizona Saturday, and I thought I might post versions of a couple of my longer comments there as blog posts here... which is a turnaround on the usual blogwhoring practice of commenting at some other blog for no reason other than to redirect traffic to your own. So here's the first comment, in response to another commenter who had objected to a plan from Rep. Robert Brady (D-PA) to criminalize "language or symbols that could be perceived as threatening or inciting violence against a Member of Congress or federal official," in part on the grounds that it was cowardly of a congressman to attempt to safeguard himself and his federal colleagues when others had been injured and killed. I said...

I agree that Brady's proposal may be wrongheaded — credible threats of violence against public officials are (AFAIK) already illegal, and Brady's proposed change would put protected political speech at risk of prior restraint on the basis of what is effectively subjective literary analysis — but to suggest his motivation for making it is cowardly personal self-protection is, you'll pardon me for saying so, foolish on your part.

The security of our elected representatives is an important issue not because they're too cowardly to face the risk, but because they're our elected representatives! They deserve extra protection under the law not because they're more valuable as individuals than "regular people," but because, in addition to their value as individuals, they represent the rest of us. When the gunman fired a bullet into the brain of Gabby Giffords, he was not only attacking a daughter, a wife, a sister-in-law, a respected colleague, and no doubt a friend to legions; he was also attacking every citizen in her district by proxy, and attacking the very concept of representative government¹. When you target a public figure for violence, you're doing violence not only to a person, but also to everything the office that person holds stands for... and thus to everyone that office represents.

The tragic price paid by others in that crowd should make us more determined, rather than less, to stand up for the personal inviolability of those individuals willing to take on the grave responsibility of public service.

My own congressman is also a friend; in fact, I was talking to him at a local event Saturday morning, perhaps at the time this was happening in Arizona. When I got home and saw this news, my blood ran cold. I don't need to think my congressman is a coward — in fact, he is the polar opposite of that — to be desperately concerned for his safety. If some deranged right-wing gun nut comes for him at a public event, there's a chance I'll be there, and at risk... but it's certain he'll be there. I need him to stay safe, and we all need an environment in which it's safe for our leaders to lead.


¹ Please note: I'm not making wild suppositions about his motivations here; I'm making observations about the impact of his actual acts.

Not With a Bong, But a Whimper

The Michael Phelps/bong hit story broke during my recent blogging interregnum, so I haven't had a chance to favor you with my thoughts on the matter. I don't actually have a dog in this fight: I don't smoke pot, and with the exception of a tiny handful of furtive, youthful experiments, I never have. That said, I thought all the hoohaw over the picture of Phelps with a bong was ridiculous.

Understand: Pot is not a performance-enhancing drug (maybe for archers or biathletes, but not swimmers!), nor (by all accounts) is it banned by FINA outside of competition... so there was no issue of "cheating," a la the steroid and human growth hormone revelations in baseball or the blood doping and erythropoietin (EPO) scandals in cycling. Further, while I doubt anybody would claim with a straight face that the infamous picture doesn't show Phelps actually smoking pot, it certainly doesn't constitute clear evidence that he was: There's no way to prove, from the photo alone, that there was pot (or anything, for that matter) in the bong. So it's not surprising that authorities declined to prosecute him.

In fact, it's shocking that they would even think about it: Under South Carolina law, possession of an ounce or less is a misdemeanor. I would never argue that Phelps should get special favors because of his fame, but he shouldn't be harassed because of it, either... and when was the last time you heard of a "regular person" being prosecuted because a photo of him possibly committing a simple misdemeanor showed up on teh intertoobz months after the fact? Let's be serious, shall we?

Ahh, but the Richland Country sheriff apparently has a rep to maintain as a Miami Vice-style crusader against "drug crime." Not for nothin', but haven't we had about enough of law enforcement from the Carolinas trying to make a name for itself on the backs of prominent athletes? And isn't calling this a "drug crime" a bit hyperbolic anyway? What Phelps did was partake of a mild intoxicant while enjoying himself at a party. If it had been a beer or a glass of wine (or a Sardonic Buddha), nobody would've thought a thing of it. And if we had halfway rational laws on this point, the law would treat it just as if it were a beer or a glass of wine.

Well maybe, just maybe, we're getting a little more rational. In the wake of the Phelps story, Rob Kall of the Huffington Post suggested that it might hint at a turning point in drug policy; today, relatively quietly amid the continuing cacophony of economic woes and the gathering budget battle, comes word that the federal government will no longer raid distributors of medical marijuana in states where it is legal. It's not legalization, nor is it exactly an earthshattering shift in policy... but I think it represents a shift in attitude, a move away from the stern-daddy disapproval of conservative rule, that will eventually lead to liberalization of social policy on many fronts. Every journey begins with but a single step, after all.

To paraphrase T.S. Eliot, "this is the way a policy ends."