Page Two: Sticks and Stones
The paradoxical pleasures of the religious right
By Louis Black, Fri., Feb. 3, 2006
PART 1: Name-Calling
Not since I graduated from elementary school have I been called names so often and so vehemently as I have in the past five years. Invariably, you do something stupid driving and encounter road-rage-lite, where some driver screams at you, or you are in the wrong place at the wrong time, or someone just loses it on you. For decades, this is how I've usually encountered name-calling until recently.
Name-calling has everything to do with intention, and only coincidentally with language. Minorities often use the derogatory words that negatively stereotype them in daily friendly talk within their community. Someone can call another "slow" and, depending on the tone of voice, it can mean almost anything. Regardless of the words, in this case I'm referring to people I've spoken to (or who have left me phone messages or written me) who are often trying to cram as much contempt and/or hate into their words as possible.
This next paragraph offers a self-serving justification and perhaps indicates a serious state of denial. But I know some will accuse me of doing just what I'm complaining about, so let me deal with it up front. Discussing political thought has become more and more difficult. "Liberal" is almost a curse word, and was thought of as such among the left years before it came to have that status anywhere else. "Conservative" is a title often claimed but very rarely earned. Trying to clarify what group is advancing what position, I use words like "religious right," "far right," and so on in different combinations. Toward this end, I do use the terms "conservative" and "liberal." I really am trying to represent a group that I have no feeling for collectively, but whose central ideas are somewhat subscribed to in general. I am way too wordy and add on the qualifiers in an attempt to be more specific, though often the effect is just the opposite. But I do identify political groups; by rearranging a very few words, I participate in this pejorative process.
I try to stay away from "reactionary" and "fascist" words that are more loaded but also use them on occasion. But I hope I rarely am so extreme as, to quote from one of last week's poems, "Mortally reprehensible Neoleftist utopians, moral-Relativist Marxists, suicidal pacifist, chic anarchists/ Mired in the fever swamp of pathological naïveté" where the point is to dispute one's argument by generously lumping one in among everyone with whom the writer disagrees.
Interestingly, all this additional name-calling has been politically related, as the religious moral community obsessed with patriotism and values finds labeling those they disagree with not only trivializing and dismissive but frequently linguistically pleasurable. Just read the ways in which they pile labels, name-calling, and loaded phrases on top of each.
During the brief period we had The Austin Chronicle Hour on the radio, I suggested that even those who disagreed with Dixie Chick Natalie Maines' one sentence on Bush should be concerned at the conscious and concerted effort to shut her up. The common take was "Sure, I believe in freedom of speech, but you have to be aware that there can be consequences." In this case, what I was objecting to was the widespread effort to shut the group up and stop them from saying things with which other Americans don't agree. As the flames were relentlessly fanned, this reaction was far in excess of anything reasonable. Those fanning were not only aware that this explosive reaction might well discourage other people from speaking their minds, but were hoping it would do so.
One caller to the show argued that, as a lefty, I must have supported boycotts. Economic boycotts are a political tool of which I've always been suspicious, especially when used by the left. There are boycotts that are designed to shut down speech (and any shouting down of any speaker by anyone, regardless of ideology, is reprehensible). Other boycotts are designed to attack policies of companies and governments.
I really support neither, but am more sympathetic to the latter.
When I was young, my parents had friends whose lives were affected by the Fifties' capricious, anti-Communist blacklisting (including my mother's cousin Eli Friedland and his wife, Doris, both well-known in certain Austin circles).
The first time I was urged to boycott by leftists, it was an action against Welch's mints a candy bar manufactured by James Welch, brother of Robert Welch, who founded both the candy company and later the John Birch Society. By 1956, Robert had sold all his interests in the company, but lefties were concerned that some of the candy money was being channeled to him and the society. I asked how a boycott based on ideas one disagreed with was different from blacklisting one with whom you disagreed. It's a question I've kept asking.
The caller called me a liar and hung up. He knew my beliefs better than I did.
Next week: Part II: Names I've Been Called and Why