The perils of free speech gone wild
U.S. Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., is facing an unspeakable tragedy. The sorrow caused when a parent outlives a child, I’m told, is excruciating and unthinkable. Inhofe’s 52 year-old son, Perry, died in a plane crash last week. He genuinely deserves our condolences.
Yet, there’s something troubling about those people (many of whom are liberal, who don’t share Inhofe’s politics), who have posted their antipathetic, and even vicious, Internet comments about him and his politics, at a time when the senator is suffering such overwhelming grief. This isn’t the time for that. In fact, it’s never the time for it.
The Internet, which, at times, functions as a bastion of free speech, is, simultaneously, the daily platform for callousness. Anybody can say anything about anybody else, and they can do it without having any fear of being sanctioned.
True, there are many, many well-wishers who’ve posited their responses below the numerous online articles about the death of Inhofe’s son.
“This time let us convey our condolences to the Senator no matter what party we belong to,” wrote somebody calling who went by “AnastasiaPoliticalMom” on Huffingtonpost.com.
“This is indeed a tragic loss that we all feel the sorrow and empathy for the Senator,” wrote another poster.
Those kinds of messages, both personal and heartfelt, could be found among the hundreds I’ve read. But there are others — many, many others.
“Too bad the father wasn’t with him,” wrote “davidlz” at theatlanticwire.com.
“Very sad…..so I’ll hold off saying too bad it wasn’t the Senator,” wrote “Makeredhappy” back at Huffington Post.
That opened the door for somebody calling themselves “UnkBob” to reply, “I won’t. Sorry but why be sorry when the monster gets wounded?”
Why the hatred? What has Sen. Inhofe done that could cause these people to use the occasion to wish further ill upon him and to call him a “monster?”
I’m a liberal. Chances are the people saying those things are liberals, too. I find their words disgusting. Some things — no, most things — trump politics. The loss of life is just one of those things.
But as much as it’s unsettling that these liberals have injected their political views into a deeply personal matter, conservatives are just as guilty of doing the same thing. Any story, no matter how remote the contents are from the heated politics in Washington, D.C., can become the handy launching pad for petty political sniping.
Pick any online story, and you’ll discover that the attacks from the political left and right will soon emerge from out of nowhere.
There’s that story about the two Miami Dolphins who’ve made headlines recently, after it was revealed that one of them allegedly overstepped the bounds of “normal” hazing.
If you read the online coverage of that story, chances are, it won’t take long before you’ll find a post from somebody who’ll characterize the supposed victim (or one of his online supporters) as a liberal, and the supposed perpetrator (or one of his online his supporters) as a conservative. It’s just that way.
The coarsening of American dialogue has, not-so-surprisingly, coincided with the popularity of the Internet. The increase in partisan news sources; the ability to launch personal attacks from the convenience of a computer keyboard; the ease with which anonymity can be employed to attempt political superiority; and the free use of the political chasm in Washington that has produced nightly (if only imagined) winners and losers — may have all contributed to Free Speech Gone Wild.
“Who really cares? Lots of people die every day,” wrote “inventionleader” on the Huffington Post blog about the Inhofe family tragedy.
Perhaps “inventionleader” should pay close attention to the free speech exhibited by someone named “tgrade1.”
They wrote, “Some of the people on here posting hateful comments should be ashamed. How will we ever come together as a nation if we can’t even acknowledge somebody’s grief without being mean and spiteful? A parent should never outlive their child. This is a terribly sad occurrence, and I send my condolences to the Senator and his family.” I agree.
Edward A. Owens is a three-time Emmy Award winner and 20-year veteran of television news. Email him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net