Free Speech or Hate Speech?

(long post warning; profanity warning; stay with it)

For fans of the Amazon show “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” a welcome real-life character makes his way into the show in the form of legendary stand-up comic Lenny Bruce. He had a unique style in the 1950s and 1960s that was loaded with satire and was often vulgar. Bruce was arrested for an “obscene performance” four times and was convicted on obscenity charges once, but never did time because he died at age 40 of a drug overdose at his home in the Hollywood Hills.

From a post on the ANU Museum of the Jewish People website, there’s this description of Bruce: “Lenny Bruce was scathing and critical. He wasn’t a nice comedian who made nice people in nice clubs laugh at nice jokes. He was a protest performer, kicking and angry. Behind his profanity and the wallowing in the sewers of human language, there was a complex, agonized and hurting man hiding.”

That said about Bruce, stand-up comedy works best when a comedian doesn’t have to worry about censorship. The unwritten rule of stand-up is if you heckle the comedian, you’ll be his/her target. But there’s also an element of responsibility on the part of the comic to not insult the audience’s intelligence. Michael Richards (Kramer from “Seinfeld”) did a racist screed at a Comedy Club in Los Angeles and has sort of disappeared since.

Hold that thought.

The Southern California News Group owns and operates 11 local daily newspapers and more than a dozen community weeklies, including the Orange County Register.

This is from the Register’s opinion section webpage:
The editorial board and opinion section staff are independent of the news-gathering side of our organization. Through our staff-written editorials, we take positions on important issues affecting our readership, from pension reform to protecting our region’s unique natural resources to transportation. The editorials are unsigned because, while written by one or more members of our staff, they represent the point of view of our news organization’s management. In order to take informed positions, we meet frequently with government, community and business leaders on important issues affecting our cities, region and state. During elections, we meet with candidates for office and the proponents and opponents of ballot initiatives and then make recommendations to voters.

From the editorial board webpage
Sal Rodriguez is the opinion editor for the Southern California News Group. He got his start in journalism investigating the abuse of solitary confinement in American prisons and jails with Solitary Watch. He first joined the newspaper business in 2014 as an editorial writer and columnist for the Orange County Register and the Press-Enterprise. He lives in Los Angeles.

We did a post on State Senator Dave Min’s recent DUI arrest and how Rodriquez has published numerous editorials calling for Min to drop out of the race for Congress in CA-47, including another one on June 1. The editorials are actually pretty mean-spirited. Rodriquez suggested our asking for “fairness” was a “weak defense of Min because we suggested he refer to Republican candidate Scott Baugh, who has four felonies and 18 misdemeanors on his record, drop out of the race as well. Rodriquez linked to his columns he’s written that criticize Republicans that aren’t nearly as mean-spirited and downright personal.

From Rodriguez’s June 1 editorial, he describes Min’s campaign in “freefall”: “Dave Min, as I will never let anyone forget, is a tool of the California prison guard union. They spent millions to get him elected and he made sure to return the favor by voting to give them half a billion dollars in giveaways, which I believe is corrupt. He has not been a reliable supporter of criminal justice and policing reform, and he’s now touting the support of a Los Angeles police union. These are all facts. If Democrats want to hand Scott Baugh the congressional seat held by Katie Porter, they should continue to encourage Dave Min to stick around. If Democrats in Orange County have any sense, they will be encouraging him to drop out and rally behind Weiss (or someone else if there’s a someone else).”

One can argue with SCNG’s reach and Rodriquez in the post of “opinion editor,” Rodriquez is arguably one of the more powerful print editors in the state of California. His editorials are written to influence readers on public policy, elections, and candidates for office based on his perceptions of what’s best for society and Southern California. That’s a heavy responsibility.

Over the years, Democratic candidates for office go before the Register’s (SCNG’s) editorial board hoping for an improbable endorsement. More Democrats were endorsed by the Register in 2022 simply because the political make-up of the county has changed from Deep Red to Dark Purple to Navy Blue in some spots. But for certain cities and certain offices, why should a Democrat waste their time to seek an endorsement that’s never going to happen?

Katie Porter declined to meet with the Register who endorsed her Republican opponent Scott Baugh without reservations and no mention of Baugh’s four felonies and 18 misdemeanors. Porter won. She spent a lot of money because she had to in a newly drawn district where a significant number of voters needed to learn about her.

Democrats who gain the Register’s endorsement tend to be more moderate. A left-leaning liberal has zero chance of an endorsement. And it’s not wise to go after an outlet that buys newsprint by the truckload, or ink by the barrel, or bits and bytes of unlimited data on the Internet.

Hold that thought.

Did you ever do anything stupid in college? Really stupid? Brett Kavanaugh “I like beer” stupid or “Devil’s triangle” stupid?
I’ll be the first to admit having done stupid things. I was keeping the scorebook for a women’s college road basketball game and one of our players was fouled hard with no call. I shouted “unbelievable” in a loud voice from the scorer’s table. I got a technical foul. I cost our team three points, but our team rallied and scored 11 unanswered points in the last 51 seconds to win the game. The team captain said to me, “we saved your ass,” and I couldn’t argue with her. The head coach laughed it off and said, “this will be a great story one day” and she was right. But it’s the one thing about college I’m most embarrassed about. But it’s a mistake that’s not going to come back and bite years after graduation.

Mistakes we make – even today — shape us and hopefully make us better people.

So, let’s retrace. Lenny Bruce+vulgar stand-up+Sal Rodriguez+political influence+”no” on progressives and unions. And I’m told mentioning Lenny Bruce and Sal Rodriguez in the same sentence is generous to Rodriguez.

Before we connect the dots, this post is not a defense of Senator Dave Min. It is not a knock on free speech or a call for censorship. It is a post to ask readers to consider past actions and words spoken by an influential member of our news media to determine how much weight future editorials should carry moving forward.

After our Min post ran in May, a reader sent us a tip. And it has to do with a college experience of the Register’s Sal Rodriguez.
Rodriquez was a student and stand-up comedian at Reed College, a liberal arts school in Portland, OR. There were times he’d get laughs and times he would not. A performance at the Reed College Student Union by Rodriguez in November of 2012 resulted in an article in the Reed College Quest, an independent student newspaper, which carried a reader warning about extreme profanity. The headline read: “Comedian Under Fire for Misogynistic, Racist and Homophobic Comments.” Rodriguez’s photo ran in the story and it’s clearly him but with much longer hair.

The subhead reads: Sal Rodriguez’s routine has drawn intense criticism for being “blatantly misogynistic, racist, and homophobic.” Rodriguez says, “My performance, like much of comedy, is predicated on transgression, on playing upon the pretensions and anxieties of the crowd.”

Can’t say we agree with his predication of comedy after reading the details. But the debate over his performance lasted long after the event itself.

As far as the routine goes, the newspaper reported this:
According to the accounts of students present at the performance, Rodriguez made jokes about diversity, gender pay equality, and Reed’s campus discussions about rape and sexual assault. He said that the audience “sit and watch as I trash talked them,” as he put it via email after the event. He called the audience out for this, calling them “faggoty pussies.” Rodriguez quotes himself from a transcript of a video he says he has of the performance: “I don’t know what it is about this fucking school, but we have fucking signs everywhere just talking about ‘diversity’ and then we have signs saying ‘don’t rape people.’ It’s just fucking everywhere—‘diversity is fantastic and don’t rape people here.’ ‘You have to not rape someone to have a good time.’ On the topic of pay disparity, he quotes himself as saying, “I support equal pay for equal work. And women as a group do not perform equal work.”

The paper’s reporter, Alex Blum, writes that The Quest viewed a recording of the performance which corroborated what Rodriguez said and “demonstrates the extent to which he antagonized the crowd.”

Back to the paper’s account:
He referred to one person, whose racial background was not clear from the video, as a “sand nigger.” When another spectator was talking in the front row, he criticized them, calling talking at shows “the negro way.”

He also gave the audience a good deal of provocation.

“You should be fucking outraged, and you’re fucking sitting here like a bunch of little bitches, and then after the show you fucking bitch to Sean (Howard, a host at the show; unclear if Mr. Howard was a student or not) about it,” he said, as he criticized the crowd for a passive reaction to his antagonization.

Later, he was quiet for a long stretch, then suddenly shouted, “You fucking just sit there like a bunch of bitches, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

“What would you do?” asked a spectator.

“I wouldn’t come here,” he replied.
…..
One female attendee shouted back at Rodriguez. He responded directly, as attendees recall, calling her a “loud-mouthed cunt.”
The audience member then took the stage and grabbed the microphone, telling Rodriguez off for the offensive nature of his comedy.
According to the video, she said, “Sit the fuck down. Is this what you were waiting for? Is this what you were waiting for? Do you want to hear ‘fuck you your jokes aren’t funny because I was raped here?’ Do you want to hear that fuck you women aren’t in math and science fields because of fucked up male mentorship? Sit the fuck down.” Witnesses, including the girl who took the stage, also upheld the overall accuracy, if not the word-for-word correctness, of this version
…
The audience member who took the stage says, in a statement that she requested only be reproduced in full: “This was not offensive comedy. This was hate speech. His words were blatantly misogynistic, racist, and homophobic. These were not jokes—there was never a punchline or a hint of irony. He did not use slurs to engage in a conceptual discussion. He targeted and caused harm to specific groups of people. Please recognize his actions for what they were.”

Rodriguez remains unapologetic for his act. Comedy, he says, “is a means of expression and communicating a message. One may not like the message, the means by which the message is expressed, or neither, but that goes for all forms of artistic expression. My performance, like much of comedy, is predicated on transgression, on playing upon the pretensions and anxieties of the crowd.” Rodriguez, who has performed at Reed stand-up events before, claims this is the first time someone has told him they had a problem with his act.

He also says he doesn’t regret the interaction with the audience member. “Audience members in a comedy show don’t have a right to not to be offended. They only have a right to decide whether or not to attend or stay,” he says. “As I see it, hecklers deserve whatever response they get. Unless audience members are invited to speak (as I did allow at one point), they have no right to interfere with a performance.”
….
Another comedian who performed Saturday and wished to remain unnamed calls Rodriguez’s act “angry and hateful.” The comedian says, “I don’t really care,” but felt that “when he blew up at one Reedie in particular, that’s when he crossed the line.” That comedian went on, “I don’t want to see this kind of speech policed at Reed, but I wish we had more of a way to deal with idiots who want to abuse their power. I wish this could just be a common-sense thing. I think it’d be good if Reed could be better in general with trigger warnings.”

Rodriquez’s performance resulted in sufficient outrage from members of the student body and the College’s administration. Reed College Student Services issued a statement inviting offended members of the student body at the event to share their experience about what Rodriguez said and to encourage them to seek assistance of the school’s Health and Counseling Center.

Back to the Quest story:
Rodriguez responds, “I find it silly that someone would be so activist about a comedy routine. If anyone wants to make a difference in the world, they should go volunteer somewhere in the greater community, where there are lots of actual problems that should yield ‘outrage’—not ‘outrage’ over an artistic performance at some uppity liberal arts college on a Saturday night.”

You can read the entire piece here: https://rightondaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/The-Reed-College-Quest.pdf

We reached out to Reed College for comment, and they declined citing Rodriguez’s student right to privacy. We’ve tried, unsuccessfully, to track down the Quest reporter who wrote the story. They have a very common name, but we are still trying and hope to offer additional commentary.

That was nearly 11 years ago. A significant portion of Rodriguez’s life has passed since then. His opinions and editorials at the Register do not seem to reflect angry, hateful, misogynistic, homophobic or racist points of view. Does he still stand by his performance? Does he defend his use of horrifically offensive words even today? This is someone seeking to shape public policy via editorials that go to 11 daily newspapers across the second largest media market in the nation.

We reached out to Rodriguez for comment which we’ll run word for word.

We can only hope his apology is as sincere as Dave Min’s was.

(Editor’s note:  I have run this post by four lawyers, three professional communicators — all women, and even my retired journalism professor in an effort to be fair and true to the source material offered.  Mr. Roderguiz was alerted to the Reed College story Friday afternoon during the noon hour.  Its been more than 4 hours with no response, This post was not easy to write but as one of my editors messaged me: “glass houses” “stones.”