What should we say to them?

A constellation of recent news items deserves comment:

Controversy over cartoons, initially published by the Danish paper Jyllands, that are caricatures of the prophet Muhammad, have sparked a continuing controversy lead by several Muslim leaders and groups.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4670370.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4673908.stm

• A cartoon by Tom Toles in last Sunday’s Washington post drew protest from several high ranking military officers, including General Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs. The cartoon depicts a bandaged soldier without legs or arms being ministered to by a doctor named Rumsfeld saying, “I’m listing your condition as “battle hardended.” http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/01/AR2006020102465.html

• A complaint filed by an Indian actress, Khushboo against the magazine Maxim for publishing a faked photo of her in underwear.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4666278.stm

Free Speech? Rude and inconsiderate? Inciting a riot?

Most of us have experienced a situation in which someone says something that, even as we acknowledge to ourselves is inappropriate, we want to laugh. Humor is like that. Laughter, when it is not out of joy is often out of despair. I’ve also seen my share of diversity video’s and sexual harassment training films that are valid; tools to help people understand that humor is often at someone else’s expense. Jokes are fashionable within a very limited range of political correctness, and a funny line that may have been okay to repeat at the office in 1975, may be way out-of-line today.

In all things there is a balance. Freedom of speech, to be sure, is one of the greatest freedoms of all. Yet just because a person can say anything doesn’t mean they should. Every speech that is delivered has an audience, and every speechmaker tailors their speech to their audience. The language, the idiom, the content, and, yes, the jokes, are all orchestrated to be received by a particular group of people, a group that shares an affiliation with the speaker. For exclusive audiences ideas may coincide, or, if they differ, there is still some basis for understanding in which shared humor becomes a bridge to understand one another, to share in that condition of humanity that lets us laugh in spite of our differences.

But take that same speech, devoted to that target audience, and present it to another group and the applause might readily turn to boo’s. Scorn may replace praise. Anger may replace what was previously a happy concurrence of opinion.

On the world stage, in the public forum, the audience is no longer a hand picked group. With the limitless distribution of the internet there is no longer a targeted subscriber audience. For better or worse, it is now as if every speech intended for a select group were bugged, taped and played on loudspeakers on every corner. Our technology no longer allows for the “inside” joke. Just as the promulgation of civil liberties has diminished the exclusivity of race and gender based groups, so too, communications technology has changed the arena of social discourse.

Does this mean that much satire does and will inevitably continue to offend others? I think so. And, if I’m right, then perhaps we need to think a bit more about the results of our efforts to communicate. If we are flippant and disrespectful, are we creating a dialog that wins the hearts and minds of those we want to better understand us? If we want our views to be respected, don’t we, in turn, have to at least try and understand and respect the strongly held views of others?

We are at a crossroads in the world today. Each of us has the capacity to be heard by an audience that never existed before, an audience that can vary in size, ideology, nationality, religious expression, that can be comprised of a receptive few or of an angry mob. Those that want to reach out to us, and those who want to destroy us.

What should we say to them? And when does “us” and “them” become “we?”