Students at Brown threw a pie at
Thomas Friedman, the
over-rated NY Times columnist, during a
speaking engagement, an act that Matthew Yglesias
dubs “funny” and that Yale student Dara Lind
defends thusly:
I find the consensus in this country that the only acceptable
public action is speech to be incredibly disturbing. Pieing someone
in the face doesn’t meaningfully “prevent” him from speaking, and
registers your disapproval (and more specifically, in this case,
eagerness to show up a self-styled Man of the World for the buffoon
he is) much more effectively than an op-ed in your student paper
can…. to exclude bodily action from acceptable public expression
is to resort to a dualism that I hope we’ve moved past by
now.
But there is no consensus that “the only acceptable public action
is speech” — there is clapping, booing, turning one’s back to a
speaker, holding aloft a Zippo (or, sadly,
a cell phone)
to signal approval, shaking your fist, giving a standing ovation…
all of which, by the way, are more acceptable than certain kinds of
speech (e.g. racist harangues, shouting at the top of one’s lungs,
etc.).
Throwing pies rankles, among other reasons, because it is
destructive of public discourse. It contains less content than
spoken dissent and imposes a far greater cost: prominent speakers
aren’t going to address college audiences if there is a likelihood
that they’ll get a pie in the face.
“Action - and especially performance - is a legitimate
contribution to public discourse,” Ms. Lind writes, as if any sort
of action or performance is justified merely due to its physical
medium! Should I ever find myself debating her in person I suppose
she won’t mind if I perform an experimental ballet I’ve developed
called “Steal her microphone so the audience can only hear me,”
which ought to succeed even if I’m hit by a pie during the raid on
her podium.
