From: thf2@ellis.uchicago.edu (Citecheck Hell)
Subject: Re: Once more into the breach, dear friends (was: Re Ed babbles again
Reply-To: thf2@midway.uchicago.edu
Organization: University of Chicago Computing Organizations
Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1992 13:26:51 GMT

In article <1992Sep13.063733.25098@Princeton.EDU> egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Ed Nilges) writes:
>Robert A. Viktora had the right, according to the sitting Supreme Bozos,
>to perpetuate a tort.  

Ed, I don't know why you keep saying this.  It's demonstrably false.
I really suggest you bother to read the Viktora case before you jump
to these false conclusions.

>But you yourself deny the Constitutionality of hate speech laws and
>would forgive Jesse his "free speech."  The contradiction's in your
>court.  Unless you give people "free speech" not to permit them to
>engage in dialog, but to incriminate themselves at the earliest possible
>moment, in the same way the gun bozos would arm the criminally insane in
>order to lock them up at the earliest possible schoolyard massacre.

Non sequiturs abound, Ed.  I support Jackson's right to say "Hymie"
all he wants.  And the same right of free speech gives me the right
to criticize him for it.  

>>It's a shame that your hate speech law would have him jailed.
>
>That's a lie.  Hate speech laws don't ban private remarks, they at most
>enhance the penalties for torts and crimes in which hate speech occurs.

It depends.  That's what the ADL laws would do (which I, at the moment,
support, though I reserve the right to change my mind if someone talks me
out of it).  That's *not* what the Minneapolis law that the Supreme Court
struck down did.  

Perhaps that's why you're upset at the Supreme Court -- you think they
struck down an ADL-type law that would have increased Viktora's penalty
for a crime because of the motivation, when in actuality they struck
down a law that would penalize Viktora for simply having the motivation.

Maybe you should define a bit further what you mean by "hate speech" laws.
Are there some you oppose?  Would you be against a hate speech law that
banned certain private remarks?  Public remarks not accompanied by other
crimes?

>>Really?  Then why did you flame me for knowing about Gallagher and Shean?
>>And why do you continue to make an issue out of a long-dead radio show?
>
>Because of your nauseating hypocrisy, Ted, in speaking of anti-Semitism
>and then turning around and comparing an Arabic-named poster (Sheheryan)
>and myself to characters in a racist vaudeville program.  

I never compared you nor Sherheyar to any vaudeville characters, racist or
otherwise.

>Vaudeville and
>its successors, television and radio, have much more power than my
>friend's idiotic joke, or even Jesse's slip, to set up people's
>attitudes.  Nightly airing of Amos 'n Andy was a far more serious matter
>than one "Hymietown" remark, wrong as that remark was; making money by
>mocking Irishmen repeatedly is closer to Amos 'n Andy than "Hymietown."

Really?  How many blacks have been lynched in the last fourteen months
due to "Amos'n'Andy"?  How many Jews have been lynched by blacks chanting
"Kill the Jew"?  I beg to differ.

>>What is it that causes "Amos'n'Andy" to not have "redeeming social
>>value," while Henry Miller does?  Have you read Kate Millett on Miller
>>yet?
>
>Ted honey, your plaintive reiteration of your inability to distinguish
>Amos 'n Andy and Henry Miller is most amusing.  Whaddayou do, go in the
>video store and note the price of Amos 'n Andy and thence to Tower Books
>to note the price of Miller (aha! law 'n economix in action!) and make
>your determination thusly?  And are you so afraid of women, Ted, that
>the idea that some woman, somewhere, has (gasp) criticized Miller makes
>you terrified to rate him above Amos 'n Andy?  Note the poignancy here:
>Tedster at once downgrades Millett, finding it earth shattering that a
>woman should criticise a man (although men do it to each other all the
>time), and places her on a pedestal, making her opinion central to how
>Ted thinks about Millett.  

It is you who devalue Millett, by discounting her justifiable criticism
of Miller's misogyny.

Note once again how Ed misrepresents my views -- I defy him to find a
single post where I criticized Millett.

Meanwhile, Ed, learn something about law and economics, because your
intentional ignorance of the subject hardly helps your cause.

>Ted, you make a mistake common to neoconservatives, typically young and
>half-educated.  This is the attempt to argue against liberalism and
>modernism using its own precepts...to turn its guns against it.  This is
>nothing more than an attempt to argue by reduction to absurdity.
>However, it is a flawed and fallacious form.  Proper "reductio" assumes
>the opponent's beliefs for a short moment and quickly shows how they
>lead to a contradiction (in logic) or perhaps a result morally
>unacceptable to all parties (in ethics.)  

Indeed.  Which is why I'm concerned when you call me "racist" because
at the age of fourteen I read a book on vaudeville and happen to know
who Gallagher and Shean are, but you yourself somehow escape the tag 
of "racist" when you comment the excellent work of the Marx Brothers,
who are arguably at least as racist as G&S, if not more so, because of
their greater influence.

I think that belies a contradiction on *your* part. 
-- 
           .........................................................
          ted frank | thf2@midway.uchicago.edu | standard disclaimers
         the university of chicago law school, chicago, illinois 60637
         here i sit looking for a warming smile in a house of cold wit