The Tactical Use of Obscenity - David Loftus

[Note: this is part two of a commentary on a guerilla protest mounted by the Veterans for Peace on Friday. If you haven't read part 1, to there.]


I would imagine the vast majority of people who objected to the banner had seen the four-letter word reproduced on it before. Many of them have probably employed it in their own speech. Why did they object to it here?

The question isn’t whether such a word should be employed in public (after all, it appears often enough in movies, novels, and cable television series -- and I hear it daily on the street), but to what purpose is it being used? Most of the time, the word is used in public entertainment as an illumination of character and/or expression of heightened emotion.

The latter appears to be the point here: veterans wished to declare their extreme frustration over the carnage being done overseas in the name of the United States, and the relative inaction of the American people and a President who had promised in his 2008 election campaign to end it soon. The banner acknowledged its own shock value, and was pointedly hung before a restatement in stone of the American right to free speech.

I hear people complain about nudity in movies or in live theater, but I have seen full frontal nudity (male and female) effectively and appropriately used not only to shock but to express tenderness under fire from an authoritarian government. I find the use of obscenity in this context no less appropriate and effective.

As for addressing Mr. Obama as if he were a fellow citizen, there is nothing disrespectful about that. Presidents are elected out of private life, and they return to it. They are also public servants, just like local school board members or U.S. Senators, and I don’t believe there’s any harm or faux pas in addressing any such officeholders as Mr. or Ms. The Constitution makes it very clear that no special titles apply to holders of the Presidency other than “Mr. President.” He is not “the Honorable,” “Your Highness,” or “Lord” Obama. Certainly, far-right commentators and countless letters to the editor refer to the Chief Executive in far less correct and respectful terms, but I never hear of their fellow citizens correcting them on that point.

Next: U.S. pride and carnage

Obscenity in the Protest of Obscene Military Actions - David Loftus

On Friday, October 1, the activist group Veterans for Peace, who state that they are opposed to wars and occupations in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Palestine, hung the banner pictured here in a prominent place in Washington, D.C. The site was the Newseum, a museum just off the Capitol Mall between the U.S. Capitol and the White House, at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. The protestors pointedly hung their banner over a 74-foot marble engraving of the First Amendment.

Someone posted this photo to a discussion list I belong to -- one devoted to professional theater and film work -- and created a mini-uproar. As usually happens when people respond emotionally over a political issue, a lot of ground got covered in a very short time. Comments questioned the taste and appropriateness of the banner and its circulation to our list; objected to the President being addressed as merely “Mr.”; questioned the tactical wisdom of a banner that seemed intended only to “inflame, offend, and spark dissension”; and affirmed that the poster was (or was not) proud to be an American.

First, being offended does not confer any particular moral stature upon the person who takes offense, or express any inherent righteousness. We are all offended by different things, and some emotional responses are more justifiable than others. The reason one can offer for taking offense, if it is persuasive to others, is what confers legitimacy upon one’s complaint.

In this case, some readers in my newsgroup (and undoubtedly elsewhere) were offended by blatant public obscenity. But that was precisely the activists’ point: the banner acknowledges its offensiveness, but makes a comparison to the death and destruction our forces are responsible for overseas.

“The American public should be shocked that we are still killing and crippling thousands of innocent people in these countries as well as our own soldiers – that’s what’s truly obscene,” VFP spokesman Mike Ferner told the media. Ferner is a 59-year-old veteran who served as a navy corpsman during Vietnam. “Blowing people’s arms and legs off, burning, paralyzing them, causing sewage to run through their streets, polluting the water that kills and sickens children, terrorizing and bombing people and their livestock with flying robots -- that defines obscenity. If this banner shocks and offends a single person who hasn’t been shocked and offended by what’s being done in our name, we’ve accomplished our mission.”

Just imagine how people would react if enemy soldiers were in California, doing to American citizens precisely what our soldiers are doing in Iraq and Afghanistan! Yet we passively accept that it’s going on day after day, month after month, and year after year in our name. According to Ferner’s terms, the outraged responses to the banner among my peers in the theater list was precisely what the veterans had sought. Ideally, they might desire to change some minds and get more people to lobby against the wars, but given the state of apathy and helplessness with which most Americans seem to view U.S. foreign policy, in this as in so many other areas, Veterans for Peace surely knew that was too much to hope for.

Next: the tactical use of obscenity, and addressing the President