Who's Listening

Free Speech and Raw Emotions

MSNBC (or whatever they're calling themselves now) fired Mathew Dowd for various reasons (mostly economic)--but, really, his biggest "sin" was: BAD TIMING.

The Roman's had saying: "De Mortuis Nihil Nisi Bonum"-- Don't Speak Ill of The Dead.

Why has this saying/sentiment/feeling been so instinctively understood for so long?

Because--as Reverend Donne pointed out a couple of hundred years ago:

"Send Not to Know For Whom the Bell Tolls--it Tolls For Thee."

Why does every man/woman's death--even those we dislike or even detest-- Why does anyone's death grip us so tightly, chill us all to our bones? Because we instinctively feel our own mortality.

When any human being dies, we automatically become terrified children, shaking in fear, looking for some "grown-up" to comfort us. And, for the entire span of recorded history, this comfort can take the form of a reawakening of the understanding that we're ALL in the same boat, OR, after a slight pause in our shaking and shuddering, that this terrible thing was the fault of the_______ ... Fill in the blank with whatever designated OTHER or Tribal enemy some narcissistic parental impersonator tells us is the REAL villain.

Death--the various causes of which are, no matter how well understood--is ALWAYS terrifying; especially when it happens suddenly and violently--and even more especially when it comes to someone young. Mathew Dowd was not necessarily wrong to say what he said--maybe he was even right, but he was spectacularly tone deaf; he made his public comments at a time when a large section of the populace was shivering in fear and overwhelmed by grief.

Basic motions--especially mass emotions--are infinitely more powerful than rational thought--on the comparative scale of a raging ocean to a 60 watt light bulb. We ignore these emotions at our peril and then they can be used by the self-serving and unscrupulous people to cause an endless amount of suffering

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All performers (Dowd--like anyone else who has ever appeared live on any stage, whether its a theater, a microphone, a TV show, a political speech, etc.-- Anyone who chooses to appear on a stage is automatically a performer. And any performer, whatever the content or purpose of their performance, has to understand that there is an AUDIENCE...

When you open your mouth on any kind of stage, there is ALWAYS an audience--and in this crazy kaleidescopic modern world, there's a new form of audience being born every minute (and a new form of sucker to go with it). Also, for better or for worse (generally always for the worse), part of that audience is composed of critics, the owners of the stage on which you appear, and even, government regulators that can threaten to, or, actually, shut you down.

I had a regular live radio show on WBAI-FM in New York City, for 25 years (and after that, on Sirius XM for another ten). It was inevitable that I wound up on WBAI because there was virtually no interference from the management and our only sponsors were the listeners.

During our fund-raising drives, we often referred to WBAI as Free-Speech Radio. Later, when I was on Sirius Left (the liberal stream on Sirius XM.), I hardly ever heard from the management--no matter how harsh or passionate my commentary. If I had, I probably would have quit...

For me, the right to Freedom of Speech was the closest I came to having a religious belief.

But I when I was on the air--and later, when I did live performance on various stages, I was ALWAYS aware of the audience; that there were people actually listening--and, whether I was expressing some passionate philosophical/political opinion on the radio, or just telling a story on stage--I had to be aware of my audience. If I didn't have that awareness, then anything I said or did would ring completely hollow--be nothing but a bunch of boring words dribbling out of my mouth.

As is the case with so many commentators and god knows how many actors, preachers, therapists, and politicians, this awareness is essential to communicating anything, and most of them have no talent for it... The ones that do have a talent for it, like Trump, have an instinctive sense of what huge sections of the population want to hear, what entertains the lowest-information voters who live in the vast land of the lowest common denominator...

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As far I'm concerned, what Mathew Dowd said about Charlie Kirk was more or less accurate in a general way; But, more importantly, he (Dowd)--whatever his personal faults and egregious sense of timing-- was making a larger point, one that applies to every mouth that squeaks or roars anywhere on the political spectrum: Hate thought leads--almost inevitably--to Hate Speech; and Hate Speech often leads (more so now than ever) to Hateful action.

I'm in no way excusing or justifying what happened to Charlie Kirk--that was as awful and shocking as what happened to the Democratic state senator and her husband in Minnesota. What I am saying is that there is a great Karmic law that rules the universe--or, to paraphrase an old saying: "What goes around, can come around." OR--as a well known religious figure once said: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

These days there's no almost visible line between public speech and action--You cannot yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. America, mostly because of the NET and podcasts and cell phones, is now one big theater and there are people yelling fire on it every fucking second. What do we all expect?