A good time to have meaningful dialogue
Speaking of narrow authoritarian impoverished versions of “morality,” there’s this sheriff in Texas who is all worked up about…the word “fuck” on someone’s personal vehicle.
A sheriff in Texas is looking for a truck bearing a profanity-laced anti-Trump sticker and said authorities are considering charging its owner with disorderly conduct — a threat that immediately raised alarm among free speech advocates.
I wouldn’t call it “profanity-laced” – it’s too succinct for that. It says simply: Fuck Trump and fuck you for voting for him.
Fort Bend County Sheriff Troy E. Nehls posted a photo of the truck Wednesday on Facebook after, he said, he’d received several complaints about the display from unhappy people in the Houston-area county.
The photo is no longer on Facebook, but it’s easy to find lots of photos of the type via Google images. Here’s one:
Not really an enhancement of the public landscape, but not a police matter, either.
“If you know who owns this truck or it is yours, I would like to discuss it with you,” the sheriff wrote. “Our Prosecutor has informed us she would accept Disorderly Conduct charges regarding it, but I feel we could come to an agreement regarding a modification.”
The Houston Chronicle said the truck’s owners have no plans to remove the custom graphic, which they ordered after Trump’s election.
“It’s not to cause hate or animosity,” Karen Fonseca told the Chronicle. “It’s just our freedom of speech and we’re exercising it.”
Wellll it’s a little bit to cause animosity – the “fuck you for voting for him” part.
At a news conference Wednesday, after his Facebook post went viral, Nehls said he supports freedom of speech, according to the Associated Press.
“We have not threatened anybody with arrest; we have not written any citations,” Nehls said. “But I think now it would be a good time to have meaningful dialogue with that person and express the concerns out there regarding the language on the truck.”
A meaningful dialogue with the police…which is rather different from meaningful dialogue with random fellow citizens.
This sort of belies the sheriff’s disclaimers that they just want to have a meaningful dialogue.
And I’ve lived in Texas. To a lot of Texans, a meaningful dialogue means “If you don’t agree with my narrow version of the world, you just STFU.”
I wonder if it would have been “disorderly conduct” if “Trump” had been “Obama” or “Clinton”. No, I don’t wonder, because I realize that Free Speech covers any conservative, liberal-hating speech. And that Trump is not to be challenged, because he is our Dictator-in-Chief (and all the little wannabe dictators are cozying up to him so he doesn’t break all their toys)
The message is spiteful but not illegal. What about this one. ‘Fuck gun laws. And fuck you for voting for gun laws.’ I can’t imagine the majority of Texans consider that statement ‘disorderly conduct’. Probably the reverse: a proud message from a loyal Texan supporting individual rights.
As iknklast says, it seems unlikely the sheriff would be interested if it said Clinton or Obama instead of Trump. Nevertheless, there’s a general principle here too – I wouldn’t personally have this sticker on my vehicle but I hate the idea of this kind of creeping censorship of “bad words” in public. Note I’m not referring to racist, sexist or other slurs but more the kind of words that are more neutral on an individual level (shit, fuck, ass etc.)
Years ago, a lady once got very angry with me when I tripped over something in a dimly lit subway station (BTW why are your subway stations so badly lit?). It hurt like hell and I barked out ‘Fuck!’ in pain and shock. This total stranger proceeded to take me to task for swearing in public because it was a) unladylike (yeah that went down well) b) there were children around (and? They’ve heard the words before no doubt) and c) it makes baby Jesus cry. I said fuck baby Jesus and walked off. Not one of my proudest moments to be honest, but I was angry and in pain.
But I think it’s my right to swear in public if I choose. I try not to, because it is rather vulgar, but I’ve always believed that intent is more important than the actual words. For example, a good friend of mine from Ireland says feck every third word, but there’s no malice there, just the natural rhythm of her speech. One of those scary preachers who stand on a street corner, ranting and raving at people are far more frightening even though they never use a curse word.
So, in my view people are perfectly welcome to have Fuck Trump or Fuck Clinton or Fuck Barney the Dinosaur (seriously, fuck that terrifying purple monstrosity) if they choose. The idea that the mere existence of a word on a bumper sticker is disorderly conduct is a road to a Hell nobody wants to live in.
Claire, you haven’t heard the worst of it. Yes, there are too many people here who think they should be free to police your language. But sometimes the actual police get involved. Cases of swearing in public usually invoke children, but not always. They could invoke “community standards”. And one local case where a lady got arrested for swearing in her own home! Her window was open, the cop heard her, was offended, and arrested someone for exercising Freedom of Speech inside the privacy of a private home (their argument being it wasn’t private if others could hear).
I don’t know what happened to that case. The conclusion did not make our local paper, so I presume the charges were quietly dropped, the officer received nothing more than a “guy, don’t do that” and the woman chose not to kick up a stink (I say chose, but more likely it would have been a condition of letting her “off the hook” for something that is not illegal in the first place, at least not since the repeal of the Comstock laws were repealed, and from what I can find out, they actually weren’t, Congress just deleted references to contraception).
One thing I’ve noticed about swearing in public is that if I hear a man saying “fuck” in real anger, I tense up – expecting violence, I think. That seems absurd since I say it every tenth word or so, but…I’m not physically scary. Last week at a bus stop for instance: a perhaps homeless guy was carrying a bunch of stuff and a box or bag gave way, spilling a lot of it. Furious loud “fuck” – and it made me nervous.
I’m not sure what my point is.
AT 1 (after Trump) I hear fuck a lot more. I think he’s habitualized the word by his mere existence and unless it’s said in explicit defiance of Trump, it can seem scary.
I have spent time in work places where “fuck” is pretty much the only verbal modifier… adverb, adjective, prefix, infix, suffix, whatever
It can be difficult to return to civilisation and stop saying shit like, “Please pass the fucking maple syrup.”
OK…
So you’re a liar then, since that is clearly a threat of arrest. It’s saying they’ll totally arrest the truck owner if they don’t do what they say.
And anyway, not threatening to arrest someone for doing something not illegal is supposed to be the height of reasonableness?
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-42032634
The arrest was apparently for an outstanding felony warrant over use of fake i.d., dating from 2015. One assumes the timing is purely coincidental.
Claire, #3; the Irish word ‘feck’ isn’t an expletive or a substitute for ‘fuck’ even though non-Irish people, having heard its use in Father Ted by Father Jack (“Nuns! Feck!”), and more recently by Dara o’Briein, are using it as such. It’s a word in common use in Ireland and is not offensive in any way. It is a slang word for ‘throw’, as in ‘he fecked the ball at me’, which has evolved into a catch-all mild oath, much as ‘blast’ is (or was) for Brits (“Blasted moles digging the blasted lawn up”, etc).
https://stancarey.wordpress.com/2012/09/12/the-meanings-and-origins-of-feck/