The right to be stupid

I've been watching Whoopi Goldberg get raked over the coals for her attempt to sound clever. Man, did she bomb! She's been hung out to dry for two things she said which I think should be taken separately. One strikes me as a question of perspective, that the Holocaust was not about race but about man's inhumanity to man. The other was a comment probably meant to be clever, and one that she must have thought was a kind of mark of solidarity with black folk; that the Holocaust was about white people fighting amongst themselves. Now that's stupid. Seriously stupid. And insensitive as all get-out.

The Holocaust was absolutely not about white man against white man. It was one of the cruelest examples of a hateful ideology put into practice by a nation of folk many of them living in poverty and hoping for a savior, somebody who would "Make Germany great again."  People filled with fear of falling through the cracks, apathetic or clueless about the degree to which the Weimar democracy depended on their active participation, working hand-in-hand with a critical mass of enablers of fascism. One of the lowest points in Western civilization. Seen from this aspect of the issue, and through an American lens, Whoopi was right: race had nothing to do with it.

Where she needed to be corrected was in her oversimplified notion of what racism is. Nobody can blame an American, and particularly an African-American, for seeing anti-racism as a struggle between black and white Americans. We all define things on the basis of our own experience, and our racism is all about the white supremacist belief, prevalent through most of our history, and to some degree still very much alive today, that white people had the right to own black people and use them in any way they chose. They could rape them, work them to death, tear them from their loved ones with impunity, be assured that the police would help them capture them when they ran away. American racism is about as evil as evil gets. It's not surprising that when Whoopi looked through that lens, she found the connection between racism and the Holocaust almost irrelevant. And given her work in the area of human rights, it's not surprising she should foreground it.

But that was Whoopi with blinders on, not Whoopi worthy of punishment. She evidenced absolutely no intention to cause harm. She merely missed the very important fact that the Holocaust was indeed about race; it was about people who used the word explicitly, people who thought of themselves as the "master race" and the Jews as a race that they had every right to extinguish. Right down to the last man, woman and child.

When she expressed on The View that what the Nazis did should be interpreted as a crime against humanity rather than an example of racism, she was being reasonable, whether you agree with her or not. She had a perspective. You don't have to agree with it. And a couple of her fellow panel members did protest. That's what a talk show called The View is supposed to be about - a sharing of different perspectives. 

Where Whoopi went off the rails was the second part of her statement, that this was whites fighting amongst themselves. I'm still reeling at the stupidity of that statement. But I don't feel any need to beat her with a stick. I'm happy she found it a good idea to apologize.  Not before she found herself in a hole and kept digging, unfortunately. "Race is something I can see," she said on the Colbert Report.

We're living in a time when being stupid can cost you more than if you're crooked. While the conspiracy theorists run relatively free, we are quick to punish, quick to portray ourselves as people who would not be stupid, given the chance. We worry less about being hypocritical than about being politically correct. The media bring on a holocaust survivor who wants to school Whoopi in the evils of the holocaust, and the network plays this up big: "What would you like to say to her?" the newscaster asks, even after reporting that Whoopi has seen the error of her ways and apologized for what she said.  And it was a real apology, not just a perfunctory one:

I should have said it is about both. As Jonathan Greenblatt from the Anti-Defamation League shared, ‘The Holocaust was about the [Nazis’] systematic annihilation of the Jewish people — who they deemed to be an inferior race.’ I stand corrected.

It occurs to me that what's going on is not about the re-education of Whoopi Goldberg, but about the view we have that the media's role should be a didactic one. Here's how you're supposed to think, it tells its audience. Take notes. Do it right. Don't make the mistake Whoopi Goldberg did. Whoopi has no recourse. She doesn't get to explain. She has to sit there and put out her hand to be slapped with the ruler. No protests. Just take your punishment.

It's bad enough that we have to watch Americans fall all over themselves these days to spread one bit of misinformation after another. The fawning members of the Republican Party give me an ulcer. But it pains me almost as much to have to watch us turn our backs on something I thought was sacred. I'll never forget the first time I heard somebody say, "The freedom of speech, the freedom to worship in any way you choose, the freedom to organize labor unions - all those are important freedoms; but the greatest freedom we have is the freedom to be stupid." It's another way of saying that the freedom of speech has no meaning if there are going to be censors or arbiters of correct thinking.

I'm really glad Whoopi apologized for that insensitive statement. I wish she had not been suspended just so ABC, the network that The View is on, gets to look clean and pure. When I read the reason Kim Godwin, the head of ABC, gave for the move, "I've asked her to take time to reflect and learn about the impact of her comments," my stomach turned. How arrogant. How condescending. How dare you think you're in a position to give lessons on morality? But on second thought, it occurred to me that it probably wasn't Whoopi she was addressing, but the American people. When you're put in charge of media, you assume a moral position. Otherwise you're just a tool of monied interests. Or a simple propaganda machine, like Fox News. I don't know Godwin, but my guess is she's no more a hypocrite than the rest of us. She's just doing her job as she understands it.

I'm not going to shed a tear for Whoopi. She took on the risk by going on a talk show where people of different opinions get together to slug it out. Getting slapped down goes with the public job.  Anti-semitism is up in America - and around the world - it's good that it's getting the attention this goof brings to it. Good that people are learning that not all Jews are white, that being Jewish is not parallel to being Catholic, because Jewishness and Judaism are two different things; that not all Jews are religious and Jewishness is not an ethnicity. It's a lot like it in some ways, but it's not the same thing. Just ask an American whose father was a Persian Jew and whose mother was a German Jew and who was raised in a secular household in America. It's good that we get to learn from this kerfuffle.

But, as always, it's what happens next that matters more than what has happened to date. If this experience makes Whoopi less willing to speak her mind for fear of showing her ignorance, that will be a big loss. She's been in hot water a number of times before. It's part of her personality to say things off the cuff. Like the time she pointed to her pubic area and said, referring to George W. Bush, "We should keep Bush where he belongs, and not in the White House." She needs to be free to be stupid (and vulgar) again, and we need to be free to call her stupid (and vulgar) again, if that's how she strikes us.

And that goes for all of us, of course.