Word play

It's getting late, we leave early in the morning, so this is going to be quicker and less carefully-constructed than I would like it to be, but time constraints do not allow it to be otherwise - and time constraints of a different sort, specifically being away for the next week, impel me to say what I can now.

"Pieing." What an odd-sounding word. What an odd-looking word. It's the "i-e-i" that does it. It's like one of those word riddles:

- What's the only common English word with three consecutive double letters?¹
- What's the only common English word with a double i (plurals such as radii and proper nouns excepted)?²
- There are four common English words that end in -dous, such as tremendous. What are the other three?³

And now we have "Name a word that has the letters i, e, i, together and in that order."

But of course what raises the word is the recent use of pies as instruments of political expression aimed at a couple of right-wing blowhards: William Kristol got one during a speech at Earlham College in Richmond, Indiana, then David Horowitz got similarly splattered at Butler College in Indianapolis. (Is there something about Indiana here?)

And oh my aren't some of the tough-blogging liberals among us all a-flutter with distress, so disturbed are they by this breach of Good Order.

People, get a flying grip. These are pies. We're not talking about weapons of mass destruction here or sweeping Patriot Act roundups or truncheons. We're talking about flippin' pies.

The purpose of throwing a pie in someone's face is not physical injury but mockery; it's to make them look foolish and thus smaller, to puncture the aura of power and authority. (Like any other tactic, it doesn't always work: Kristol defused the situation entirely by simply wiping himself off and continuing his speech as if nothing had happened, which is assuredly the most effective response. In fact, it was the college that came off looking foolish with its gross overreaction: It suspended the student, is threatening him with expulsion, and has gone so far as to take out a full-page ad in a local paper apologizing for the incident.)

In fact, pie-throwing has quite the recent history, both here and elsewhere, although in most cases it's been used as a more general cultural statement rather than as a classically political one. So why all the gasping, all the outrage? Why, to return to a theme I've raised before, do we feel the need to waste time and energy (when we have little enough of either) insisting "oh no no no, they're not with us" whenever something slips even a little bit outside the comfort zone?

Like the proverb says, some questions need only be asked. The reaction occurs precisely because some among us do not want to be taken out of their comfort zones, those who, despite their fiery online rhetoric,

persist in thinking of political debate as a quiet exchange of well-crafted ideas, punctured only by "tut-tut"s and "hear, hear"s,

as I said just the other day. Oh yes, the words can be strong but it's still vital that we be polite, well-mannered, that we do not appear to be rowdy, to be ruffians.

But, the impertinent voice calls out from the crowd, why? Why must we be polite, why must we forever play by the rules that you yourselves are forced to admit are stacked against us? The answers - there are two, one philosophical, one tactical - are, let's call it, less than satisfying.

The philosophical one is easily dismissed: It's the claim that pieing William Kristol or David Horowitz (or even, in a related incident, pouring salad dressing on Pat Buchanan, which happened to him during a recent appearance at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo) is an attack on or a threat to their freedom of speech. That is utterly, unforgiveably, absurd. It is beneath ridiculous. These are men who can command the attention of the national media any time they want it. They have organizations whose whole purpose is to promote their (and similar) views. They get paid big money to make speeches advocating those views. Their freedom of speech is under no threat at all and claiming otherwise drops right through the bottom of my credibility scale. (It does fit in nicely with that view of political debate as something for the dignified drawing room rather than the raucous street - but it represents a complete failure of logic or even connection to current political reality.)

The tactical argument comes down to "it makes us look bad and so it will help the right." Some have literally invoked Karl "The Bogeyman" Rove in this, describing him as "chuckling." This counsel of fear, of constant self-censorship, of imbuing opponents with demonic powers of manipulation and control, of ducking and covering for fear you might get hit if you raise from your crouch, is self-defeating and profoundly discouraging.

It seems that every time someone steps beyond the bounds of "propriety," of "reasonableness," of "civilized behavior," the same cries get raised, the same claims that it will "hurt the cause" are flung about. I have said this before, just recently, in fact, but I will say it again:

The fact is, the movement for peace and social justice in this country has been at its strongest and most influential when it has spoken the truth without giving a flying damn if anyone was "offended" or not. We didn't build a movement against the Vietnam War ... [or] for civil rights, women's equality, or a cleaner environment by worrying about ... who we'd "turn off" if we labeled the discriminators and despoilers for what they were.

Others who have risked far more than I have, have expressed similar sentiments far more eloquently. For one, Martin Luther King, Jr., who, sitting in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama, in April, 1963 as a result of civil disobedience, saw an ad by a group of local ministers who called his campaign there "unwise and untimely." In his famous response, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, he wrote in part

[w]e know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct-action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant 'Never.'"

Even sharper are the words of Daniel Berrigan. On May 17, 1968, a group of nine people, including Dan and his brother Phil, walked into the Catonsville, Maryland draft board, grabbed 378 files on men classified 1-A (i.e., draftable), took them outside, and burned them with homemade napalm. In a meditation written for the action, Dan wrote:

Our apologies, dear friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children, the angering of the orderlies in the front parlor of the charnel house.

Now, I don't mean for a minute to compare the courage of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Catonsville Nine, as they came to be known, with throwing of pies. But the point at issue is valid: Whenever "good order" is "fractured" there will always be those who pronounce it "unwise and untimely," who will claim it will set back the cause, give comfort to the enemy, whose preference for decorum over drama traps their tactics and inhibits their imaginations.

Well, truth be told, pie throwing possibly could hurt your cause - if your cause and your hopes are limited to producing a Democratic Congress even if it's a Congress of Joe Liebermans and Zell Millers. My cause is rather more far-reaching and in that pursuit a little creative raucousness is not at all out of place.

Oh, there is one other argument offered against pieing: "It's a waste of good food." This is apparently supposed to be a clever slammer. It is neither.

¹bookkeeper
²skiing
³stupendous, horrendous, and hazardous