{"id":802,"date":"2007-09-24T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-24T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chisnell.www216-119-142-248.a2hosted.com\/chizblog\/?p=802"},"modified":"2017-08-09T05:11:58","modified_gmt":"2017-08-09T05:11:58","slug":"on-tasers-and-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/on-tasers-and-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"On Tasers and Free Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

University of Florida\u2019s Andrew Meyer was tasered by campus police for resisting arrest following his questioning of Senator John Kerry at a recent seminar.\u00a0\u00a0The story<\/a>\u00a0is, of course, all over the internet and news\u2014especially\u00a0YouTube<\/a>\u2014in part for the questions of free speech it raises but also for his now t-shirted and coffee-mugged phrase, \u201cDon\u2019t tase me, bro!\u201d<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s set aside the orgy of profit-seekers and bloggers who seem more interested in the circus around the story than the questions of order and proper use of force.\u00a0\u00a0Is the cultural milieu around Meyer ridiculous? Even obscene? Yes. Is it bizarre that the most creative thing we can muster about the incident is a\u00a0Britney Spears-style remix<\/a>\u00a0of the video tape?\u00a0\u00a0Definitely. And is the news distracted by the possibilities that the incident was staged?\u00a0\u00a0Absolutely.<\/p>\n

The civil liberties question we might be asking is whether passionate speakers may, in a public forum, question our politicians provocatively without being forcibly subdued.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s certainly possible that Meyer is a bit paranoid and a conspiracy-theorist, but this does not in the least alter the question.\u00a0\u00a0The campus police did not know him but could only act on what they witnessed at the scene.\u00a0\u00a0It\u2019s also possible that Meyer intentionally staged the incident, considering his history of such stunts.\u00a0\u00a0Again, however, this does not change the question.\u00a0\u00a0The police acted upon his behavior at the microphone, not his unknown intent.<\/p>\n

What did Meyer do?\u00a0\u00a0He is guilty of making a speech and asking three questions in a row, instead of asking one question clearly.\u00a0\u00a0He also went over his allotted time at the microphone.\u00a0\u00a0For this, campus police asked him to stop, then led him away.\u00a0\u00a0When he then resisted, they subdued him; while they had him pinned and attempted to handcuff him, they used a taser.\u00a0\u00a0All of this was filmed from multiple angles.\u00a0\u00a0All the while, Senator Kerry attempted to keep the audience calm and answer Meyer\u2019s questions which he called \u201cimportant.\u201d<\/p>\n

They\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0important, not because Meyer was concerned about possible election fraud in 2004 or secret societies, but because if a political figure opens the floor to the public, then we must allow the public some liberty in its efforts to \u201cto petition the government for a redress of grievances.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Oh, that\u2019s the First Amendment, by the\u00a0way.<\/p>\n

Meyer was sarcastic, but not violent.\u00a0\u00a0Meyer was provocative, but was not inciting others (which the police initially accused him of).\u00a0\u00a0The audience around him was surprisingly calm and perhaps impatient with his diatribe.<\/p>\n

Not ironically, Meyer has written a fair amount on his own website about our media, our rights, and American culture, similar in some veins to my post last week on cultural claustrophobia:<\/p>\n

The news is designed to keep viewers watching and sedated and not thinking bad thoughts about America, because that would be bad for the economy. Stories about a severely unbalanced budget are out, train wrecks like Paris and Anna are in. A train wreck may be senseless and pointless, but Americans sure do love to watch.\u00a0\u00a0(The Andrew Meyer<\/a>)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No, this doesn\u2019t mean I agree with his conclusions, but it does mean that he either understands far too well or paradoxically not well enough what his arrest has created.<\/p>\n

If his goal was to create a dramatic scene suitable to distract millions of YouTubers for a few days to demonstrate our twisted media, he has succeeded.\u00a0\u00a0But if his goal was to raise sincere issues about political manipulation and the war in Iraq, he failed utterly.\u00a0His own antics and provocations of the police assured his message would not be credible.\u00a0\u00a0I worry that the latter is the case.<\/p>\n

Which leaves us with the question.\u00a0\u00a0Should he have been arrested?\u00a0\u00a0I don\u2019t blame the campus police for acting as they did, awkward as it must have been for them.\u00a0\u00a0Once Meyer began to resist, they raised their level of intervention by degrees.\u00a0\u00a0Nevertheless, I don\u2019t believe they needed to intervene in the first place.<\/p>\n

Democracy is messy.\u00a0\u00a0Dissent makes it so.\u00a0\u00a0We attempt to bring order by establishing rules of conduct and hope everyone abides by them, but we must also know that when informed or even uninformed citizens argue from principles, conduct may take a backseat.\u00a0A moderator assigned to monitor conduct would have helped; cutting power to the microphone would likely have been sufficient once warnings had been issued.\u00a0\u00a0Then Meyer could have returned to his own blog space and continued his dissent.<\/p>\n

As it is, he has not helped Kerry\u2019s cause, the media\u2019s cause, or his own.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Florida\u2019s Andrew Meyer was tasered by campus police for resisting arrest following his questioning of Senator John Kerry at a recent seminar.\u00a0\u00a0The story\u00a0is, of course, all over the internet and news\u2014especially\u00a0YouTube\u2014in part for the questions of free speech it raises but also for his now t-shirted and coffee-mugged phrase, \u201cDon\u2019t tase me, bro!\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1598,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[247,256],"tags":[333,334,335,336,337],"class_list":["post-802","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-chizblog","category-politics-and-ethics","tag-andrew-meyer","tag-democracy","tag-first-amendment","tag-free-speech","tag-john-kerry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2007\/09\/Andrew-Meyer-gets-tased-by-the-police-Sept.-17-2007-8x6.jpg?fit=450%2C350&ssl=1","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":810,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/when-the-constitution-may-be-wrong\/","url_meta":{"origin":802,"position":0},"title":"When the Constitution May Be Wrong","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2007 Nov 6","format":false,"excerpt":"The Westboro Baptist Church protests are the kind of example which is a real test of our tolerance for free speech.\u00a0\u00a0The church, supported by the ACLU, is appealing a US District Court decision that compels it to pay $11 million for invasion of privacy and intent to inflict emotional distress.\u00a0\u00a0What\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "ChizBlog"","block_context":{"text":"ChizBlog","link":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/category\/chizblog\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/04\/clickit.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":828,"url":"https:\/\/www.chisnell.com\/chizblog\/on-daggits-and-darfur-obama-and-adama\/","url_meta":{"origin":802,"position":1},"title":"On Daggits and Darfur, Obama and Adama","author":"Steve Chisnell","date":"2009 Mar 21","format":false,"excerpt":"Truly, my first thought when I heard that the cast of\u00a0Battlestar Galactica\u00a0was debating at the real United Nations was that we've finally lost our sense of reality. 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