“I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” — Evelyn Beatrice Hall

Recently the blogosphere has been having a strikingly poignant conversation about Loren Feldman, Verizon and freedom of speech.

Let’s set the stage. Loren Feldman is a satirist and comedian who makes videos in which he lampoons Social Media types. His list of “victims” have included noted Social Media figures, as well as a veritable carnival of races, creeds and cultures. Recently, a video series that Loren put together a year ago is coming onto center stage. In it, he goes to great lengths to expose (as he sees it) an inequity in the way that black bloggers are represented in Social Media.

Setting The Stage

He does this in typical Loren fashion, which means brazen, over-the-top caricature.

Many say he went too far to make his point.

Some of those who feel that Mr. Feldman overstepped the bounds of good taste petitioned Verizon, which had been syndicating Loren’s videos, to remove him from their lineup. Bending to the pressure, Verizon did just that.

The fall-out has been dozens and dozens of passionate, well reasoned, and telling posts on both sides of the fence. Some say that Feldman is a genius and others think that he’s a hack.

The reality is that Loren is a man, a man who wanted to make a point and failed on two levels. The first was that the joke, the point, got lost somewhere in the translation. The second is that he failed to recognize that the context you assume people will see is not always the context people actually see.

In other words, if you leave yourself open to knee-jerk reactions, don’t be surprised when you get them.

Is he completely guilt free in this — certainly not, but I’ll leave that portion of the debate to the intelligent people already having this conversation.

What I will say is that this blogstorm is transitory. In a few weeks time, we will all forget our collective indignation and life will return to normal. If you don’t believe me, send me an email in September and we’ll chat about it.

The only thing that will not have changed in all that time is that as bloggers, as content producers, the one thing that we have that is of any value is our right to be wrong. I am reminded of a story that was floating around not too long ago about Iranian bloggers possibly facing the death penalty for “corruption”. That drove home to me how lucky I was to live in a country where no matter how ridiculous, arrogant or incorrect my opinion was I was allowed to present it and everyone else was allowed to disagree in whatever over-zealous, self-righteous and over-wrought manner that caught their fancy.

A Different Perspective

Matt Ingram was partially right when he said that, “Loren should be free to make and distribute his content, and others are free not to watch it.” What he forgot to add was that others have just as strong a right to express their distaste for that content to anyone who will listen — including Verizon.

Reversing this, those who decry Loren should not get so caught up in their anger that they forget that the same right that allows them to protest anything that upsets them is the one that people like Loren are exercising when they create their content.

In the grand scheme of things, Loren is not the person who you should be directing your indignation towards. If you want something to be upset about, read this post by Louis Gray and read through to the comments. What you’ll see is that the web makes targets of us all and if you’re only thinking in terms of whatever group you happen to belong to you’re missing the wider problem.

It’s a problem we can only solve by focusing our attention on not adding to the bile that is already floating out there, by being better than it in our own lives and with the people who we love.

Welcome to America, where a comedian is not always funny and the “righteous” are not always right. It’s an America in which thousands, no tens of thousands of times a day someone, somewhere is being maligned unfairly and no one is crying out for them.

It’s an America where we don’t bat an eye to casual contempt, to cocktails of sexism, racism, classism, ageism — except for every other Tuesday or if it effects us directly.

It’s an America where despite all of these things, all of us are free to rant, rave, and rabble-rouse to our heart’s content; an America where we are at our best and at our worst when we are exercising our right to speak our minds and to act on our feelings.

It’s an America, in a World, where the best we can hope for is that the good people in our lives always outweigh the bad and that we do our best to improve that ratio every day.

Whether we hate or love Loren.

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