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The Rice Thresher
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Having been featured for two weeks on the Backpage, I write to thank you for catapulting me into my 15 minutes of celebrity. After years of professorial anonymity, it is exciting to have my own faculty trading card and to be invited to appear on both Oprah and Geraldo.

There is an important error in your reporting, however. You claim that I am sensitive about my ears. On the contrary, I have always gloried in them, feeling a special affinity with LBJ and Ross Perot.

On a more serious note, you have depicted me as wanting to censor the Thresher because I oppose humor that doesn't conform to my taste. Friends have asked me to explain why. In fact, I don't wish to censor the Thresher or have others censor it. I do want the Thresher itself to adopt a policy that conforms to accepted journalistic standards.

As I understand it, your Backpage editors' animus toward me grew out of events last fall, when students put up posters and called a campus-wide meeting to protest the Nov. 8 issue of the Thresher , which many people thought went far beyond the bounds of acceptable journalism. The target of Backpage "humor" was Rice women in general, who were depicted in insulting stereotypes.

At that meeting, which filled Farnsworth Pavilion and was moderated by Chemistry Professor John Hutchinson, many students of both genders protested the Backpage, which has a long history of insulting people and minority groups and women in particular. Others defended it.

I was among the faculty, students and staff who were asked by the organizers to speak.

I noted that over the years the editors, when criticized, have typically tried to defend the Backpage by saying they were just joking.

However, I pointed to a substantial literature in social psychology and anthropology that interprets as thinly-veiled aggression much joking behavior -- especially when directed against traditional targets of prejudice, such as women and ethnic minorities, and when employing common derogatory stereotypes.

Although many on the Thresher staff were there, including its editors in chief, its Backpage editors and a photographer, the Thresher chose not to report this unprecedented meeting in its pages or to respond to the issue in print.

It is tempting, I am sure, to portray me as someone who wants to impose political correctness on the Thresher , spoiling the fun and violating the free-speech rights of Rice students.

But that portrayal would be inaccurate. I have never advocated censorship of the Thresher , even when the Backpage has caused what I considered to be great injury to some of its victims.

Nor am I against humor directed at, among other targets, the faculty.

In fact, one of my long-standing complaints about the Thresher is that it is woefully short on good satire: witty, hard-hitting humor of the sort that historically has been the stock-in-trade of good campus journalism.

Instead, what the Backpage has all too often served up is drivel. I have always thought Rice students were capable of appreciating more sophisticated humor in their newspaper.

Who should establish Thresher policy, and what should it be? The editors should establish it, thereby taking responsibility for the newspaper and acknowledging that the public trust vested in them as journalists is premised on the expectation that the newspaper be accurate, fair and civil.

Should the Thresher forbid humor that is painful? No. Effective satire has a target, and the target will probably feel hurt or at least extreme discomfort. This is true of all good satire, whether that of Jonathan Swift, Mark Twain, Molly Ivins or P.J. O'Rourke.

Should satiric humor be based on the actual behavior of the target? Yes. Making up falsehoods about people's actions that intentionally mislead the reader is simply not responsible journalism. But this hardly restricts good satire.

There is enough meanness and stupidity in the world to supply legions of satirists with material daily.

Should material from anonymous sources be used, as is now the Backpage policy? I doubt it, but I'm open to argument. Admittedly, anonymity can occasionally provide a needed protection for the satirist.

But anonymity is also a cloak for irresponsible, thoughtless accusations of the kind that may well have played a role in causing a gentle and much loved English professor, John Parish, to commit suicide several years ago shortly after an anonymous Backpage attack on him.

Should humor be directed only against people of one political tendency? Should liberals be let off the hook? Or conservatives?

The obvious answer is no. A free press should be truly free to cast well-aimed barbs against any political, religious or philosophical tendency, as well as against asinine behavior of every sort, so long as the laws against libel are observed.

Where, then, does one draw the line? My view is that, at minimum, no ridicule should be directed against an ascriptive group -- one which people are born into or do not voluntarily join, such as a gender, disability or racial group -- that has traditionally been the object of cruel stereotypes.

You don't ridicule women for being women, crippled people for being crippled, or African Americans for being African Americans, unless you are a bully.

On the other hand, the Thresher should be free to satirize anybody, any group or any tendency -- from the National Organization of Women to the National Rifle Association, from professors to administrators, from the Religious Right to liberation theology -- whose actual words or behavior the writer considers worthy of ridicule.

Freely chosen actions and words are fair game, although editorial judgment still has a role to play.

Admittedly, there may be gray areas and special cases, as there always are when guidelines are drawn.

But it is essential for the Thresher editors to make clear that certain things are beyond the pale of responsible journalism.

Does such a policy deny the right of free speech? Not at all. Every responsible newspaper places limits on what its staff may write. The Thresher itself doesn't permit "nigger" or "kike" on its pages.

Is this the imposition of political correctness? Not unless you define p.c. as the requirement that newspapers treat people with basic respect.

At first glance, the requirement of basic respect might seem to conflict with a policy that allows satire, which can hurt the target. I would argue, however, that one can satirize and make angry without insulting.

My attempt to suggest a policy guideline is admittedly rough-hewn and is meant more as a provocation to Rice students to think seriously about what should not be permissible in their newspaper than as a finished proposal.

Finally, I welcome the opportunity to discuss my views with anyone in any forum on campus.

I would particularly welcome a chance to discuss them with students who believe that a policy of the sort I have suggested, imposed by the Thresher editors themselves, trammels students' right to free speech.

Chandler Davidson

Professor

Department of Sociology

This item appeared in the Opinion section of the March 14, 1997 issue.