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On March 1, 2011, Sidney Toledano, CEO of the French fashion house Christian Dior, wrote that he was dismissing its chief designer, John Galliano, after the surfacing of a video that showed "his anti-Semitic outbursts at a Paris bar." The word choice of outbursts by The New York Times is interesting, for the actual video shows him in a rather mellow, notably intoxicated, "well you know" mood. The article's writer admits that the designer had used "a slurred voice." Galliano was telling a Jewish couple that they should feel lucky that their ancestors were not killed by the Nazis because so many did not survive. He said ‘‘people like you would be dead,’’ and  ‘‘your mothers, your forefathers’’ could have all be ‘‘gassed.’’ Although applying a rational criterion to a drunk man, I wonder in what sense he meant ‘‘I love Hitler.’’ Considering that Galliano is gay and Hitler sent homosexuals to concentration camps, I suspect that Galliano was lying simply to hurt the couple in what was undoubtedly a back-and-forth in a verbal fight.  Indeed, it takes two to tangle, and the rest of us might do well to recognize the difficulty in interpreting a snipet without having observed the entire contest.

While hurtful and inappropriate even in the midst of a disagreement, Galliano's aversarial comments hardly constituted an outburst, as if he had lost control of himself and thrown his bar table against a wall. Why, one might ask, would a journalist at a major New York paper use a word that (deliberately?) overstates the case against the designer?  Perhaps even in a free society, there is a tendency to gang up on an unpopular, even loathed, minority opinion in a way that distorts the story in order to give occasion for further fulminations. We don't know, for example, what the couple might have said to Mr. Galliano that sparked his vitriole.  Lyes Meftahi, a 38 year old Parisian who runs an audiovisual company, said that Mr Galliano was certainly drunk, speaking slowly and slurring his words. So much for any outburst. Furthermore, the witness said that the designer was keeping to himself and was ‘‘provoked’’ by a woman, who had called Mr. Galliano ‘‘ugly.’’  Mr. Galliano himself was threatened with violence at one stage during the altercation according to Mr. Meftahi. It is difficult for the rest of us to know what happened based on an objectionable snipet.

Rather than defending the designer, whose comments I concur were highly inappropriate (note that I'm applying rationalism again to a drunk person),  I want to contend that the rush to judgment against him had a certain amount of presumption attached. That is to say, we as human beings may tend to presume we are in a position to judge when in fact we are not. Taking ourselves as gods on earth in effect, we tend to assume omniscience rather than limited creatureliness as our mantle. For a part to take itself as the whole is to truncate reality itself into a mere projection of the part. Lest we forget, we are all fallible, even when we judge with apparent certitude.

For example, that Mr. Galliano had "helped to energize Dior after he joined it in 1996 as creative director, increasing sales and making it a jewel of the LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton luxury-goods empire" was wantonly or unintentionally tossed aside by Mr. Toledano in what bears all the signs of a rush to judgment. In its statement, Dior said it had ‘‘immediately suspended relations’’ with Mr. Galliano and ‘‘initiated dismissal procedures.’’ It cited the ‘‘particularly odious comments’’ contained in the video. It is as though the weight of history came slamming down on the star designer, suffocating him from even proffering a self-defense before the fall of the guillotine. In the face of this injustice, it might be quelle dommage pour M. Galliano were it not for his own choice of weapon. He undoubtedly esteemed his own faculties too much in assuming he could handle being drunk. Again, human beings do not have as much pith as we tend to think.

To be sure, anti-semitism and racism ought to be relegated to the ash heap following the twentieth century. For all its technological progress, that century was remarkably decadent and stagnant.  In early 2011, the world dared to hope that popular protests sweeping the Middle East might have been ushering in a new progression of freedom in the establishment of republics in what had been autocracies for centuries. Would that region sport the tolerance that is necessary for a free society to truly be free? Can it look to Europe, where certain speech, even in a small group, can get one thrown in prison? According to The New York Times, "French law makes it a crime to incite racial hatred; the statute has been used in the past to punish anti-Semitic remarks."  Yet to incite seems to connote a public broadcasting or speaking format, as in inciting the mob to storm the Bastille (or, as in 1792, the republic's prison filled with aristocrats and clergy--a massacre that Robbespierre denounced as a travesty of the rights of man). Does a person incite hatred against a particular group simply be giving his opinion in a dispute with another person?  The dubious applicability of the French law seems to hinge in this case on treating a private gathering, albeit in a public establishment, as a public (political) event.  Of course, in the United States, even the latter is protected by the first amendment on free speech, but even there hate crimes exist. In the European Union, where speech is punished on account of the Nazi experience, the society looks overly restrictive and unfree, at least from an American perspective. To be sure, the reverse has also been the case. In 1948, for example, the U.S. Government banned showings in the U.S. of the American documentary, Nuremberg: Its Lessons for Today, even as Germans were free (and encouraged) to see it in Germany. The American military did not want Americans seeing the Soviets as allies (and the Germans, whose help the American govenment was then seeking against the Russians, as enemies). It is precisely such a proclivity that the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution was designed to thwart. The human species is insufficiently equipped to be able to curtail innate freedom effectively.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/02/fashion/02dior.html?pagewanted=1&sq=john galliano&st=cse&scp=2

See related essay (essentially completing the wider argument)  in this blog: http://thewordenreport.blogspot.com/2011/03/westboro-churchs-anti-gay-and-john.html

Geert Wilders, head of the Party for Freedom (PVV) in the Netherlands, went on trial on October 4, 2010, in the Netherlands on charges of inciting hatred, less than a week after entering parliament as a linchpin in the coalition government. The far right political leader faced five charges of inciting hatred and discrimination against Muslims and people of non-Western immigrant origin, particularly Moroccans. “He divides, he creates hate, he creates conflicts between people,” said Mohammed Rabbae of the National Council for Moroccans. Wilders told the court he was being persecuted for “stating my opinion in the context of public debate,” adding: “I can assure you, I will continue proclaiming it.” In an opinion piece in a Dutch daily, he compared Islam to fascism and the Koran to Adolf Hitler’s book “Mein Kampf.” Wilders also made the film “Fitna” in 2008 which portrayed the Koran as inciting violence and mixed images of terrorist attacks with quotations from the Islamic holy book.



I am staying out of the debate on Islam. Hence, I am not expressing an opinion on whether I agree or disagree with Wilders’ statements on Islam. I raise the matter of this case for its implications for free speech as it is practiced in political debate. The extreme-antisemitism of the Nazis resulted in some rather severe curbs on free speech in the state of Germany that would shock people in any of the American states.  While the EU is relatively restrictive on free speech, however, even in the US a person can not shout “fire!” in a crowded theater unless there really is a fire. The Wilders case is not being prosecuted as a “fire” case.  Rather, it is being portrayed as akin to hate crimes in the US, only in this case it involves speech in a political debate.  The Europeans may be conflating a hate crime with an opinion in political debate.  Had Wilders urged people to kiss Muslims, his case would be much closer to a hate crime.  If a position in a political debate is itself to be treated as a hate crime, then politics itself is being criminalized.  This would be like saying that republican leaders who are against gay marriage and say it is sinful and akin to having sex with animals are somehow guilty of a hate crime. To say that something is odious does not in itself cross the line into urging people to kill those who believe in it or practice it. Were “dividing people” in a political speech or an opinion piece a crime, the republican party would find itself continually before a judge as one interest group after another feels marginalized by republican positions on particular issues. Political positions may well offend; that is the nature of politics. It doesn’t make it a crime. A clearer line between politics and crime needs to be drawn in Europe. Otherwise, prosecution will be increasingly used to cut out positions in the political discourse that some do not like. Politics is about conflict—hopefully resolving it. Part of the process may be identifying the conflict, and this may be perceived as dividing people when in fact there is already such a division. Where one side of a division is criminalized, the division itself cannot be known by society, and thus any resolution would be partial.  Ideally, a division should be clearly and fully enunciated by each side, and then others not invested in either side will be sufficiently informed to be able to suggest viable and realistic solutions to the conflict. To ignore one of the positions would be to risk a solution that is merely partial and thus ultimately unsustainable.

Source:  http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,6072375,00.html%C2%A0

Republican outside groups are outspending democrats by eight to one in the 2010 election cycle.  Citizens United, the court case allowing unlimited (and anonymous) corporate political spending (as if spending were speech!), is benefiting the republicans. The republican party advocates policies that are more in the financial interest of the wealthy (e.g., cutting entitlements and extending the Bush tax cuts for those over $200,000). In my view, the case opens up the dichotomy between a plutocracy (rule by wealth) and a representative democracy (rule by the people through their representatives). Although the latter is not perfect (esp when most of the people are idiots), it is better than rule by the moneyed interests (i.e., the status quo).  It is ironic that after electing real change, the forces of the status quo would gain the upper hand. Since the vast majority of American voters are not wealthy, the question is perhaps whether we can be effectively manipulated by political ads into voting for the interests of the wealthy. For example, one outside group had an ad complaining about the U.S. government’s debt and urging less spending on entitlements.  No mention is made of the roughly $1 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  As another example, extending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy is put in terms of the latter using the savings to hire workers, even though studies show that such tax savings are typically saved. An educated electorate seems to me the best means of resisting such manipulation. Essentially, the distinction can be said to be between the vested interests of the status quo and those of real change.  Too much power going to the wealthy can stultify the political system, such that we do not adapt.  An organism that does not adapt to a changing environment does not tend to survive.

On January 18, 2011, Comcast received government approval to acquire NBC Universal. This followed a lengthy review, which mandated a list of conditions. The most important of them is aimed at preventing the new media conglomerate from thwarting competition in online video. However,even though regulators described their review as the most intense scrutiny ever for a planned media merger, Comcast managers said they believed their company faced few onerous restrictions from the review. “I don’t think any of the conditions are particularly restrictive,” said David L. Cohen, executive vice president of Comcast. This statement ought to give readers some pause.

According to The New York Times, "The combination of Comcast’s cable and Internet systems and NBC Universal’s channels will create a media powerhouse, and it will be the first time a cable company will control a major broadcast network." In abstract terms, process or transport will control content. It is perhaps as though the flying to grandma's for Thanksgiving were itself the point. Less abstractly, it is worth looking at how the privileging of throughput might have an impact on content. It seems at the very least like a case of mistaken priorities.  Even so, what sticks out to me is the conflict of interest that is inherent in the combination. I believe we put too much stock on the ability of regulations to mitigate such conflicts.
The concentration of market power in a combined media company that includes program content with a strong cable-system influence is inherently at odds financially with other routes being able to use the content. In other words, there is an inherent conflict of interest at the root of the combination. Interestingly, it could be argued that NBC content, being private property, could rightly be limited to one pipeline. For example, NBC could have purchased Comcast in order to have its own route. It would be understandable if NBC wanted to limit its content to its own pipeline. Our resistance to this idea is perhaps because we view the major networks as public goods because they are readily available over the airwaves. The latter give the content the veneer of being public goods. Similarly with the free content available on the internet, it is easy to view it as a public good because it is free and available, even though the content has ownership. This post, for example, is mine because I am writing it; it contains my ideas. So it could be argued that the "over the air" system of television broadcasting had led us to "forget" that the content is private property, which could rightly be limited as to throughput.  Yet it could also be argued that broadcasters must have broadcasting licenses because they are being allowed to use the public airwaves, which are a public good, and there can be obligations associated with this privilege that include open access and safeguarding competition. Essentially, there is is a public good vs. private property tradeoff that should be addressed in analyzing the merger.
The matter of who in the merger is in the driver's seat is also relevant, for it might be in NBC's interest to be broadcast beyond its own cable system, whereas Comcast would benefit most by restricting the availability. Part of the angst over the merger may be due to the restrictiveness inherent in Comcast being in the driver's seat. A policy implication might be that in such mergers the content could be mandated to be in charge. That the people at Comcast view the restrictions as far from onerous may suggest that the company will be able to do what is in its financial interest in spite of the conditions. One might recall the case of subprime mortgage derivatives, which had outstripped the ability of regulators to regulate, much less to understand. To rely on regulations to protect the public interest in the case of very complex securities minimizes the ability of traders to circumvent what must seem to them as quite superficial barriers. The conflict of interest in the present case, which involves throughput restricting access beyond what is in the interest of the public or even the content, can be expected to have a subtle and on-going force that would inevitably out-wiggle the ability of regulators to look out for the public interest. 

Lastly, the case of a media company that includes political and news content means that market concentration also has implications for free speech, and ultimately for the republic itself. Specifially, the views gaining access in the public air waves could narrow, and those that make it through migh be more likely to support the media company's general political interests. It is, for example, in the interest of corporations that we debate secondary issues, rather than the basics that enable large businesses to exist.  For example, it is notable that after the <i>Citizens United </i>case that allows for unlimited campaign donations, the question of whether a corporation should be considered a legal person was not salient in the media.  Also nearly missing was a discussion of whether wealth constitutes speech.  As another example, in the debate on financial reform in 2010, whether banks too big to fair should be allowed even to exist was not much debated. Consequently, the resulting law applies "too big to fail" only to firms that have already failed on their own (e.g., structuring their liquidation). According to Jesse Eisinger of Propublica, "Goldman, like all the other major investment and commercial banks, had become too big and intertwined, making the financial system too fragile. . . . Unfortunately, despite a hulking financial reform law, the American financial system still has largely the same structural issues that it had before the crisis." Eisinger laments that neither the U.S. Government nor Wall Street has been particularly interested in going after the underlying structural flaw: over-leveraged banks whose size alone renders them too big to fail. Coincidentally, discussion of this structural flaw and the related very existence of the big banks as big banks was kept largely off the public radar. I wonder if we realize how narrow our public political discourse really is,  why that is so, and what the impact has been on legislation.  In other words, what the public debates may not be an accident. The consolidation of the media sector could facilitate the subterranean influence of corporate America on the American polity and society.

 In short, conflicts of interest are of such force that they cannot be undone by regulators. Therefore, it is better that such conflicts not be permitted to exist in the first place. Pipeline should not be allowed to control content. It isn't even good business because it isn't in the interest of the content.  Hence even from the standpoint of private property, there is reason to be critical of the merger. Secondly, it ought to be recognized that the concentration of media power in a republic is dangerous to that form of government because a narrowing of public discourse does not serve the electorate in making informed decisions in voting.  Compounding the problem, both the conflict of interest and the negative effects on the republic itself are long-term, whereas the regulators and the public have their attention fixed primarily on the short term.

Sources: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/business/media/19comcast.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=comcast&st=Search; Jesse Eisinger, "Goldman Sachs's Navel-Gazing Comes Up Short," The New York Times, January 19, 2011: http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/19/goldman-sachss-navel-gazing-comes-up-short/?ref=business