Political Rhetoric and Your Freedom, the Reasonable Person Standard

I just finished watching a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and he said something that really hit home with me, and was a very articulate, yet not pretentious, way of explaining my personal position on political discourse in the modern and postmodern eras. I can't remember the exact quote, but he was talking about the mannerisms and style of rhetoric used by politicians when speaking. I should elaborate here, I am describing the flow of words and sentence structure along with word choice that effects how information is presented to and received by an audience.

Stewart's comment was something to the effect of "Why can't we just sit down and talk like adults, without the use of 'code.' Politicians devise sentences that allow them the 'wiggle room' to go back and restructure our positions later for 'plausible deniability.'"

The purpose of this blog is not to show examples of our of politicians performing, it is rather to argue for the loss and potential recovery of the Reasonable Person Standard, as described by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Paul Waldman in their book, The Press Effect: Politicians, Journalists, and the Stories That Shape the Critical World (great read, really very interesting if you're into Journalism or Sociology at all, easy to follow for the most part). The Reasonable Person Standard (RPS) is relatively self-explanatory, but it still warrants further explanation.

Now, I should tell you I'm not going to cite anything here. If/when I use a quote, I'm not going to do page numbers in the book and all that jazz. I'm posting my formal essay after I finish this blog, and it contains all the proper citations for the references I'm using. So check that one if you need specificity.

The RPS could be obtusely defined as "common sense;" however, this would be an oversimplication. I think the best way to explain it is to think of jury duty. When your on a jury, you're job is to look at the facts, and decide what a reasonable person placed in that situation would do or understand. It's not rocket science, there are absolutely no academic requirements for serving on a jury. Now Jamieson & Waldman go more in depth and explore about nine other guidelines for political press coverage, which are more specific in how to successfully execute the Reasonable Person Standard in a journalistic setting and are important, but not necessary here. They can pretty much just be lumped under the umbrella of the RPS. Again, refer to the formal essay for detail.

When politicians use spin or misleading rhetoric to confuse the public perspective, they are undermining your right to information and your right to make your own choices based on pure information. Dare I say it, your freedom? Isn't that kind of what freedom is, at least from a very broad democratic perspective. People are supposed to be able to make their own decisions about their lives, based off of accurate information provided to the public. Now, I'm not going to argue that most people don't want to participate and are uninterested in active democracy, but that's partly due to the difficulties in finding clear, unspun information that is widely available and easy to understand. Enter what is supposed to be the role of journalism in society. With spreading postmodern skepticism, however, the media is losing its reputation as an unbiased source of clear and reliable information. To go in deeply here would take too long, and would not be effective for the purpose of this blog, but maybe I'll write about it soon in another.

This is becoming one of the great problems of society in our time. The manipulation of information to present a distorted view of facts is undermining our freedom and our ability to govern ourselves. Then again, we've done it to ourselves. We've made the true facts so complicated, so difficult to find, that most Americans have given up searching for them. Further, any information that is presented to individuals rather than observed by them is increasingly beoming suspect as fraud in the mind of the individual. We've let a few bad apples spoil the bunch. Fellow Americans, call for reliability and accuracy from your media. Demand clarified, but not oversimplified information. Don't allow rhetoric to twist facts to fit the story, use the facts to write the story. Become an active member in your democracy. Freedom is yours for the taking.

Supes

Newt Gingrich and Gay Marriage

So I saw Newt Gingrich on The Daily Show today, and I kinda wanted to know his whole back story. I remember him being vilified in the media when I was younger, but never knew why. Anyways, I looked him up on wikipedia and read about the controversy along with some other random facts, but nothing really about his political stance on divisive issues; for this, I had to go to Newt's own website. I overheard him mentioning something about the environment, so I looked it up, and guess what! Newt Gingrich actually wants to cut back on carbon emissions, and has really (no, really) written an entire book titled "A Contract With the Earth" that pleads for a bipartisan approach to saving the environment. What a standup guy. Except that the rest of his views on policy and social issues are a direct inhibition of my freedom. Ok, here it comes: gay marriage.

American Solutions, a 527 group (these groups try to influence public office elections, thanks wikipedia) that was created by Newt Gingrich had this to say on its website

"Every time a court defines a new right or creates new meaning beyond that created by the executive and legislative branch, it undermines the rule of law and the ability of a free people to govern themselves. When the court steps back and limits itself to objective interpretation of the law, it puts power in the hands of the people. It gives them the ability to define for themselves what laws and standards they will live by, so long as they act within Constitutional bounds. When judges rewrite the law as they see fit, our entire system of laws becomes subjective and loses the authority it is meant to have."

First off, I just have to mention how neatly tucked away this was in a hard to find figurative corner of the website, and how intentionally vague the rhetoric is here. At no point is the phrase "gay marriage" mentioned. Nor is the word "gay" or even "constitutional amendment." With careful reading, however, it is blatantly hypocritical and misleading.

In the first and fourth sentences, judges are vilified as "law-tamperers" who create rights without regard for consequence. Not only that, but it also undermines your freedom! Not so much. Judges are actually interpreters of law, not creators. Let us not forget that only fifty years ago, judges "rewrote" the laws. They tore down the "authority" of those laws based on "subjective" interpretations. You remember that don't you? Desegregation? The Civil Rights Movement? As for undermining freedom, when a judge rules against gay marriage, or a state votes in and gay marriage ban, I lose a freedom. I guess the social sanctions for being a homosexual aren't enough, they must also be institutionalized through law to ensure that future generations of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender Americans are ostracized. It's not only a conservative mindset, it's the law.

The second and third sentences are a bit trickier to decipher, but it's all clearly there if you read it carefully. The second sentence specifically is an attempt at heightening emotion. It uses strong, evocative rhetoric to rouse feeling from the reader. "Objective interpretation" (which, let's be honest, isn't that what courts and judges are supposed to do? Of course we all want that!) of the law is what "puts power in the hands of the people" (nice alliteration, huh? If only they could have used 'paws' instead of 'hands'). The opening half of the third sentence says that if judges acted accordingly, the people could fully govern themselves and live their lives exactly the way they want to...so long as they "act within Constitutional bounds." What a great idea! So, as long as I don't do what the constitution specifically says I can't, I can live my life the way I want to, right? Sadly, this doesn't seem to be the case. Even without a federal constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, states such as Georgia (where I live) do have amendments or statutes preventing same sex marriage. The federal Constitution says nothing about the definition of marriage as far as I can remember. In fact, the main part I do remember is about equality of man, and the basic inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While I am in no way making the plight of the Civil Rights Era synonymous with the struggle for marriage equality, the two are analogous, at least in unconstitutionality. The nationwide debate and state referendums on gay marriage over the past six years have created a new era of "Jim Crow-esque" laws being used to deny GLBT citizens their rights. "Johnny Rainbow Laws," if you will.

So thanks, Newt Gingrich, for your concern about the environment, it is much appreciated I'm sure. However, for basically everything else you stand for (including the integration of church and state, which don't get me wrong, I'm a religious guy, but that's ridiculous) I think you couldn't be farther from what truly represents myself and many others as citizens of Georgia. Your close-minded perspective is only another example of the traditional, fundamentalist viewpoint that has keep America socially stagnant and politically mired despite being in the face of revolutionary innovations in technology, health, and communication over the past eight years.