Who the Hell Do They Think They Are?

In campus journalism, censorship can be insidious, preemptive rather than reactive. Here is an example: last spring I wrote an article, regrettably, for a certain publication. It was a personal history on growing up with Super Smash Brothers, mixed with a review of the new installment. The personal history, like my social set or the kind of people who play Smash, was male-dominated.

My editor accused me of employing “misogynistic rhetoric.” What could I do? She was judge, jury, executioner, and arbiter of taste and decency. To her feminist agenda—and to her, even my professed dislike of women’s basketball was rank bigotry—it was “offensive”; it could not stand as is. Who the hell did she think she was? Bowdlerized by my hand, the story ran.
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The Spec is hardly immune. Once upon a time, an old opinion editor threatened to fire Chris Kulawik; had she succeeded, the page would have lost its strongest writer and its most thorough reasoner, because hardly anyone (myself least of all) agreed with what he had to say. (At least, unlike his idol Ayn Rand, Kulawik was logically consistent.) Why? Beneath the flimsy pretense of factual error—and everyone makes mistakes sometimes—the editor alleged his content was “offensive.” Who the hell did she think she was?
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So we have two cases. In the first, the “offensive” matter was edited and its creator tacitly deemed guilty. In the second, the “offensive” matter stood as it was; Kulawik for better or for worse wrote until graduation.

One common thread is the dangerous precedent that each case sets: censorship always begets more censorship. Akin to anti-intellectualism, the mere threat or specter of censorship hampers free discourse.

Another common thread is women censoring men; this dynamic is integral to the “offensive” pretense. Along with this, note the number of columns that have appeared in Spec over the last few years crudely fingering every White man as a racist and the author (who has 900 words in a prestigious university’s paper every two weeks) as oppressed. On the face of it, this is absurd and racist: but because the tone is “offended,” it cannot be “offensive.”
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The easiest way to not be “offensive” is therefore to act “offended” yourself. As a White male I can’t really be offended, but everyone else can; it is thus that men can’t write about women, White people can’t write about other ethnicities; but other ethnicities can say anything about White people, and women can censor things written by men. Who the hell do they think they are?
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Being “offended” is not something that just happens; it is a conscious choice, a meditated-upon reaction that refuses to critically engage with something. It is therefore always wrong­—a bad reading habit that might be dispelled by a different Lit Hum—and always mixed in with self-righteousness.

Things are censored due to insecurity on the part of the editor. Nothing is more gutless than arbitrarily cutting something; the sham display of authority is a perfect illustration of how insecurity and self-righteousness and being “offended” are basically the same thing.

Insecure, self-righteous, and self-serving: for behind an act like this is the notion that a publication exists only for itself. There’s a chain of command at most publications; the writer is subordinated to the editor; the editor at the top has carte blanche to act as judge, jury, executioner, and arbiter of taste and decency. With one exception: public opinion can act as a check on this otherwise limitless power; Kulawik was spared in part because of the shit-storm it would have stirred up. But this happens too rarely at Columbia, though a publication exists for its readers more so than for its writers.

In the absence of this balance the hypocrisy grows worse: the censor assumes the authority of a public figure but none of the responsibility, which includes airing the thoughts of those that disagree with you. Disagreement is critical, and it is a function of diversity: the matriarchy that at many publications has replaced the old boys’ clubs of five years ago is just as bad.

Until the culture of being “offended” and pandering to those phantoms who might be “offended” is obliterated, everything will be an exercise in self-weakening self-abuse, insecure people stroking the wounded egos of other insecure people: Spec will continue to weaken Spec in the same way the Core weakens itself and Obama undermines Obama. Destruction and decline are so often inside jobs at Columbia: once you start to believe your own bullshit, it turns into reality; if you’re a public figure, it can also turn into other people’s reality. Who the hell do they think they are?

Chris Morris-Lent is a Columbia College junior majoring in English. Blood, Toil, Tears & Sweat runs alternate Thursdays. opinion@columbiaspectator.com