Reader expresses dismay at editorial board's 'arrogance'
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I was dismayed at the arrogance displayed in the editorial “Punishment for pie-thrower should be tempered (SN 9/01).” Not only did The State News editorial board members demonstrate their ignorance towards the specifics of (anthropology senior Ahlam) Mohsen’s case, but additionally demonstrated their ignorance toward social justice movements and activism more broadly.
The charges against Mohsen went unquestioned in the editorial, although they appear politically motivated and exceptionally weak at best.
(Felonious assault for chucking a pie and felonious stalking for a previous act of civil disobedience over a year prior to last month’s action?)
Law enforcement, in collusion with local prosecutors, often crafts negative images of the accused in order to discredit their actions and their motivations — a technique overlooked, and in doing so, validated by the editorial board.
Also unexamined by the editorial board are the actions of US Sen. Carl Levin as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the utter devastation American foreign policy has enacted on people, nations and ecosystems all over the world.
Pieing political and social figures is a historically recognized, lighthearted protest tactic used in order to bring attention to social injustices and the individuals who, in some aspect, are responsible for the continuance of such violence or inequality.
In 1979, anti-gay spokesperson and activist Anita Bryant was pied, as was conservative hate-monger Ann Coulter in 2004 and Islamophobe David Horowitz in 2005. The 1970s “Yippie Pieman,” Aron Kay, is credited with having pied conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly as well as a handful of other political figures.
In 2000, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, pied Dan Glickman, US secretary of agriculture. Earlier this year, they also pied Canada’s Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Gail Shea for her support of the Canadian seal hunt. In fact, pieing political figures is so well identified as a mainstream protest tactic that in 2005 Newsweek’s Gersh Kuntzman declared “throwing a pie at someone who deserves it is one of the most celebrated traditions in our so-called culture.”
By passing judgement on political actions which they have demonstrated they know little — if anything — about, the editorial board has further cemented their role not as the “voice of students,” but as a mouthpiece for the administration, the police and the status quo.
Sept. 1’s editorial is just another example of the editorial board arrogantly and dangerously flaunting their privilege in the face of the powerless — both those who Mohsen sought to speak for in her pieing of Levin and those on campus trying to effect positive change for people whose lives have been torn apart by the actions of our political and social leaders.
Mitch Goldsmith, social relations and policy senior
Commentary
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Todd
(09/08/10 8:37am)Report
Dude,
Shut your pie hole.
lol
(09/08/10 9:02am)Report
How is it that i could guess he was a Social Relations “Major”?
Arafat
(09/08/10 11:49am)Report
Here are other examples of Muslims practicing light hearted antics to display their disapproval.
No doubt Mohsen finds nothing reprehensible about these “protestors”.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-j32YAI3XU
Arafat
(09/08/10 11:52am)Report
Or look at these light hearted Muslims having a little fun with someone they disagree with. It’s nice to know we can all get along. Social justice at its finest!
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2010/02/hamas-linked-cair-defends-muslim-thugs-who-shouted-down-israeli-ambassador.html
Ed
(09/08/10 1:16pm)Report
In act of civil disobediance you’re on the receiving end of the pie; you’re not the one throwing it. That’s a crucial distinction.
Drew Winter
(09/08/10 3:04pm)Report
This is an excellent letter, which blows the SN’s editorial right out of the water. Goldsmith clearly has a better understanding of the history of social justice than the entire State News editorial board.
Also, I would encourage the bigots here like Arafat to have the bravery to use their real names. Or at least admit that, by their own logic, all Christians are child molesters and right wing extremists who blow up buildings in Oklahoma.
amazing
(09/08/10 4:34pm)Report
Did any of you read the title of the opinion article cited?
“Punishment for pie-thrower should be tempered (SN 9/01).”
You’re angry at the state news for being too hard on her? You’ve gotta be kidding me. They call for leniency. If anyone would be unhappy it’s those who feel she should get none.
The fact you’re upset with that article means you believe she should get a medal for what she did as opposed to being punished in any way. Consequently, you show just how radical your own political viewpoint is.
Reason
(09/08/10 4:39pm)Report
Her actions, and the actions of those you’ve cited, make mainstream society tone deaf to any logical or legitimate argument she may have had.
Notice how no one on here is even remotely thinking about legitimate issues facing palestinians?
All we’re talking about is how dumb and immature this girl is. Had she rather taken steps to get her message out in a legitimate way, she very well may have caused people to consider her side of the argument.
Too bad people who do these sorts of things never understand that. they’re their own worst enemies.
Perry Miller
(09/09/10 12:07am)Report
It’s good to learn about the history of pie-throwing as an established tradition in protest speech.
In response to Ed, historically, practicioners of civil disobedience have been on the receiving end of much worse than pies. They’ve received lethal beatings by colonial authorities (as in the Salt March led by Gandhi). Women’s suffrage activists in Britain received force feeding and beatings. And civil rights activists in Alabama received frenzied German shepherds and high-pressure fire hoses of the civil authorites together with lynch mobs, during the Civil Rights 1960s protests. The great practitioner of civil disobedience, Dr. King, himself was gunned down on his way to a sanitation workers’ strike, supposedly by a crazed lone gunman with no ties to the government*, James Earl Ray.
*King’s surviving family publicly refuted this narrative. James Loewen questions its prevalence in American history textbooks, in Lies My Teacher Told Me:Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (1995).
If mainstream society will tune out from the massively destructive consequences of US foreign policy because of a thrown pie, we are in bad shape. But I don’t think we will tune out. Mainstream society is sane and smart enough to distinguish between pie throwing and sit-ins and, say, a decade of airstrikes, Abu Ghraib, or the saturation of Fallujah with bullets and depleted uranium in 2004.
These things really happened, the US government did them and can unabashedly do so as long as mainstream society stays “tuned out” (not entirely through their own fault, as there is an extensive media blackout on factual reporting on the Middle East, together with a series of domestic emergencies like anthrax, Katrina, 2008 stock market crash, and an ongoing recession).
So far the only voices I hear trying to collapse the distinction are those clearly Islamophobic, disgusted with civil rights, politically active women, and any idea branded “extreme” or “radical.”
Some of the precepts taken as fact today were considered as “extreme” or “radical” in their day, such as the notion that women are human beings and not chattel, that slavery is unconstitutional, that people with disabilties are equally important as the “able-bodied” to society and therefore have a right to reasonable accommodations to enable their participation…
mvt
(09/09/10 1:20pm)Report
Sen Levin has very little to do with US foreign policy with respect to Palestinians. The target was poorly chosen, so she simply looks foolish.
I suggest that a more appropriate target for a pie would be President Obama or Secretary Clinton as they are directly responsible for US foreign policy. What do we suppose would happen to the pie-er had she chosen one of these more suitable targets ?
melisa
(09/09/10 6:23pm)Report
right on mitch!
Kris
(09/09/10 11:40pm)Report
I second everything Mitch has said. The haters and racists and bigots have been exposed by their comments. And who ever said Mohsen is a Muslim? Sounds like a lot of ignoramuses jumping on the 9/11 anti-Islam bandwagon. Mohsen’s brave anti-war action should be emulated by all who desire peace and social justice.
Eh...Mitch
(09/10/10 12:30am)Report
Technically what she did was assault and battery. You don’t need to beat the snot-p*** out of someone for it to be battery. Your pie throwing hero may have gotten away with hitting public figures with pies, but that doesn’t make it right or even legal.
Did you know even APPROACHING someone in a threatening manner is assault? Do you think it should be perfectly legal for someone to nail you in the face with an egg if they so choose? No, our legal system prevents even non-lethal and non-damaging acts like these. If you did that in front of a cop, they’d take a statement and might even put you in cuffs.
One last thing, Mitch. You criticize SN for bringing up the charges and not questioning them, yet you fly valiantly against your own wisdom with this: “Law enforcement, in collusion with local prosecutors, often crafts negative images of the accused in order to discredit their actions and their motivations”
Care to back that up? Or are you thinking with your heart again instead of your brain, like you people are wont to do? In any case, your sweeping and baseless accusation about the police department that arrested her is irrelevant. Her motivations mean nothing to the law unless she killed him (manslaughter versus the degrees of murder, etc). She committed a crime. Period. If you steal a loaf of bread because your family can’t eat, you still broke the law and yes, you’ll be punished (in a modest degree) if it’s prosecuted.
Thank God you people don’t get jobs of any social significance or I’d be petrified of the future.
Darko
(09/14/10 8:21am)Report
If you don’t like America then you can gittt out.
Arafat
(09/18/10 3:57pm)Report
Kris,
These guys want social justice too. Ain’t it great that social justice means so many things to so many different people!
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2009/10/uk-muslim-protesters-threaten-geert-wilders-well-have-his-head.html