Louis Brandeis was a hell of a guy.
For lefties like me, he is the American Nye Bevan, a social justice warrior who fought the good fight and left behind stuff – like a citizen’s right to privacy – that endures to this day. He went from an impoverished background to the US Supreme Court and a place in the history books.
If he hadn’t become a Zionist his picture would be on as many walls amongst my friends as John F Kennedy.
Amongst his many positive traits was this; Brandeis was a free speech advocate of the very first rate.
He believed in it passionately, and fought for it his entire life. He also believed that it was the role of the media to explore and highlight evil. One of his most famous quotes was on that very subject, on how scrutiny and public attention could effect change.
“Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases,” he said. “Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.”
Brandeis was ahead of his time in oh so many ways.
Sunlight is still the best disinfectant, which Stewart Regan would rather not acknowledge as he presides over an Association still broken backed by the weight of its secrets and grubby off-stage deals. The media would like to pretend otherwise too. We’ve seen a superb example of it this very weekend.
I wrote here yesterday about Sevco’s sectarian karaoke at Dingwall. So too did the other Celtic bloggers. It’s a good job we did. If we hadn’t nobody else would have. The silence in the mainstream press has been louder than the thunder they would have raised by mentioning it. Once again, you are forced down the path towards the conclusion that these people would rather live in shit than pick up a shovel. Our media is a thoroughly discredited bunch.
I know some of them will wail about this, and point fingers, but myself and others in the blogosphere have put our money where our mouths are on this. I have written articles criticising some of the behaviours of Celtic fans, and even some of the songs they sing; my piece on the disgusting Sevco kit-man song was just one case in point.
The media can pretend ignorance as they like, but this stuff would not be allowed to run and run and run unchecked year on year as it does here in Scotland.
Imagine, for just one second, that there was a football support in England which sang songs of hate. Imagine those songs mocked the dead, were sectarianism and racist. Imagine they sang about wading in the blood of another culture or religion.
You can’t imagine it, can you?
Because fans who did that would be hounded out of English stands after one game.
That’s how long it would take before that problem was well and truly eradicated, by virtue of unanimous media condemnation. About 24 hours, and then only because the press down there would be waiting to see what the club itself and the FA did about it first.
What is it with our press? How can they be so lax in their duty? How can professional journalists be so thoroughly gutless? Don’t they realise they are part of the problem?
Let me put that another way; do they even realise there is a problem?
Chris McLaughlin played deaf. He said he was too busy watching the game and working to hear the songs.
What bullshit. What disreputable, cowardly bullshit.
Neil Cameron was so blasé about it that he might as well have written “So what?” on his Twitter feed.
Do these people get it? Or do they actually find something virtuous in those songs, those songs of evil and hatred?
Eventually the question has to be asked; if these people aren’t outraged is it because they have some sympathy with the sentiments?
This stuff could be eradicated from Scottish grounds in a day if the media here was up to snuff. If they highlighted it, and pushed the SFA to tackle it – and the rulebook does have provisions for them doing so; I cannot stress that enough times – it would be dealt with.
And yes, they will do their moral equivalence and my answer for it is what it’s always been. When they can point out to me which song Celtic fans sing about being up to their knees in Protestant blood then I’ll agree. If they can tell me which song we sing that mocks a dementia sufferer, or a kid with Downs Syndrome I’ll agree. If they can provide me with an equivalent of the Famine Song then we’ll have something to talk about.
I couldn’t care about Derry’s Walls or any of their other uber-British dirge and I won’t be lectured on Republican songs for the same reason. Those songs are no more and no less than folk music about a war against British imperialism.
As Louis Brandeis could have told them, so is The Star Spangled Banner.
Which isn’t to say that Brandeis would have agreed with the Sevconites that it is their right to sing what they want, where they want, and when they want. One of his most famous cases involved what he called “the captive audience”.
Brandeis was drawing a distinction between a billboard ad and a newspaper ad … the newspaper ad is something people can choose to look at or not, either by not buying the paper or by flipping the page. A billboard ad is there, where it’s much harder to ignore, standing out, drawing your attention towards it.
McLaughlin and Cameron may well be saying that people who complain have the ability to turn down the telly. But that pays no heed to the captive audience inside the ground which was forced to listen to this stomach churning bile all day long. It pays no heed to the many times that sectarian sing-a-thon has been sung at other grounds.
Brandeis didn’t believe that stuff fell under the rubric of free speech. In this case, it’s hatred rammed down people’s throats and McLaughlin and Cameron might not give a toss but that’s only because they aren’t the targets of it. It’s much harder to readily dismiss for those of us who are, and that’s the blind spot here, that’s where they have utterly failed to do their jobs and why their spineless responses to this have infuriated so many people.
In its own way, I consider their decision to ignore this as disgusting as the songs themselves.
Brandeis himself said once that “Neutrality is at times a graver sin than belligerence.”
In his landmark article Opportunity And Law he said “It is, as a rule, far more important how men pursue their occupation than what the occupation is which they select.”
And in that lies the truth of it; a journalist who doesn’t tell it like it is, without fear or favour, a journalist who ignores issues rather than tackling them, is only pretending to do the job.
He is a phony.
He is a fraud.
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