The 1st Amendment v Cancel Culture, Interview John MacArthur
Posted: Thu May 06, 2021 3:59 amPart 1 of 2
The First Amendment vs Cancel Culture: Interview with Harper's Magazine John MacArthur
by Ralph Nader
April 24, 2021
https://ralphnaderradiohour.com/the-fir ... l-culture/
NOTICE: THIS WORK MAY BE PROTECTED BY COPYRIGHT
RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR EP 372 TRANSCRIPT
Steve Skrovan: Welcome to the Ralph Nader Rader Hour. My name is Steve Skrovan along with my co-host, David Feldman. Hello, David.
David Feldman: Hello, everybody.
Steve Skrovan: Nice to have you here. And the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
Ralph Nader: Hello, everybody.
Steve Skrovan: On the show today, we're going to spend the whole hour with journalist and publisher, John R. MacArthur. He's the subject of a recent article in the New York Times that chronicles his colorful tenure at the helm of Harper's magazine. He has steered the magazine through the rise of the internet and the new digital age in publishing, hired and fired six top editors, and become a rather prominent critic of cancel culture, which will be pretty much the topic of our show today. It should prove to be a pretty lively hour. And after that smoke clears, we will take some time to check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber. But first, let's talk to the man behind what the New York Times described as “America's most interesting magazine and media's oddest workplace”. David?
David Feldman: John R. MacArthur is the president of Harper's, a journalist and the author of several books, including Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Rader Hour, John R. MacArthur.
John MacArthur: Thank you.
Ralph Nader: Welcome indeed, Rick. Let me just establish the basis for the discussion so it can be a deliberative process and we can end up with some suggestions about the status of free speech in our country today. The freedom of speech is guaranteed against government encroachment by our First Amendment. It comes in three forms in addition to religious liberty; it's freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to petition your government. Over the years, I've had a lot of experience confronting slanders, confronting terrible descriptions of what we were trying to do to make corporations more accountable. I also confronted this in running for political office. The same people today who take umbrage, oftentimes legitimately, at ethnic, racial and gender slurs were opposed to my Green [Party] candidacy, not by rebutting it, which is certainly their right and privilege, but by demanding that I drop out of the presidential race. In other words, by saying, “Do not use your freedom of speech, assembly and petition.” All three are part of any political candidacy.
Having said that, it's important for our listeners to know that there are three sources of restrictions on free speech. One of course is the government, government censorship. Under the First Amendment, the government is not supposed to be able to censor what you say prior restraint, even before you say it. That doesn't apply to corporations. Corporations can shut you up as an employee without any First Amendment repercussions because they're not considered government or state action. The second source is tort law. That is somebody cannot say, “I have a freedom of speech to libel and slander you.” And the third is the criminal law. People don't have the right to speak in a way that immediately incites violence. The famous statement by a [US] Supreme Court justice, “You don't have the right to falsely cry fire in a crowded theater.” Or President Donald J. Trump on January 6 shouldn't have had a freedom of speech right to incite the crowd to head for the insurrectional actions in [US] Congress a few moments later. All right. We start with Rick MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's, who is a very strong believer that the best response to bad speech is more speech, more freedom of speech, the so-called marketplace of ideas and early parlance. So what is your principal concern about what's going on in this country today? And I think it's because the situation today is different from when we were younger. Censorship came from the right wing. They wanted to censor all kinds of things – literature, comedy, you name it, novels, prohibit certain texts from being used in schools, such as in Texas. Now it's coming from the right wing and the liberal left part of our political spectrum. What is your concern?
John MacArthur: Well, my concern is principally that people are being intimidated. It's a little facile to call it political correctness, but for want of a better expression, let's just call it political correctness. In order to be a good person or a progressive or a well-meaning moral person, you have to toe the party line, and the party line right now, broadly speaking, restricts speech, restricts freedom of speech and restricts the notion that in a democratic society, it's a good thing to have an argument, to have two different points of view or five different points of view on the same subject. So the most blatant example of this was last summer when James Bennett, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, published an op-ed piece by [US] senator from Arkansas, whose name I've now forgotten.
David Feldman: Tom Cotton?
John MacArthur: Tom Cotton advocating the intervention of federal troops to suppress the riots after the George Floyd killing. And there was an uproar that appeared online, not in the print newspaper. It was an uproar in the New York Times newsroom and people were outraged that Bennett had allowed a piece to be published contrary, not only to the New York Times editorial line, which is exactly what the op-ed page is supposed to do, but also to the prevailing anger and rage and point of view of right-thinking people who are legitimately outraged, many of them about the Floyd killing, but also some who saw it as an opportunity to maybe take the argument a little bit further and suppress other voices. So Bennett was run out of his job. He was essentially fired, asked to resign. They always use these euphemisms. He resigned or he was asked to resign. I'm not clear on it. But this casts a chill on all people who want to say something contrarian, that's not part of the prevailing mood, or it doesn't go along with the crowd.
And in this country, we've always had problems with this. I mean, [Alexis] de Tocqueville picked up on this in the 1830s [when] he noticed how narrow the range of speech was, that anybody could say anything they wanted, but if you dared to step outside the boundaries of acceptable opinion, you would be marginalized for the rest of your life. So Bennett who was really a terribly moderate mainstream guy, I mean, he never said anything controversial in his life, is suddenly cast out into the darkness. He's gone. He's canceled. I think he's gotten some kind of freelance deal with the Economist. But he's a guy who might've become the editor of the most important newspaper in the country is out of a job and out of circulation because he published a piece by a United States Senator that disagreed with the New York Times editorial line and the prevailing sentiment in the newsroom.
Ralph Nader: Well, after that, one of the more illustrious reporters of the New York Times, Donald McNeil, experienced something that you were critical of.
John MacArthur: Right.
Ralph Nader: Why don't you tell us about that?
John MacArthur: So I'm glad you brought that up because I like to contrast the big fish like Bennet with the small fry like McNeil. So because every time I think that this is blowing over, it gets worse. And you all may know about the Harper's letter, so-called Harper's letter we published, which was petitioned, essentially, a letter signed by 150 people protesting or criticizing what's now known as cancel culture. That was last summer after the Bennett firing. And a lot of people criticized the letter at the time saying, “Oh, this is just powerful elite types protecting themselves when they have nothing to fear. They're too powerful and elite ever to be canceled.” Well, no. There are many, many, many examples of small fry, mid-level types or lower-level types who lose their jobs because they get on the wrong side of the prevailing opinion. And McNeil is a good example.
Donald McNeil, Jr., was the Times’ principal reporter on COVID-19. The Times’ is so desperate for revenue that they've started organizing these tours, paid tours where students and people can go on a guided tours, guided by a New York Times reporter. And they sent McNeil as the chaperone and the guide for a group of high school students back in the summer of 2019 to Peru. Now McNeil is not the most sociable guy from what I hear. He's not your ideal tour guide. But in a conversation with one of the high school students, the high school student asked him-- this is just a dinner after the day's events are concluded--did he think it was wrong for her to have gotten in trouble for having made a video in eighth grade in which somebody used the so-called N-word and got in trouble for using it? So McNeil repeats the word, the forbidden word.
Ralph Nader: As part of the discussion.
John MacArthur: Part of the discussion. It's informational. Nobody disputes that. After the tour was over and apparently McNeil was also not sufficiently respectful of indigenous ceremonies that they witnessed or that they participated in. I'm not sure, but he was not a get along, go along clubbable tour guide. So afterwards, the kids complained to their parents, all of whom were White, by the way. I think they were from [Phillips Academy] Andover, the prep school, and they'd paid $5,500 a pop. They complained to their parents. The parents complained to the Times. Dean Baquet, the editor of the Times reprimanded McNeil. I think they had a little proceeding and they finally said, “We're just going to let this pass with a reprimand.”
Now, fast forward to January of this year, the Daily Beast website breaks the story, reveals the story about McNeil's terrible racist behavior and the complaints from the kids. And the whole thing blows up again. The New York Times newsroom is up in arms like they were against Bennett for publishing the Cotton op-ed. And Baquet suddenly changes his tune and says, ‘Well, I guess this isn't resolved.” And they call McNeil in and they reprimand him and they force him to make this confession--crazy like a Moscow trial’s confession from the 30s about how he shouldn't have even thought that he could get away or justify using the word informationally, that even thinking it was a crime didn't work; they frog marched him out of there. They essentially fired him. And to make it worse, Dean Baquet then said publicly that it didn't matter what the context was of the use of the N-word, that it was wrong to use in any context, even though the Times prints that word all the time, hundreds of times in the last 20 years. So Bret Stephens writes a column saying this is outrageous. No sane system of law or ethics leaves out of consideration, intention or intent the way the word is used. So the difference between manslaughter and first-degree murder, that's a question of intent. What did you mean to do? What did McNeil mean to do when he used the word is essential in a law-abiding society where you pay attention to these sorts of things. Baquet had to backpedal, but they didn't rehire McNeil and they spiked Stephens’ column. Stephens’ column turns up in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post like samizdat a week later. That's how you were able to read it, to read what Stephens said. Now they didn't fire Stephens, but they did spike his column, criticizing management's decision to cancel Donald McNeil. Now McNeil doesn't have any supporters. He doesn't even have the New York Times newspaper union supporting him.
Ralph Nader: But he's written four articles on this topic since he left the New York Times.
John MacArthur: He’s now branded as a racist. And like the [Joseph] McCarthy days, like the 50s, once you're branded a red, you can't work anymore and he's not going to be able to work anymore.
Ralph Nader: Well, this is not just Donald McNeil, Jr. It's dozens of people in every area of American life--from entertainment to politics, to business, to labor, to sports. One word uttered, gets them suspended or loss of their job, and then they are tainted. Now here's my concern.
When I go to the Harvard Law School to speak, I make a lot of points about corporate crime, etcetera. And I say, you know, the one thing that can get you really agitated, as they sit there quietly in the room, is if someone among you or visiting you used an ethnic, racial or gender slur, you would go up the wall and you say that's not proper. And you're quite correct to say that you want to rebut that. But you know, the discriminatory viciousness on the ground, in the ghettos, in the lack of pay equity, in the mistreatment of women, in the bigotry against Arab-Americans or Asian-Americans, they don't spend a minute worrying about. Not a minute.
So there is this asymmetry between being very concerned about bad words, but not concerned about the discriminatory, vicious, horrific behavior on the ground. The distinction between words and deeds. This is the problem. The distinction between words and deeds. If you just focus on words, here's what's going to happen. The censoring culture will expand. Government politicians will pick it up. They'll start adopting coercive censoring. There are countries in the world where a mere criticism of the leader can get you in jail. And they're not totalitarian countries. They're authoritarian countries. So there's a contagion to this kind of cultural practice that instead of rebutting and rejecting bad language, wrong thoughts, plutocratic thinking, whatever, instead of doing it by more free speech, you try to do it by shutting them down. You drive it underground and it erupts in the form of Trump voters and Trump's support for example. Or you push it underground and it erupts in terms of some other charlatan that takes advantage of it and accuses people of shutting people up because they don't like what their views are.
So this is a problem of long standing, Rick. It's just become more prominent because it's erupted in liberal circles. You have a coach or basketball coach huddling with his players, some of whom were Black. And he's pretty desperate because they're not winning. And he says something like, “Look, fellows, we've got to stay on the plantation,” which is his way of saying we've got to stay in practice. We've got to stay mentally focused. Well, it blew up on him. He was very remorseful, and remorse and regret in this kind of culture now doesn't get you a reprieve. It doesn't get you proportionality. It gets you no more job and no more ability to get another job after you've been fired or forced to resign.
In the meantime, the corporations are taking over the world. In the meantime, they're disrupting the climate of the earth, preserving massive poverty, supporting fascist and communist regimes, emptying out communities under the guise of free trade in this country, millions of workers losing their jobs, exploiting consumers, running nursing homes that are infectiously mismanaged and gouging; ripping off people in the health insurance area, denying benefits so over 100,000 people die, according to a Yale [University] study, who can't afford health insurance to get their diagnosis or treatment in time; corporate crime waves, stealing from taxpayers, escaping taxes. And where are the liberals and progressives who are so upset about bad language? Do they have time for these other situations on the ground? Housing discrimination?
Let's try something really controversial. Dick Gregory wrote a book. The title was the N-word. It was his autobiography. Black law professor at Harvard wrote a book. The title was an N-word. It was by Randall Kennedy. The title was the N-word and the subtitle was The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. And Black athletes use the word with each other all the time. So is that proper?
John MacArthur: Well, and it's in the language. It's in the culture. It's in the music. It's everywhere on the street. It's absurd. The whole thing is –
[David Feldman] Can I --
Ralph Nader: What I'm asking is the same people who condemn the commentary use, the contextual use of the N-word, not its use accusatorily or bigotry. Like they're talking about a historical situation or a trial. The same people who come down hard on that. Should they come down hard on Blacks using that word?
John MacArthur: Well, if they were consistent. Now you see that the editor of the – I guess they're trying to spread the net. I disapprove of this too, but they forced out, they fired the editor of Teen Vogue magazine who is Black and a woman.
David Feldman: She resigned. She resigned. She wasn't fired.
John MacArthur: Okay. Well, I'm sure there was a push and she resigned because she made anti-Asian remarks in high school on her tweets. Now, again, I believe in redemption also. And I don't think that people should be held to account to this extent for things they did when they were teenagers. It's crazy. But I guess –
David Feldman: I apologize for interrupting. This is something. Ralph, do you mind if I ask a question?
Ralph Nader: No, let's wait until we get to the end, David.
David Feldman: Okay.
Ralph Nader: Because I want to put a lot of questions about disproportionality, questions about where are your priorities. If you're going to talk about verbal affronts, you've got a duty to talk about the vicious deeds on the ground that go unnoticed and unchallenged, that the verbal of affronts represent. But I also want to raise another issue here. This is remarkable. You have Senator [Kirsten] Gillibrand and others in the Senate. They went ballistic about some sexual escapades or harassment by Al Franken before he was senator. All the women in his office and retired women supported him. And they basically beat the drums in a few days and drove him out of the Senate. And the Democrats did the same thing against Congressman John Conyers for sexual harassment in his office.
At the same time, they gave a free ride to the savage sexual predator in the White House, who not only did horrendous things, including assault, battery, some would say even rape, who was involved in litigation by his accusers and who brandished them all as liars and continued slandering them and boasted about his prowess on television programs like “Howard Stern”, and the members of Congress and Democratic Party didn't go after him. Didn't say, “This is a violation of the public trust. This is what Hamilton was talking about. You're not only a bigot, you're a sexist, you're a misogynist, but you are a violent form of those behavioral traits against distinct women.” And they didn't have a congressional hearing. They didn't make it an impeachable offense. They gave him a free ride. This upset me very much. I've been an advocate women's rights since before I went to law school.
So I wrote an open letter, which was going to go to all members of the Democratic Party in the Congress. But the male members said address it to the women because they have credibility. So it was an open letter to the women, Democratic women of the Congress. And I laid out the case against Donald Trump and his violent practices against women using the power of his position, using his ability to slander them in the mass media, which lapped up his verbal assaults, et cetera. I delivered it, hand delivered it to 89 women representatives in the [US] House of Representatives. And the letter was delivered to some of the women senators, including Senator Gillibrand. This was in January, February of 2020. Not one response. It was a letter that made recommendations for action. Not one acknowledgement.
I even phoned up certain offices. Trump called Maxine Waters “low IQ.” Can't get a more racist epithet like that, an African American member of the House. And she wouldn't stand up to him. Why? I asked people in the Congress and so on. It's intimidation. Number one, they're afraid of Trump because he singles out and he unleashes all kinds of hate on the internet and they didn't need that. And the other members told me and staff told me was Speaker [of the House] Nancy Pelosi didn't want to get into that, didn't want to raise it. So this is what troubles people who don't like bad language, but they also don't like hypocrisy, disproportionality, and a willingness to forget about the deeds as long as you can counter attack and fire people who talk the words, sometimes inadvertently.
There is a book written, which I send this book to deans of law schools before we get into other subjects. It's a book by Anthony Lewis. He was a celebrated columnist and First Amendment specialist for the New York Times for many years. And his last book was titled Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, and he got that title from Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court associate justice, who in a case titled United States v Schwimmer, he wrote, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought--not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.” And that made the title of his book. I don't know how many people it will take to persuade other people that once you start censoring, it becomes contagious and often comes back to bite you.
John MacArthur: Yes.
Ralph Nader: With the exception of libel, slander, and incitement to riot, and of course, government suppression of free speech.
John MacArthur: And of course, we don't see all the results, all the consequences of this because self-censorship becomes the rule. And you never hear about what people didn't say or decided not to say because they were afraid of reprisals. I mean, it's preemptive censorship. And I know all sorts of people in the news media who have told me that they're dumbing down or they're lowering the tone and they're not daring to say things they would have said a few months ago or a couple of years ago because they don't want to get canceled. They don't want to lose their jobs. The media, as everybody should know, is in crisis because Google [LLC], Amazon[.com, Inc.] and Facebook[, Inc.] run the media now, and to some extent dictate the terms by which the New York Times and Harper's magazine will survive or not.
Ralph Nader: Self-censorship is a cardinal behavioral trait in every culture ever studied. I mean, cultures can hardly survive. But after 9/11, for example, and also after the invasion of Iraq, I would be speaking before audiences and I would say, “How many of you wanted to say something, but felt you couldn't because you'd be accused of not supporting the troops and being unpatriotic?” Well, a lot of people in effect indicated that they did keep their mouth shut and they didn't say what they thought about those important situations.
John MacArthur: Of course.
Ralph Nader: Self-censorship is rampant in academia. Self-censorship is rampant everywhere. It's our duty to try to loosen the pressure of that. Look at the self-censorship that Trump generated, not just directly, but indirectly. Fear and intimidation, anxiety, dread. People afraid to challenge Trump because the Trumpsters out there in the private sector would come down very hard on them and not just on the internet. So we really have to think through all this and realize that freedom of speech, which is often called the primary amendment to the Constitution, the precursor for all democratic societies activities, freedom of speech already has its restraints against government, libel, slander, and incitement to violence. Anything more than that, and you get contagion; you get an epidemic of censorship regardless of political backgrounds, fear, anxiety, self-censorship, repression, and the eruption that would inevitably occur when demagogues come around and take advantage of it the way Trump did.
John MacArthur: Also, a couple of things I'd like to just add. And one is that I see the First Amendment used to be, and I guess to some extent still is, fetishized. In other words, it's this thing that's there that we're supposed to memorialize and protect. And it was Lewis Lapham, my old editor who used to say, “Wait a minute. The First Amendment is there to be used.” We're supposed to use it. That's why we have it. It's not there as an ornament in the Constitution. So I am a great believer in the notion that not only is it essential to a democracy, but it also enlivens society. It's fun to be free as my great uncle and Ben Hecht, my great uncle, Charles MacArthur, and Ben Hecht used to say, “It's fun to be free,” but it is also essential to a functioning democracy.
Ralph Nader: Absolutely, absolutely. If you look at most of our rights, Rick -- we're talking to Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harper's magazine -- if you look at our rights, many of them were born out of dissent. Dissent in our history and the history of societies is the mother of assent. For example, a lot of our procedural rights now in the Bill of Rights were tremendously disputatious. And if people in those days who were fighting for those rights were shut down, then the consequences would have been more autocracy. Let me test you a bit, Rick. Let me test you here. Where do you stand on the increasingly successful drive to get rid of the name the Washington Redskins? That's gone. It's now the Washington Footballers. There's now pressure to get rid of the name Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians. What's your position on that?
John MacArthur: I think it's foolish. It's pointless.
[David Feldman] [Scoffs] Oh, my god!
John MacArthur: And I think if you ask the average, I mean, I used to go – I've driven around the west a lot and I've talked to a lot of Native Americans, and I've asked them this question about calling them Indians versus Native Americans. And most of them have said over the years, this is a random sampling of people say, “We don't mind being called Indians. We just don't like being treated like second-class citizens.” And that's the heart of it.
Ralph Nader: Well, a lot of the opinion on the Redskins was split by Native Americans. Some thought it was terribly disrespectful, exploitive, et cetera. Others said, the Washington Post has covered this subject a hundred times more than they’ve covered the conditions on the reservations.
John MacArthur: Exactly.
Ralph Nader: Why don't they come out and see what's going on the ground here in terms of the institutional, historic bigotry against Native Americans? Winona LaDuke doesn't mind using the word Indian. She's a major leader among Native Americans. And so I can see both sides. The reason why I asked you this, I really can see both sides. I mean, it's really sort of disgusting to me to see the Tomahawk chops at the Atlanta Braves game. It’s childish. But anyway, what would you do about the Fighting Irish? There are far more Black football players on the [University of] Notre Dame football team than Irish-Americans.
John MacArthur: Yeah, but, I think the more pertinent question is about, again, the argument about tearing down Confederate monuments. I'm not against taking down Confederate monuments. If people want to tear ‘em down, that's fine. But I just remind people all the time. Because by the way, I covered the so-called Second Trail of Tears. You remember the American Indian Movement March on Washington in 1978? I covered that for the Washington Star and I never heard a single American-Indian or Native American leader demand, for symbolic reasons, that they not be called Indians anymore--that they be called only Native Americans.
It's the same thing with [Rev. Dr.] Martin Luther King[, Jr.]. Not once that I could find and I really read the record and read his stuff, did he ever call on municipalities or states to tear down Confederate monuments. And I think it's because he recognized that these were symbolic gestures, not substantive gestures, like voting rights, like a higher minimum wage, like integration in public schools. Those are the things that matter. That's what matters to Black people and to Native Americans. I don't think this symbolic stuff amounts to much of anything. And all it does is drain energy from the fight that should be engaged all the time for bringing greater equality to the United States and treating everybody like equal citizens. So that's my position on name changes.
Ralph Nader: Just to introduce a new form of censorship that I think most people would be astonished, we now have judicial opinions redacted by the government. The government now, when it engages in litigation that involves anything they claim is a matter of national security or any other issue that they don't want the public to know about, they force the publishers of these judicial opinions or the judges to redact. So you open up West Publishing’s Appellate decisions or whatever, and you see marked-out sections, not just a line here, sometimes a paragraph. You see what happens when you start suppressing freedom of speech? It knows no boundaries and it ends up in a very bad way.
John MacArthur: Well, and here's another example. Has anyone been watching the [Ernest] Hemingway documentary over the last three nights on PBS? Hemingway used the N-word frequently in his stories, or often enough, that they showed a page where he used it three or four or five times. And they had it blacked out on the screen, like the Mueller report [Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference] was redacted. It's just unbelievable. It's treating people like children. What are we going to do now? Are we going to start publishing redacted versions of Hemingway and of Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, where every offensive word is blacked out so you can't see what the author intended to say? It's insane.
Ralph Nader: There's also some efforts to change the name of Columbus, Ohio. I don't think that's going to succeed, but you can see where it keeps going. I mean, Columbus was an invader. He slaughtered Indians. He was there to get gold. Not exactly a historic figure that kids should learn about. By the way, when you were younger, what was the phrase, "sticks and stones" they used in the school yard?
John MacArthur: Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Ralph Nader: Well, now you'd never hear that. You would never hear that. Now of course words can hurt. Words can hurt people. Words can hurt children. They can internalize it in a very bad way. The point is that the more sensitive a society becomes, the more sensitive a society has to become until people and kids don't brush things off. They don't develop a tougher hide and throw it back on the accuser by rebutting and challenging. So there's is a very interesting turnaround in our society now, which deals with teachers afraid to say a whole number of things. They don't know when they're going to get tripped up.
The First Amendment vs Cancel Culture: Interview with Harper's Magazine John MacArthur
by Ralph Nader
April 24, 2021
https://ralphnaderradiohour.com/the-fir ... l-culture/
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RALPH NADER RADIO HOUR EP 372 TRANSCRIPT
Steve Skrovan: Welcome to the Ralph Nader Rader Hour. My name is Steve Skrovan along with my co-host, David Feldman. Hello, David.
David Feldman: Hello, everybody.
Steve Skrovan: Nice to have you here. And the man of the hour, Ralph Nader. Hello, Ralph.
Ralph Nader: Hello, everybody.
Steve Skrovan: On the show today, we're going to spend the whole hour with journalist and publisher, John R. MacArthur. He's the subject of a recent article in the New York Times that chronicles his colorful tenure at the helm of Harper's magazine. He has steered the magazine through the rise of the internet and the new digital age in publishing, hired and fired six top editors, and become a rather prominent critic of cancel culture, which will be pretty much the topic of our show today. It should prove to be a pretty lively hour. And after that smoke clears, we will take some time to check in with our corporate crime reporter, Russell Mokhiber. But first, let's talk to the man behind what the New York Times described as “America's most interesting magazine and media's oddest workplace”. David?
David Feldman: John R. MacArthur is the president of Harper's, a journalist and the author of several books, including Second Front: Censorship and Propaganda in the 1991 Gulf War. Welcome back to the Ralph Nader Rader Hour, John R. MacArthur.
John MacArthur: Thank you.
Ralph Nader: Welcome indeed, Rick. Let me just establish the basis for the discussion so it can be a deliberative process and we can end up with some suggestions about the status of free speech in our country today. The freedom of speech is guaranteed against government encroachment by our First Amendment. It comes in three forms in addition to religious liberty; it's freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom to petition your government. Over the years, I've had a lot of experience confronting slanders, confronting terrible descriptions of what we were trying to do to make corporations more accountable. I also confronted this in running for political office. The same people today who take umbrage, oftentimes legitimately, at ethnic, racial and gender slurs were opposed to my Green [Party] candidacy, not by rebutting it, which is certainly their right and privilege, but by demanding that I drop out of the presidential race. In other words, by saying, “Do not use your freedom of speech, assembly and petition.” All three are part of any political candidacy.
Having said that, it's important for our listeners to know that there are three sources of restrictions on free speech. One of course is the government, government censorship. Under the First Amendment, the government is not supposed to be able to censor what you say prior restraint, even before you say it. That doesn't apply to corporations. Corporations can shut you up as an employee without any First Amendment repercussions because they're not considered government or state action. The second source is tort law. That is somebody cannot say, “I have a freedom of speech to libel and slander you.” And the third is the criminal law. People don't have the right to speak in a way that immediately incites violence. The famous statement by a [US] Supreme Court justice, “You don't have the right to falsely cry fire in a crowded theater.” Or President Donald J. Trump on January 6 shouldn't have had a freedom of speech right to incite the crowd to head for the insurrectional actions in [US] Congress a few moments later. All right. We start with Rick MacArthur, the publisher of Harper's, who is a very strong believer that the best response to bad speech is more speech, more freedom of speech, the so-called marketplace of ideas and early parlance. So what is your principal concern about what's going on in this country today? And I think it's because the situation today is different from when we were younger. Censorship came from the right wing. They wanted to censor all kinds of things – literature, comedy, you name it, novels, prohibit certain texts from being used in schools, such as in Texas. Now it's coming from the right wing and the liberal left part of our political spectrum. What is your concern?
John MacArthur: Well, my concern is principally that people are being intimidated. It's a little facile to call it political correctness, but for want of a better expression, let's just call it political correctness. In order to be a good person or a progressive or a well-meaning moral person, you have to toe the party line, and the party line right now, broadly speaking, restricts speech, restricts freedom of speech and restricts the notion that in a democratic society, it's a good thing to have an argument, to have two different points of view or five different points of view on the same subject. So the most blatant example of this was last summer when James Bennett, the editorial page editor of the New York Times, published an op-ed piece by [US] senator from Arkansas, whose name I've now forgotten.
David Feldman: Tom Cotton?
John MacArthur: Tom Cotton advocating the intervention of federal troops to suppress the riots after the George Floyd killing. And there was an uproar that appeared online, not in the print newspaper. It was an uproar in the New York Times newsroom and people were outraged that Bennett had allowed a piece to be published contrary, not only to the New York Times editorial line, which is exactly what the op-ed page is supposed to do, but also to the prevailing anger and rage and point of view of right-thinking people who are legitimately outraged, many of them about the Floyd killing, but also some who saw it as an opportunity to maybe take the argument a little bit further and suppress other voices. So Bennett was run out of his job. He was essentially fired, asked to resign. They always use these euphemisms. He resigned or he was asked to resign. I'm not clear on it. But this casts a chill on all people who want to say something contrarian, that's not part of the prevailing mood, or it doesn't go along with the crowd.
And in this country, we've always had problems with this. I mean, [Alexis] de Tocqueville picked up on this in the 1830s [when] he noticed how narrow the range of speech was, that anybody could say anything they wanted, but if you dared to step outside the boundaries of acceptable opinion, you would be marginalized for the rest of your life. So Bennett who was really a terribly moderate mainstream guy, I mean, he never said anything controversial in his life, is suddenly cast out into the darkness. He's gone. He's canceled. I think he's gotten some kind of freelance deal with the Economist. But he's a guy who might've become the editor of the most important newspaper in the country is out of a job and out of circulation because he published a piece by a United States Senator that disagreed with the New York Times editorial line and the prevailing sentiment in the newsroom.
Ralph Nader: Well, after that, one of the more illustrious reporters of the New York Times, Donald McNeil, experienced something that you were critical of.
John MacArthur: Right.
Ralph Nader: Why don't you tell us about that?
John MacArthur: So I'm glad you brought that up because I like to contrast the big fish like Bennet with the small fry like McNeil. So because every time I think that this is blowing over, it gets worse. And you all may know about the Harper's letter, so-called Harper's letter we published, which was petitioned, essentially, a letter signed by 150 people protesting or criticizing what's now known as cancel culture. That was last summer after the Bennett firing. And a lot of people criticized the letter at the time saying, “Oh, this is just powerful elite types protecting themselves when they have nothing to fear. They're too powerful and elite ever to be canceled.” Well, no. There are many, many, many examples of small fry, mid-level types or lower-level types who lose their jobs because they get on the wrong side of the prevailing opinion. And McNeil is a good example.
Donald McNeil, Jr., was the Times’ principal reporter on COVID-19. The Times’ is so desperate for revenue that they've started organizing these tours, paid tours where students and people can go on a guided tours, guided by a New York Times reporter. And they sent McNeil as the chaperone and the guide for a group of high school students back in the summer of 2019 to Peru. Now McNeil is not the most sociable guy from what I hear. He's not your ideal tour guide. But in a conversation with one of the high school students, the high school student asked him-- this is just a dinner after the day's events are concluded--did he think it was wrong for her to have gotten in trouble for having made a video in eighth grade in which somebody used the so-called N-word and got in trouble for using it? So McNeil repeats the word, the forbidden word.
Ralph Nader: As part of the discussion.
John MacArthur: Part of the discussion. It's informational. Nobody disputes that. After the tour was over and apparently McNeil was also not sufficiently respectful of indigenous ceremonies that they witnessed or that they participated in. I'm not sure, but he was not a get along, go along clubbable tour guide. So afterwards, the kids complained to their parents, all of whom were White, by the way. I think they were from [Phillips Academy] Andover, the prep school, and they'd paid $5,500 a pop. They complained to their parents. The parents complained to the Times. Dean Baquet, the editor of the Times reprimanded McNeil. I think they had a little proceeding and they finally said, “We're just going to let this pass with a reprimand.”
Now, fast forward to January of this year, the Daily Beast website breaks the story, reveals the story about McNeil's terrible racist behavior and the complaints from the kids. And the whole thing blows up again. The New York Times newsroom is up in arms like they were against Bennett for publishing the Cotton op-ed. And Baquet suddenly changes his tune and says, ‘Well, I guess this isn't resolved.” And they call McNeil in and they reprimand him and they force him to make this confession--crazy like a Moscow trial’s confession from the 30s about how he shouldn't have even thought that he could get away or justify using the word informationally, that even thinking it was a crime didn't work; they frog marched him out of there. They essentially fired him. And to make it worse, Dean Baquet then said publicly that it didn't matter what the context was of the use of the N-word, that it was wrong to use in any context, even though the Times prints that word all the time, hundreds of times in the last 20 years. So Bret Stephens writes a column saying this is outrageous. No sane system of law or ethics leaves out of consideration, intention or intent the way the word is used. So the difference between manslaughter and first-degree murder, that's a question of intent. What did you mean to do? What did McNeil mean to do when he used the word is essential in a law-abiding society where you pay attention to these sorts of things. Baquet had to backpedal, but they didn't rehire McNeil and they spiked Stephens’ column. Stephens’ column turns up in Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post like samizdat a week later. That's how you were able to read it, to read what Stephens said. Now they didn't fire Stephens, but they did spike his column, criticizing management's decision to cancel Donald McNeil. Now McNeil doesn't have any supporters. He doesn't even have the New York Times newspaper union supporting him.
Ralph Nader: But he's written four articles on this topic since he left the New York Times.
John MacArthur: He’s now branded as a racist. And like the [Joseph] McCarthy days, like the 50s, once you're branded a red, you can't work anymore and he's not going to be able to work anymore.
Ralph Nader: Well, this is not just Donald McNeil, Jr. It's dozens of people in every area of American life--from entertainment to politics, to business, to labor, to sports. One word uttered, gets them suspended or loss of their job, and then they are tainted. Now here's my concern.
When I go to the Harvard Law School to speak, I make a lot of points about corporate crime, etcetera. And I say, you know, the one thing that can get you really agitated, as they sit there quietly in the room, is if someone among you or visiting you used an ethnic, racial or gender slur, you would go up the wall and you say that's not proper. And you're quite correct to say that you want to rebut that. But you know, the discriminatory viciousness on the ground, in the ghettos, in the lack of pay equity, in the mistreatment of women, in the bigotry against Arab-Americans or Asian-Americans, they don't spend a minute worrying about. Not a minute.
So there is this asymmetry between being very concerned about bad words, but not concerned about the discriminatory, vicious, horrific behavior on the ground. The distinction between words and deeds. This is the problem. The distinction between words and deeds. If you just focus on words, here's what's going to happen. The censoring culture will expand. Government politicians will pick it up. They'll start adopting coercive censoring. There are countries in the world where a mere criticism of the leader can get you in jail. And they're not totalitarian countries. They're authoritarian countries. So there's a contagion to this kind of cultural practice that instead of rebutting and rejecting bad language, wrong thoughts, plutocratic thinking, whatever, instead of doing it by more free speech, you try to do it by shutting them down. You drive it underground and it erupts in the form of Trump voters and Trump's support for example. Or you push it underground and it erupts in terms of some other charlatan that takes advantage of it and accuses people of shutting people up because they don't like what their views are.
So this is a problem of long standing, Rick. It's just become more prominent because it's erupted in liberal circles. You have a coach or basketball coach huddling with his players, some of whom were Black. And he's pretty desperate because they're not winning. And he says something like, “Look, fellows, we've got to stay on the plantation,” which is his way of saying we've got to stay in practice. We've got to stay mentally focused. Well, it blew up on him. He was very remorseful, and remorse and regret in this kind of culture now doesn't get you a reprieve. It doesn't get you proportionality. It gets you no more job and no more ability to get another job after you've been fired or forced to resign.
In the meantime, the corporations are taking over the world. In the meantime, they're disrupting the climate of the earth, preserving massive poverty, supporting fascist and communist regimes, emptying out communities under the guise of free trade in this country, millions of workers losing their jobs, exploiting consumers, running nursing homes that are infectiously mismanaged and gouging; ripping off people in the health insurance area, denying benefits so over 100,000 people die, according to a Yale [University] study, who can't afford health insurance to get their diagnosis or treatment in time; corporate crime waves, stealing from taxpayers, escaping taxes. And where are the liberals and progressives who are so upset about bad language? Do they have time for these other situations on the ground? Housing discrimination?
Let's try something really controversial. Dick Gregory wrote a book. The title was the N-word. It was his autobiography. Black law professor at Harvard wrote a book. The title was an N-word. It was by Randall Kennedy. The title was the N-word and the subtitle was The Strange Career of a Troublesome Word. And Black athletes use the word with each other all the time. So is that proper?
John MacArthur: Well, and it's in the language. It's in the culture. It's in the music. It's everywhere on the street. It's absurd. The whole thing is –
[David Feldman] Can I --
Ralph Nader: What I'm asking is the same people who condemn the commentary use, the contextual use of the N-word, not its use accusatorily or bigotry. Like they're talking about a historical situation or a trial. The same people who come down hard on that. Should they come down hard on Blacks using that word?
John MacArthur: Well, if they were consistent. Now you see that the editor of the – I guess they're trying to spread the net. I disapprove of this too, but they forced out, they fired the editor of Teen Vogue magazine who is Black and a woman.
David Feldman: She resigned. She resigned. She wasn't fired.
John MacArthur: Okay. Well, I'm sure there was a push and she resigned because she made anti-Asian remarks in high school on her tweets. Now, again, I believe in redemption also. And I don't think that people should be held to account to this extent for things they did when they were teenagers. It's crazy. But I guess –
David Feldman: I apologize for interrupting. This is something. Ralph, do you mind if I ask a question?
Ralph Nader: No, let's wait until we get to the end, David.
David Feldman: Okay.
Ralph Nader: Because I want to put a lot of questions about disproportionality, questions about where are your priorities. If you're going to talk about verbal affronts, you've got a duty to talk about the vicious deeds on the ground that go unnoticed and unchallenged, that the verbal of affronts represent. But I also want to raise another issue here. This is remarkable. You have Senator [Kirsten] Gillibrand and others in the Senate. They went ballistic about some sexual escapades or harassment by Al Franken before he was senator. All the women in his office and retired women supported him. And they basically beat the drums in a few days and drove him out of the Senate. And the Democrats did the same thing against Congressman John Conyers for sexual harassment in his office.
At the same time, they gave a free ride to the savage sexual predator in the White House, who not only did horrendous things, including assault, battery, some would say even rape, who was involved in litigation by his accusers and who brandished them all as liars and continued slandering them and boasted about his prowess on television programs like “Howard Stern”, and the members of Congress and Democratic Party didn't go after him. Didn't say, “This is a violation of the public trust. This is what Hamilton was talking about. You're not only a bigot, you're a sexist, you're a misogynist, but you are a violent form of those behavioral traits against distinct women.” And they didn't have a congressional hearing. They didn't make it an impeachable offense. They gave him a free ride. This upset me very much. I've been an advocate women's rights since before I went to law school.
So I wrote an open letter, which was going to go to all members of the Democratic Party in the Congress. But the male members said address it to the women because they have credibility. So it was an open letter to the women, Democratic women of the Congress. And I laid out the case against Donald Trump and his violent practices against women using the power of his position, using his ability to slander them in the mass media, which lapped up his verbal assaults, et cetera. I delivered it, hand delivered it to 89 women representatives in the [US] House of Representatives. And the letter was delivered to some of the women senators, including Senator Gillibrand. This was in January, February of 2020. Not one response. It was a letter that made recommendations for action. Not one acknowledgement.
I even phoned up certain offices. Trump called Maxine Waters “low IQ.” Can't get a more racist epithet like that, an African American member of the House. And she wouldn't stand up to him. Why? I asked people in the Congress and so on. It's intimidation. Number one, they're afraid of Trump because he singles out and he unleashes all kinds of hate on the internet and they didn't need that. And the other members told me and staff told me was Speaker [of the House] Nancy Pelosi didn't want to get into that, didn't want to raise it. So this is what troubles people who don't like bad language, but they also don't like hypocrisy, disproportionality, and a willingness to forget about the deeds as long as you can counter attack and fire people who talk the words, sometimes inadvertently.
There is a book written, which I send this book to deans of law schools before we get into other subjects. It's a book by Anthony Lewis. He was a celebrated columnist and First Amendment specialist for the New York Times for many years. And his last book was titled Freedom for the Thought That We Hate: A Biography of the First Amendment, and he got that title from Oliver Wendell Holmes, the Supreme Court associate justice, who in a case titled United States v Schwimmer, he wrote, “If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other, it is the principle of free thought--not free thought for those who agree with us, but freedom for the thought that we hate.” And that made the title of his book. I don't know how many people it will take to persuade other people that once you start censoring, it becomes contagious and often comes back to bite you.
John MacArthur: Yes.
Ralph Nader: With the exception of libel, slander, and incitement to riot, and of course, government suppression of free speech.
John MacArthur: And of course, we don't see all the results, all the consequences of this because self-censorship becomes the rule. And you never hear about what people didn't say or decided not to say because they were afraid of reprisals. I mean, it's preemptive censorship. And I know all sorts of people in the news media who have told me that they're dumbing down or they're lowering the tone and they're not daring to say things they would have said a few months ago or a couple of years ago because they don't want to get canceled. They don't want to lose their jobs. The media, as everybody should know, is in crisis because Google [LLC], Amazon[.com, Inc.] and Facebook[, Inc.] run the media now, and to some extent dictate the terms by which the New York Times and Harper's magazine will survive or not.
Ralph Nader: Self-censorship is a cardinal behavioral trait in every culture ever studied. I mean, cultures can hardly survive. But after 9/11, for example, and also after the invasion of Iraq, I would be speaking before audiences and I would say, “How many of you wanted to say something, but felt you couldn't because you'd be accused of not supporting the troops and being unpatriotic?” Well, a lot of people in effect indicated that they did keep their mouth shut and they didn't say what they thought about those important situations.
John MacArthur: Of course.
Ralph Nader: Self-censorship is rampant in academia. Self-censorship is rampant everywhere. It's our duty to try to loosen the pressure of that. Look at the self-censorship that Trump generated, not just directly, but indirectly. Fear and intimidation, anxiety, dread. People afraid to challenge Trump because the Trumpsters out there in the private sector would come down very hard on them and not just on the internet. So we really have to think through all this and realize that freedom of speech, which is often called the primary amendment to the Constitution, the precursor for all democratic societies activities, freedom of speech already has its restraints against government, libel, slander, and incitement to violence. Anything more than that, and you get contagion; you get an epidemic of censorship regardless of political backgrounds, fear, anxiety, self-censorship, repression, and the eruption that would inevitably occur when demagogues come around and take advantage of it the way Trump did.
John MacArthur: Also, a couple of things I'd like to just add. And one is that I see the First Amendment used to be, and I guess to some extent still is, fetishized. In other words, it's this thing that's there that we're supposed to memorialize and protect. And it was Lewis Lapham, my old editor who used to say, “Wait a minute. The First Amendment is there to be used.” We're supposed to use it. That's why we have it. It's not there as an ornament in the Constitution. So I am a great believer in the notion that not only is it essential to a democracy, but it also enlivens society. It's fun to be free as my great uncle and Ben Hecht, my great uncle, Charles MacArthur, and Ben Hecht used to say, “It's fun to be free,” but it is also essential to a functioning democracy.
Ralph Nader: Absolutely, absolutely. If you look at most of our rights, Rick -- we're talking to Rick MacArthur, publisher of Harper's magazine -- if you look at our rights, many of them were born out of dissent. Dissent in our history and the history of societies is the mother of assent. For example, a lot of our procedural rights now in the Bill of Rights were tremendously disputatious. And if people in those days who were fighting for those rights were shut down, then the consequences would have been more autocracy. Let me test you a bit, Rick. Let me test you here. Where do you stand on the increasingly successful drive to get rid of the name the Washington Redskins? That's gone. It's now the Washington Footballers. There's now pressure to get rid of the name Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland Indians. What's your position on that?
John MacArthur: I think it's foolish. It's pointless.
[David Feldman] [Scoffs] Oh, my god!
John MacArthur: And I think if you ask the average, I mean, I used to go – I've driven around the west a lot and I've talked to a lot of Native Americans, and I've asked them this question about calling them Indians versus Native Americans. And most of them have said over the years, this is a random sampling of people say, “We don't mind being called Indians. We just don't like being treated like second-class citizens.” And that's the heart of it.
Ralph Nader: Well, a lot of the opinion on the Redskins was split by Native Americans. Some thought it was terribly disrespectful, exploitive, et cetera. Others said, the Washington Post has covered this subject a hundred times more than they’ve covered the conditions on the reservations.
John MacArthur: Exactly.
Ralph Nader: Why don't they come out and see what's going on the ground here in terms of the institutional, historic bigotry against Native Americans? Winona LaDuke doesn't mind using the word Indian. She's a major leader among Native Americans. And so I can see both sides. The reason why I asked you this, I really can see both sides. I mean, it's really sort of disgusting to me to see the Tomahawk chops at the Atlanta Braves game. It’s childish. But anyway, what would you do about the Fighting Irish? There are far more Black football players on the [University of] Notre Dame football team than Irish-Americans.
John MacArthur: Yeah, but, I think the more pertinent question is about, again, the argument about tearing down Confederate monuments. I'm not against taking down Confederate monuments. If people want to tear ‘em down, that's fine. But I just remind people all the time. Because by the way, I covered the so-called Second Trail of Tears. You remember the American Indian Movement March on Washington in 1978? I covered that for the Washington Star and I never heard a single American-Indian or Native American leader demand, for symbolic reasons, that they not be called Indians anymore--that they be called only Native Americans.
It's the same thing with [Rev. Dr.] Martin Luther King[, Jr.]. Not once that I could find and I really read the record and read his stuff, did he ever call on municipalities or states to tear down Confederate monuments. And I think it's because he recognized that these were symbolic gestures, not substantive gestures, like voting rights, like a higher minimum wage, like integration in public schools. Those are the things that matter. That's what matters to Black people and to Native Americans. I don't think this symbolic stuff amounts to much of anything. And all it does is drain energy from the fight that should be engaged all the time for bringing greater equality to the United States and treating everybody like equal citizens. So that's my position on name changes.
Ralph Nader: Just to introduce a new form of censorship that I think most people would be astonished, we now have judicial opinions redacted by the government. The government now, when it engages in litigation that involves anything they claim is a matter of national security or any other issue that they don't want the public to know about, they force the publishers of these judicial opinions or the judges to redact. So you open up West Publishing’s Appellate decisions or whatever, and you see marked-out sections, not just a line here, sometimes a paragraph. You see what happens when you start suppressing freedom of speech? It knows no boundaries and it ends up in a very bad way.
John MacArthur: Well, and here's another example. Has anyone been watching the [Ernest] Hemingway documentary over the last three nights on PBS? Hemingway used the N-word frequently in his stories, or often enough, that they showed a page where he used it three or four or five times. And they had it blacked out on the screen, like the Mueller report [Report On The Investigation Into Russian Interference] was redacted. It's just unbelievable. It's treating people like children. What are we going to do now? Are we going to start publishing redacted versions of Hemingway and of Mark Twain, Huckleberry Finn, where every offensive word is blacked out so you can't see what the author intended to say? It's insane.
Ralph Nader: There's also some efforts to change the name of Columbus, Ohio. I don't think that's going to succeed, but you can see where it keeps going. I mean, Columbus was an invader. He slaughtered Indians. He was there to get gold. Not exactly a historic figure that kids should learn about. By the way, when you were younger, what was the phrase, "sticks and stones" they used in the school yard?
John MacArthur: Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words will never hurt me.
Ralph Nader: Well, now you'd never hear that. You would never hear that. Now of course words can hurt. Words can hurt people. Words can hurt children. They can internalize it in a very bad way. The point is that the more sensitive a society becomes, the more sensitive a society has to become until people and kids don't brush things off. They don't develop a tougher hide and throw it back on the accuser by rebutting and challenging. So there's is a very interesting turnaround in our society now, which deals with teachers afraid to say a whole number of things. They don't know when they're going to get tripped up.