Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, by Kliph Nesteroff, Abrams, 312 pages, $30

The first paragraph of the book jacket lays it out: "There is a common belief that we live in unprecedented times, that people are too sensitive today, that nobody objected to the actions of actors, comedians, and filmmakers in the past. Modern pundits would have us believe that Americans of a previous generation had tougher skin and seldom complained. But does this argument hold up to scrutiny?"

There's a good point underneath the hyperbole. People tend to believe—and pundits, politicians, and activists tend to claim—that whatever issues trouble them are worse than ever. Why? Because these things are happening now. To us. Problems in the past weren't as urgent or significant because they happened to others, and anyway things turned out OK (or if they didn't, at least those problems are over).

So Kliph Nesteroff's Outrageous has a decent premise. Alas, it also has significant flaws.

The book's subtitle is A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars, and Nesteroff has some expertise—at least regarding the former. He previously wrote The Comedians, a lively and informative work that, admittedly, bit off more than it could chew, trying to cram the history of American comedy into a few hundred pages.

A history of public opposition to American entertainment is a more manageable subject, though still a big one. While Nesteroff starts with complaints about blackface and minstrel shows in the 1800s, most of the book deals with post–World War II controversies. And he has some fascinating stories to tell about the many attempts to cancel movies, music, TV shows, and just about anything that was new and different.

Some of these stories may be familiar. Many people know about the resistance All in the Family faced when it first aired in the 1970s, with its vulgarity and ethnic slurs; CBS stuck by it, and the sitcom went on to become one of the biggest TV shows ever. But how many people remember Bridget Loves Bernie, a sitcom that followed All in the Family for one season? Vaguely based on the 1920s Broadway blockbuster Abie's Irish Rose, it was a show about a marriage between a Jewish man and a Catholic woman. It received so much pushback—including bomb threats—that CBS canceled it, despite its high ratings.

Interesting though these tales are, the book's overall narrative is shaky. It tends to move from one anecdote to the next without sufficient transition. Outrageous often comes across as less a history of a phenomenon than a chronological data dump.

There are some lapses in the research too. For instance, Nesteroff claims Cole Porter wrote "Do It Again" (I assume he's referring to the George Gershwin tune) while attributing Porter's song "Love For Sale" to Irving Berlin. And he mistakenly asserts that David Letterman wrote an episode of the sitcom Good Times. (The episode in question features Jay Leno in a small role. Perhaps that's where the confusion arose.)

But the biggest problem is that Nesteroff has an ax to grind—one so large it ends up taking over the book and turning it into a screed.

It's true that any conservatives who claim that censorship today is worse than ever lack historical perspective. Still, that doesn't mean there's nothing worth complaining about, or that we should simply dismiss what they say. Nesteroff writes as though we should.

Nesteroff notes how the John Birch Society saw Communist conspiracies everywhere in the 1960s. Far from disappearing, he argues, their discredited philosophy has been rebranded; recent culture wars, funded by partisan foundations, have used fear tactics to fool people into supporting otherwise unpopular policies. (Funny, my Republican friends say the same thing about the left.)

According to Nesteroff (and the partisan experts he quotes), right-wing think tanks tell their talking heads in the media what to say, often gaining consensus through payment of large sums. (It's not clear what he believes the left is doing in the meantime. I guess they're just telling the truth and being ignored.) Further, under the guise of supporting free speech, right-wing plotters send "provocateurs to speak on college campuses for the purpose of incitement. When protests erupt, such objection is used as proof that the campus is opposed to free speech. Demonized in the body politic, funding is threatened—and legal action undertaken—until the campus is made hospitable to think tank interests."

Wow. A conspiracy theory almost worthy of the Birchers.

Let me suggest a different narrative. Nesteroff seems to believe the right has, if anything, gotten worse in recent decades. Worse or not, it's true that it has changed. But hasn't the left changed as well?

A few decades ago, many would say, the movement for greater civil liberties was spearheaded by the left. (Some of the most famous student protests of the '60s were centered around Berkeley's Free Speech Movement.) Courts responded with interpretations of the First Amendment guaranteeing greater freedom to express oneself. Outside the legal realm, much of the country—and much of the left—adopted a cultural ethos that it's a good thing people are allowed to say what's on their mind, even if some find it offensive or dangerous.

But over time, much of the left reversed its position, becoming suspicious of such freedom—at least for groups it opposes. Thus, the "provocateurs" Nesteroff warns of aren't just protested at colleges: They're disinvited, or shouted down, or physically attacked. Meanwhile, students are disciplined and professors fired for expressing views that, while not outside the larger social mainstream, are considered objectionable on campus.

What's more, this culture has spread into the world off campus. Newspaper editors are fired for running editorials that trouble their staff. Workers in large corporations fear that expressing unorthodox political opinions can get them cashiered. People are deplatformed on social media for questionable reasons. And, of course, there are the showbiz culture wars—the putative subject of Outrageous—where people feel they have to make public expressions of regret for something they said or did in the past, or risk not working again.

This isn't just based on anecdotes. A number of polls—for example, a recent College Pulse/Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression survey of undergraduates—show that today's young liberals are more willing than previous generations to shut down speech they find offensive. According to the American College Student Freedom, Progress and Flourishing Survey, conducted annually by researchers at North Dakota State University, about four out of five liberal or liberal-leaning students think it appropriate to snitch on a professor for stating fairly common (but "wrong") opinions on hot-button issues. It's one thing to debate or protest ideas you don't like. It's quite another to try to stop anyone from even hearing them.

When you don't listen to the other side…well, it's hard to put it better than John Stuart Mill: "He who knows only his own side of the case, knows little of that." Unfortunately, today's left seems to lean more toward Oscar Wilde's Lady Bracknell: "I dislike arguments of any kind. They are always vulgar, and often convincing."

So yes, there's good reason to be concerned about the cancellations and related issues that upset the right, even if repression was sometimes worse in the past. And if you wish to engage in serious debate, it's not enough to be satisfied with your own arguments. You've got to refute the other side, not brush them off as dishonest or evil or brainwashed.

Outrageous starts with a "Note to the Reader": "Please be aware that some of the material quoted within this book includes archaic terminology that might be considered wildly offensive by modern standards." I would hope that anyone reading this book, or any book dealing with history, already knows that people thought and spoke differently in the past. A better warning would state that Nesteroff's work may claim to be an objective look at cultural history but that lurking inside is a polemic.

Too bad. There's a lot of good material in Outrageous. With a slightly different presentation, it could have been a more useful addition to today's debate.

The post A Brief, Biased History of the Culture Wars appeared first on Reason.com.

That there are government officials who politicize the law is about as foundational to the discourse as any complaint I can think of. The criticism is sometimes quite fair. And for the latest example of a soft-on-crime politician flouting law and order, we can look to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.

Abbott, of course, is no self-styled progressive. But his recent decision to pardon Daniel Perry, who was convicted last year of murdering Garrett Foster, channels the spirit of the progressive prosecutors he criticizes for allegedly refashioning the law to suit their ideological preferences. He just has different targets.

The governor, who last year urged the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to recommend a pardon for Perry, doesn't see it that way. "Texas has one of the strongest 'Stand Your Ground' laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive District Attorney," he wrote in a statement yesterday, approving the pardon after the board officially obliged his request. (It's worth noting that the board, whose members are appointed by the governor, circumvented its own requirement that "evidence of actual innocence from at least two trial officials, or the findings of fact and conclusions of law from the district judge indicating actual innocence" be submitted to even consider such a pardon.)

It is absolutely true that the right to self-defense is vital. And to argue that Perry—who, prior to killing Foster at a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest, wrote that he wanted to "shoot the [protesters] in the front and push the pedal to the metal"—acted in self-defense is to make a total mockery of that right and those who've had to exercise it.

It is also true that many district attorneys, some of them so-called "progressive" prosecutors, appear to disdain that right. There are the cases across New York City I've covered, for example, where prosecutors are unconscionably seeking lengthy prison terms for people who acted in self-defense but had the audacity to do so with an unlicensed gun. That includes the case of Charles Foehner, an elderly man who shot a mugger in Queens, after which law enforcement brought so many weapons charges against him that Foehner would go to prison for life if convicted on all. That was in June 2023. In November, LaShawn Craig of Brooklyn shot a masked man who'd entered his apartment. Though prosecutors concede the shooting was in self-defense, they also charged him with several weapons offenses, including criminal possession of a weapon, a violent felony.

And then, most famously, there was Kyle Rittenhouse, whose 2021 prosecution for murder polarized much of the nation, despite that, if you knew the facts, it was an obvious example of self-defense—something I made very clear at the time.

There are some interesting parallels between Rittenhouse's case and Perry's case that are hard to ignore. Both men used their guns at protests against police brutality, many of which popped up across the U.S. in the summer of 2020. The shootings happened exactly a month apart. Then their stories diverge considerably, ending in an acquittal and a conviction, because the way they used their firearms was quite different, despite the culture war backdrop being the same. Both of these things can be true.

In July 2020, Perry ran a red light and drove into a crowd of protesters. That in and of itself, of course, is not enough to deduce that he was looking for a fight. His own statements prior to doing so, however, add a great deal of helpful context and show his frame of mind at the time. "I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex," he wrote on social media on May 31, 2020. Also in May, he threatened to a friend that he "might go to Dallas to shoot looters." And then in mid-June, he sent that message about going to a protest, "shoot[ing] the ones in the front," and then careening his car through the hubbub.

This was part of a pattern. Austin police detective William Bursley testified, for instance, that Perry searched on Safari for "protesters in Seattle gets shot," "riot shootouts," and "protests in Dallas live." It is not hard to connect the dots between his searches and messages.

So what about that stand-your-ground defense Abbott alleges the jury nullified? Core to Perry's case and trial was whether he reasonably feared for his life that July evening. Foster indeed had a rifle on him—because open carry is legal in Texas. The Second Amendment does not solely exist for people with conservative views. The big question then: Was Foster pointing the gun at Perry when he approached his vehicle? For the answer, we can go to Perry himself, who told law enforcement that he was not. "I believe he was going to aim at me," he said. "I didn't want to give him a chance to aim at me." But that is not a self-defense justification, as Perry cannot claim clairvoyance.

That the jury reached the conclusion they did is not a mystery, nor is it an outrage. What is outrageous, however, is that a governor who claims to care about law and order has made clear that his support for crime victims is at least in part conditional on having the "right" politics.

The post Daniel Perry's Pardon Makes a Mockery of Self-Defense appeared first on Reason.com.

This week, the University of Southern California (USC) announced that the college's valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, would be barred from speaking at commencement. The school cited concerns that Tabassum, who had recently come under fire for an anti-Israel social media post, would create safety concerns.

USC announced that Tabassum had been selected as the school's valedictorian on April 4, after choosing her from among over 100 students with a GPA of 3.9 or higher.

But less than two weeks later, the school announced that Tabassum would not be allowed to speak at commencement, following complaints from several USC student groups over Tabassum's social media postings. Namely, many cited a link in Tabassum's Instagram bio that calls Zionism a "racist settler-colonial ideology that advocates for a jewish ethnostate built on palestinian land" and calls for "the complete abolishment of the state of israel."

"Unfortunately, over the past several days, discussion relating to the selection of our valedictorian has taken on an alarming tenor," Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Andrew Guzman wrote in a letter to USC students and faculty. "The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement."

Rather than directly citing the political content of Tabassum's speech, USC officials made nebulous claims that her speech might imperil student safety.

"While this is disappointing, tradition must give way to safety," wrote Guzman. "This decision is not only necessary to maintain the safety of our campus and students, but is consistent with the fundamental legal obligation—including the expectations of federal regulators—that universities act to protect students and keep our campus community safe."

Ironically, Guzman argued that the decision had nothing to do with free expression concerns. "To be clear: this decision has nothing to do with freedom of speech," he wrote. "There is no free-speech entitlement to speak at a commencement. The issue here is how best to maintain campus security and safety, period."

However, Guzman is hardly convincing. 

"Implicit in the idea of a campus committed to robust expressive rights is that administrators won't censor their students just because they have controversial views," wrote Alex Morey, an attorney for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). "Here, USC should have been palms up about any genuine security threats, with administrators first doing everything in their power to provide adequate security for the event so it could proceed. Canceling it should be a last resort."

While it's easy to view this censorship as reflective of USC taking a side in the Israel-Hamas war, the reality is much more mundane. USC, like many colleges, is primarily concerned with avoiding controversy at all costs—not with taking a side in a complex political debate. For example, just last year, the school banned a Jewish professor from campus after he was filmed calling Hamas "murderers" and calling protesting students "ignorant"—though the sanctions against him were eventually reversed under pressure.

The cancellation of Tabassum's speech presents a clear example of just how risk-averse university administrations tend to be. When controversy arises—either from the left or right—the prevailing response is censorship, rather than a principled stand for free expression.

The post USC Cancels Valedictorian's Speech Over Bogus 'Safety Concerns' appeared first on Reason.com.