Yelling and insulting

To paraphrase a well-known contemporary philosopher: There are bad people on both sides.

What else to think of the brouhaha over the shouting and insult-exchanging at a recent Stanford Law School event involving a right-wing federal judge and a bunch of yelling law students?

There’s been a lot written about this incident and free speech in general, but has any of it been helpful? The views seem to be that shouting is bad or people with obnoxious views have no right not to be shouted at. Or both sides are terrible.

If you fall into one of those camps, I suggest an exercise: apply your point of view to a bunch of Karens yelling at a school board meeting to demand the rights of their children to spread Covid or never learn history. Then imagine school board members calling these people idiots.

Do you feel differently now?

(Full disclosure of possible bias: I have a wife named Karen. As far as I know, she has never demanded to see a manager.)

My feeling is that maybe we’re overreacting to this stuff. Sure, yelling and insulting are annoying, but they’re a whole lot better than punching and shooting. Maybe we ought to be happy that (most of us, at least) are remaining relatively peaceful. A little feel-good bad behavior is a nice outlet.

I do realize that yelling and insulting can be gateway drugs to violence, but it doesn’t have to be that way. There are measures we can take to foster a peaceful society. Here are few of them:

More shouting. I know this is counterintuitive, but think how much fun pep rallies are. We need to schedule large gatherings of like-minded people for organized (or possibly disorganized) yelling sessions.

Cheerleaders would be a nice touch and you could hire an actor to portray someone the crowd loves to hate.

We’ll feel better.

Ignorance. Ignore people you disagree with. Not only will this be beneficial to your mental health, but it also deflates the bad guys.

Think about it. How much attention would the right-wing judge at Stanford have gotten if no one showed up to yell? Do you lefties out there really want to keep hearing about free speech from people on the right who want to censor schools and libraries?

Ignorance is bliss.

Organized yelling. When planning an event at a school or elsewhere with a controversial speaker, allot separate and equal time for both speaker insults and audience screaming. Put it in the flyers, programs and signage so everyone understands.

I know this will be hard to enforce, so arm ushers with Tasers for the crowd and hire an orchestra to play off speakers who go over their time limit. Not every speaker needs to thank everyone in their family.

Meditation. Deep breathing should be required for citizenship.

Spoilers ahead. Longtime readers of this column (if there are any) will remember my reviews almost three years ago of the new Perry Mason series on HBO. I was obsessed with the show because the original television version was my favorite program when I was a weird kid (the precursor to being a weird adult).

I both loved and hated the new version. It was awful but in a really entertaining way — so dumb that it was great and I got to point out the weirdness in mini-reviews for months.

And now, after a Covid hiatus, the series is back and I can recommend it again. Apparently, there’s a new showrunner and the plot is less over-the-top ridiculous than the first season — but that was a pretty high bar to clear.

There are still delights. Della is still slogging her way through law school while Perry is licensed to practice after studying for all of three weeks before taking the bar exam. Della and District Attorney Ham Burger are both gay — which is fine but a heck of a coincidence.

And in episode two, there’s a chase scene that begins when Perry is inexplicably wandering into the bottom of a casino yacht, a place with a lot of pipes. There, Perry discovers the bad guy cop, who is dressed in a tuxedo, inexplicably hanging out with his henchmen. Running ensues and ends in the casino where Perry announces that the cop is there. All is fine after that.

I will report further lowlights in the weeks to come. This is so much fun.

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