Published on 10 May 2012
There’s a relatively good song by Momus called Rhetoric, and in the Youtube video there’s this lovely segment of an interview where he explains that art is great because no one has to do it. It is so unnecessary. Sometimes, writing these blogs feels that way.
Take this one. I opened it yesterday after having a back and forth of around twenty twitter messages with a friend of mine in Edinburgh. She had been castigated the police, calling them all bastards, and so on. I tried to get across to her that the police - even the UK police, who are about as close to V for Vendetta as possible while not letting people catch on too much - do have some useful functions, that they are really actually helpful in some cases, and that they’re composed of human beings who we should embrace as brothers and not alienate. Sure, I hate the state and the popo, too. But that doesn’t mean I am going to go around calling all Police scum - they aren’t, although their office might be. I say this even though I’ve seen friends arrested, maligned, marginilised, taken away in taxis, and submitted to almost every kind of disgrace. But I still hold that we shouldn’t demand for their excommunication from life, or from any sort of new world order.
At one point, my friend, who probably didn’t get my messages intent as much as I had hoped, partially due to Twitter, told me I didn’t have the right to tell her what to think or say. I responded with the sentiment from one of my favourite quotes on the freedom of speech. Philip Pullman states that “No one has the right to live without being schocked. No one has the right to live without being offended.” I do have the right to suggest alternative ways of speaking, of telling her I don’t think her attitude towards our fellow-men-in-black is right.
I still think that’s pretty awesome.
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