Chilling effect, or just chill?

On Tech Central Station, James Miller wonders if blogs might produce a chilling effect on speech.

I fear that blogs may soon make many Americans afraid to speak their minds. Imagine you're a manager of a company. Your new blog nightmare is that you will say something stupid in a meeting and this will be reported in a blog. Other blogs will report the initial comment and soon whatever group you have offended will pressure your company to fire you. Or perhaps your distasteful remark will go unreported until you're promoted to CEO. Then your employees, while blogging about what kind of boss you are, will literally tell the world about your past unfortunate utterance.

Maybe so, but this really isn't a new phenomenon – not at all.

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Conventional wisdom in science fiction circles is, "never write anything in a fanzine you wouldn't want to see on the front page of the New York Times". In later years, "fanzines" was replaced by "mailing list", "online forum", and "chat room". The point is, people have always said things that were later seen as – unfortunate. Other people have always been willing to report these statements for any number of reasons.

Clarence Thomas faced a major fight over the confirmation of his Supreme Court nomination because of remarkes he allegedly made years before. Likewise, OJ Simpson got away with murder (just my opinion) because one of the detectives on the case made racist noises to someone he was trying to interest in a book.

The examples Miller cites include Trent Lott, Eason Jordan, and professor Larry Summers. These are people who were forced to apologize or leave their positions because of things they had said. Lott praised Strom Thurmond, a former segregationist. Eason Jordan stated that the military had targeted journalists in Iraq. Summers stated that sex differences might account for the shortage of female math and science professors.

I plead for a new social order under which a few offensive spoken remarks, even if highly odious and taken in context, are forgiven. Most everyone has some fairly nasty thoughts and occasionally these thoughts turn into speech. If we allow a few obnoxious comments to destroy someone's career, many will avoid engaging in freewheeling discussions.

You know, there are cases where a "chilling effect" is a good thing. Our laws against murder have a "chilling effect" on peoples' tendencies to kill each other, and no one seems terribly troubled by this. Even in terms of speech, I don't see very many people agitating for the "right" to yell "fire!" in a crowded theater.

In some cases, I think people have apologized too easily and too often for remarks. After a certain point, if someone takes offense at a remark, it's that person's remark. If, for example, I wished a co-worker "happy birthday", and he took grave offense because he was a Jehovah's Witness and therefore doesn't celebrate birthdays, I'd apologize.

Once.

After that, I'd know he had a religious objection to birthday celebrations, and I'd not offer him birthday wishes.

If, for whatever reason, that didn't end it – if he kept on complaining about how he had been offended, he would lose all sympathy and respect I might have had for him. And indeed, it wouldn't take a whole lot of that behavior to register on my screen as harassment.

Interestingly enough, both Lott and Summers apologized for their statements. Jordan not only has not apologized, he has declared that it's everyone else's fault for misinterpreting them or taking them out of context, and he has done nothing to try and show anyone what the proper context is.

I see a difference here. Whether this difference is worth imposing a "chilling effect" upon is a matter of some debate. But I can see a case for chilling effects, both on a speaker's "right" to say offensive things, and on a hearer's "right" to take offense at things.