Caleb Bond: We can’t let baying mobs silence debate
CELEBS like J.K. Rowling and Kathy Griffin have joined the ranks of cranks swapping discourse for abuse. They’re just looking for something to be outraged about, writes Caleb Bond.
WHO would have thought something so innocuous would become international news?
Mark Knight’s cartoon depiction of Serena Williams throwing a dummy spit, complete with pacifier, has done the global news rounds for the past two days.
American TV stations have commented on it. The BBC World Service reported on it two nights in a row.
The Washington Post, the Irish Times — everyone had a piece of the Herald Sun cartoonist.
But this whole thing started on the strange website that is Twitter.
A few people in the US picked up on the cartoon and, in their constant desire for something about which to be outraged, deemed it racist.
Soon enough, J.K. Rowling had joined the baying mob, saying Knight had reduced “one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes”.
Comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted that he was a “racist piece of s**t” who should should change his name to “KKK cartoons”.
When your humble correspondent pointed out to Ms Griffin that the cartoon was, in fact, not racist, but rather a simple caricature of someone in the public eye, she told me to “open a history book motherf***er and then go f***” myself.
Charming.
But this, apparently, is debate in 2018. Simply latch on to something, get angry, abuse some people and voila — you have 2500 retweets and 18,000 likes. How affirming.
Outrage has turned into the emotion du jour. Social media in our pockets has given us all the opportunity to react in real time — and whip up controversy that, in the real world, means very little.
Cranks have always existed. The kind of comments that can now be found readily on social media have always existed in people’s heads.
But now, they have a voice. And when they gather in numbers, it gives the sense they have some authority.
The Twitter pile on is a well rehearsed routine for many who have now been elevated to public life, supported by their followers who join the fight.
The object is not to change anyone’s point of view, or to effect positive change. Instead, abuse and anger is brought to the fore in a clamour to appear self righteous.
It allows them to assert their sense of superiority — the idea that they must be right and all others must be wrong.
One academic this week announced on radio that the issue of whether Knight’s cartoon is racist should not be debated. It should, she proffered, be universally condemned because she could see no possible argument to the contrary.
These people seemingly feed on outrage, prowling constantly for something to feed their hunger. They are to outrage what a seagull is to a stray chip. Take something simple — like a caricature of a person in a cartoon (what a novel idea), misconstrue it and you have a worldwide news item.
Americans are sometimes prone to thinking they are the centre of the universe — and nothing makes it clearer than events such as this.
The reaction to the outrage from Australian readers has been, by and large, bemused and flabbergasted. We do not see racism — and that alone, surely, is enough to prove no offence was intended.
But abuse that would otherwise be condemned in public debate is lauded. And a toxic culture of groupthink encourages the howling mob to stick together.
If you dare stray from the flock, they will turn on their own. There is strength in numbers and, one can only assume, some kind of perverse comfort in knowing others are similarly outraged over the most innocuous of events.
Take Melbourne Green MP Adam Bandt’s recent run in with the outrage brigade. On a night out at the theatre, he posed for a photo with his wife, Claudia Perkins, which was later posted to Facebook.
His crime? To describe her as “hot”.
Countless men have publicly described their wives, girlfriends and lovers as hot. Woman frequently do the same of their partners. We rightly think nothing of it.
But then the seagulls descended. One comment said he was “putting your wife out there for public consumption”.
Another read: “Women in the public eye are sexually objectified enough and you are alienating your progressive support base by contributing to that.” It went on to describe Bandt as suffering from a “Trumpish outburst”.
The post attracted 1500 comments at last count and the discussion eventually turned into outrage at the original outrage.
Bandt and the Greens are hardly the typical target of this kind of carry on. It is usually their supporters who drive it. But some people will stop at nothing to find something at which to direct their anger — no matter how trivial.
US President Donald Trump, of course, is another outrage trigger — for every time he tweets, an army of haters are ready to disagree.
This all achieves very little. It elevates issues that would otherwise have gone unnoticed into the public sphere and in doing so promotes the argument they apparently want to stop. The greatest sadness is that, if just for a fleeting moment, these people are taken seriously.
And so short are our attention spans that it all blows over in a matter of days. The topic that elicited such vitriolic rage is quickly forgotten like it were a passing fad and no one comes away any wiser.
A new outrage arrives and the Twitter caravan rolls on.
Caleb Bond is a columnist for The Adelaide Advertiser.
Originally published as Caleb Bond: We can’t let baying mobs silence debate