The courts have steadily expanded the First Amendment guarantee of free speech over the last fifty years and more. In America today the freedom of political expression for demonstrators, marchers, flag-burners, liberals, conservatives, socialists, communists, anarchists, Ku-Kluxers, Nazis, nudists, and vegetarians are secure as no where else in the world.
Only one segment of the American population has suffered a continual contraction of their right to express themselves freely. I refer, of course, to professional politicians. These unfortunate creatures live in perpetual fear of saying the wrong thing, using the wrong word, expressing spontaneous feelings, drifting "off-message," violating the rules of Political Correctness, or, above all, appearing in any way insensitive. A charge of "insensitivity" has almost the force of a charge of incest, sadism or puppy-hatred in the world of political rhetoric.
For professional politicians, words which have clear inoffensive meanings in ordinary conversation, may be freighted with fearful connotations against which no dictionary provides protection. An off-hand quip may provoke inflamed and frantic demands for apology. America now throngs with groups aspiring to victimhood, ever-watchful for some offending word which will allow them to utter wails about the injustice of it all. Political rivals scan every sentence for a phrase, an expression or a word which might give offense to some group of voters.
For politicians at the top of their game safety lies only in "focus interviews" which identify the feel-good words that provoke positive feelings in the subjects and feel-nasty words that provoke negative feelings. The feel-good words appear in every other sentence they utter and the feel-nasty words are edited out of even their private thoughts.
Eliot Cutler and Libby Mitchell are pretty well equipped to pick their way safely through the semantic political mine field without blowing themselves up. Cutler made millions as a Washington lawyer, a career that trains a man for a smooth and polished presentation. Mitchell has been in politics so long that she is incapable of speaking like a real human being any longer. My intelligence sources are inadequate to establish this factually, but I have a strong intuition that she speaks Politicorrectitudinarian in her sleep.
Paul LePage is at a disadvantage here. You don’t get polished up much coming from a mill-workers family, or surviving as a homeless kid on the streets of Lewiston, or working as a dishwasher, bartender, or short-order cook. Spend a lot of time in Maine’s forest industries and you tend to pick up habits of direct, blunt speech.
LePage’s rivals understand this vulnerability and lay in wait to pounce on any statement that could be construed to represent him as a cold-hearted, insensitive, reckless brute (sort of like me). And so Mitchell and her supporters raise a great hullaballoo about an off-hand quip about retiring her from a long career of wrecking the State of Maine at age 69. And an AARP Panjandrum joins the fun by defending his particular victim group against this evidence of age discrimination. Gee, that should work as a political issue. Maine contains one of the oldest populations in the nation.
I have to confess to ingratitude towards my defenders. Although the same age as Libby I have a distinct feeling that there may be some grounds for discriminating between John Frary, age 17, and John Frary, age 70. I’m not arguing that Sen. Mitchell is not as capable of promoting taxation, regulation and general futility at age 69 as she was at age 33. It just that at age 17 I was pretty handy with a birch hook and had the physique to shift hundreds of tons of bolter logs off wood piles and on to sledges and trailers. In 2010 I would expect any potential employer, viewing my curvaceous contours, arthritic knee, and general air of senile decrepitude, to have sense enough to discriminate, declining to place a birch hook in my hands.
My claim to victimhood lies in the misuse of the name "John." You never hear about people going to the "Eliot." You never see "Port-a-Libbys." on construction sites. "Eliots" are never spoken of as customers for prostitutes (despite Eliot Spitzer). A couple of years ago I wrote to Gov. JOHN Baldacci about this grievance but received no reply.
If Libby Mitchell is sincere about running on a sensitivity platform, she ought to be taking a stand on this issue. Professor John Frary of Farmington, Maine is a former US Congress candidate and retired history professor, a Board Member of Maine Taxpayers United and an associate editor of the International Military Encyclopedia, and can be reached at: jfrary8070@aol.com
