Joseph Sobran writes December 23, 1999:
John Rocker, ace relief pitcher and trash-talker of the Atlanta Braves, has made few friends in New York. Now he has incurred the wrath of the Bigot Squad.
Sports Illustrated quotes him as saying: “The biggest thing I don’t like about New York are [sic] the foreigners. I’m not a very big fan of foreigners. You can walk an entire block in Times Square and not hear anybody speaking English, Asians and Koreans and Vietnamese and Indians and Russians and Spanish people and everything up there. How the hell did they get into this country?”
He went on: “Imagine having to take the 7 train to the ballpark, looking like you’re [in] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids. It’s depressing.”
The New York Post, not usually an oracle of political correctness, headlined these as “racist remarks,” quoting denunciations of Rocker by spokesmen for Korean, South Asian, Russian Jewish, Puerto Rican, Catholic, and homosexual groups, and for good measure a hairdresser who specializes in purple hair. One columnist accused Rocker of “hate”; another, exemplifying the tolerance that makes New York so endearing, called the Georgia native a “cracker boy.”
Needless to say, this story ended the way all such stories end: with the ritual grovel. Rocker quickly apologized for his “unacceptable” remarks, while protesting that “I am not a racist.”
What he should have said in the first place, of course, was that, as Bill Clinton likes to say, “diversity is our greatest strength.” Not just ethnic diversity, but diversity of behavior: crime, illegitimacy, homosexuality, and purple hair, all of which are bountiful in New York. When you’re crowded into a dirty subway car with such diversity pressing against you, it can make you a mite uneasy. But you mustn’t say so. You must keep repeating the official mantra: “Diversity is our greatest strength.”
The Rocker story is one more reminder that white Americans aren’t even allowed to have their own perspective anymore. We live under the sort of tyranny of propaganda you might expect in wartime, where everyone is expected to adopt a uniform attitude or face charges of disloyalty.
Everyone in the crowded subway car is likewise expected to savor the “diversity” of the experience. But there is to be no diversity of sensation or reaction. Just paste a smile on your face and pretend you enjoy every moment of it. Ignore your gut response and talk like a cheery social scientist who thinks immigration — even the illegal immigration of new hordes of ruthless gangsters — is an unalloyed blessing.
Why shouldn’t a man like Rocker experience the New York streets and subway as he did — feeling surrounded by the alien, the bizarre, the sinister? Even native New Yorkers no longer pretend that Gotham is “Fun City.” Crime has dipped sharply, but nobody speaks of New York as a pinnacle of civilization, as we did when you could go there without fear to enjoy symphonies, museums, and the latest Cole Porter musical.
Last year I watched the old movie Miracle on 34th Street again. The miracle that struck me was not the Santa Claus story: it was the backdrop of a New York City we can barely remember — a city where ordinary people were well-dressed, polite, and civilized. More to the point, it was a city where these qualities were taken for granted, and where any exception would have stood out. We assumed that New York would always be our cultural mecca. What is now commonplace was once inconceivable.
Now that the old standards have vanished, we’re supposed to adopt new standards to make decline appear as “progress.” Obviously Rocker has somehow escaped the mass brainwashing process. He still notices the things you’re not supposed to notice. His much-maligned brain (he is also accused of “knot-headedness”) still operates independently of the Universal Propaganda Network into which all enlightened brains are wired.
It’s no longer permissible even to be provincial. All the provinces seem to have been annexed by a single empire of the mind, with no residue of private space. No room in this world for cracker boys.
JOSEPH SOBRAN writes February 3, 2000:
“How can you defend an oaf like John Rocker?” a friend asked me recently. “I don’t disagree with you, but when you take up his cause you’re just begging to be called a racist yourself.”
Well, being smeared as a “racist” is just part of the game these days. Thanks to the U.S. Supreme Court’s evisceration of libel law in the name of the First Amendment, you can’t do much about it. But the worst thing you can do is to accept the role of defendant and let yourself be intimidated by the ethos of laissez-faire libel.
Rocker, the Atlanta Braves’ star relief pitcher, has now been fined and suspended for the early part of the coming season by Major League Baseball’s commissioner, Bud Selig. The sentence also includes “sensitivity training,” on top of the psychological examination Rocker has already submitted to. Selig said that Rocker’s unflattering remarks about New York “offended practically every element of society and brought dishonor to himself, the Atlanta Braves, and Major League Baseball.”
Personally, I disliked Rocker from the first time I saw him pitch. He’s an abrasive man, like a lot of athletes nowadays. But that doesn’t justify New York’s fans in spitting on him, pouring beer on him, and throwing batteries at him. Neither do his opinions about New York justify Selig in punishing him and, particularly, humiliating him as a thought-criminal in need of a Soviet-style “cure.”
If Rocker had broken some well-defined rule, it would be one thing. But Major League Baseball, as far as I know, has no speech code. Selig himself has brought dishonor on the sport by trying, in a totally arbitrary manner, to impose taboos on the expression of opinion — taboos that didn’t apply to Ted Turner’s crude jokes about Catholics, the Pope, and Poles. (Turner, the Braves’ owner, has apologized; but so has Rocker, unavailingly.)
Rocker has been roundly condemned as a “racist” even though he never mentioned race. But liberal invective is routinely accepted as free speech.
The episode throws a lot of light on the prevailing thought-crime code. Thought-crimes differ from ordinary crimes in several respects.
First, they aren’t defined. Nobody knows exactly what “racism” is; it can mean anything the accuser wants it to mean. And it rarely refers to overt acts; usually it refers to the alleged thoughts or attitudes of the accused.
Second, nothing has to be proved — and since the word has no clear definition, nothing can be proved. So the accuser bears no burden of proof, as he would in cases of ordinary crimes. The accused is presumed guilty as long as the accusation is sufficiently strident. And, given the vagueness of the charge, he can’t prove he isn’t racist.
Third, and most important, nobody ever has to pay a price for making a false or reckless accusation. Nobody is ruined or disgraced for making loose charges of “racism.” Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton continue to thrive after making far more wild charges than Joe McCarthy.
You don’t have to worry about being falsely accused of murder, because everyone knows what murder is, there are clear procedures for testing the charge, and anyone who makes a false accusation against you can be sued or even jailed. But everyone has to worry about being accused of “racism,” because these safeguards don’t exist when that poisonous charge is leveled.
If you really think racism is a serious matter, you want the word to mean something definite and you want to make sure that innocent people are safe from false charges of it. Otherwise, the word merely becomes a weapon that can be picked up and wielded by opportunists and tyrants to create a climate of intimidation.
Which course describes the methods of those who profess to oppose racism in America today? The answer is obvious. Charges of racism are made so promiscuously that everyone has to walk on eggs to avoid incurring them. And no accuser has to worry about any penalty for damaging an innocent man’s good name.
Such a situation can only breed such thought-police as Jackson and Sharpton, paving the way for tyranny. It may not frighten the Ku Klux Klan, but other people will learn to speak guardedly in multicultural America.
