Politics & Other Mistakes: Intimidate me

6 mins read
Al Diamon
Al Diamon

There’s no act of foolishness so trivial that some self-righteous dipwad won’t overreact and attempt to outlaw it.

Conservatives have tried repeatedly to pass a constitutional amendment banning flag burning, a form of protest most Americans find so repulsive that no one with any interest in swaying public opinion in his or her direction would even consider it. Liberals clamor for injunctions against protesters shouting outside abortion clinics, seemingly unaware that prosecuting noisy eccentrics shifts their public image from minor annoyance to victim. On college campuses, criticizing even the most extreme forms of political correctness is tantamount to treason, resulting in banishment from all human interaction for the heinous crime of insensitivity.

For those of us whose livelihoods depend on dishing out heaping helpings of ridicule and insult, these are unsettling times. If displaying a disrespectful attitude toward whatever cultural icon of the moment has been elevated to sacred-cow status renders us outcasts, the only remaining opinions that meet society’s rigorous standards will be those of the moral absolutists of the left and right. Not a lot of laughs on either side.

Which brings us to Project Dirigo. Members of this newly formed volunteer organization get their jollies by visiting the polls on election day and videotaping citizens signing referendum petitions. As really stupid hobbies go, this falls between flash mobs and obsessive posting on Reddit. But like both those pointless activities, recording the signature-gathering process is perfectly legal.

For now.

In Portland, some people staffing tables seeking support for an initiative to require backgrounds checks on buyers at gun shows and in private sales were unhappy with Project Dirigo making a digital record of their activities. “I just felt intimidated,” one of them told the Portland Press Herald. A voter who had been asked to sign that petition added, “I object to creepy little spies, for any reason, trying to intimidate other citizens from exercising any of their constitutional rights.”

Naturally, such complaints quickly drew the attention of a politician with either a strong sense of civic duty or a carefully cultivated talent for getting his name in the news. State Sen. Bill Diamond, a Democrat from Windham, announced he was drafting a bill to ban videotaping in polling places (I’ll bet TV stations that regularly fill time on election days by filming citizens doing their civic duty won’t be pleased with that overreaction). “My concern,” Diamond told the Press Herald, “is that this practice will either intimidate voters or lead to a confrontation.”

Diamond’s proposal is unlikely to be considered in the next legislative session, and by the time the new Legislature convenes in 2017, he’ll probably have forgotten all about these incidents, because some other segment of the citizenry will have been intimidated by different nonsensical events. The senator will be so busy drafting legislation to outlaw those new intimidators that he’ll have no time to deal with mere videographers.

So let me take care of that right now. Project Dirigo appears to be the creation of a couple of gun-rights groups called the Maine Open Carry Association and the Gun Owners of Maine. The purpose of its filming has less to do with intimidation than with an amateur effort to produce one of those “gotcha” videos that have embarrassed Planned Parenthood and other progressive groups. This clumsy exercise in First Amendment rights is intended to result in a heavily edited online ad portraying the gun-control types as sleazy operators (“If you sign this petition for background checks, I’ll sell you some organs from aborted fetuses really cheap”). Unfortunately for Project Dirigo, it’ll take far more skill and cunning than its volunteers seem to possess to make that happen.

In any case, an allegation of intimidation is a lousy reason to pass laws forbidding some otherwise legitimate activity. We ought to realize that what intimidates us is mostly an individual reaction. I’m not much bothered by being videotaped, since I assume I’m being monitored or recorded whenever I’m in a public place, including my favorite bars (probably there’s some “gotcha” video there). But just because I’m intimidated by calculus, Marcel Proust and housecleaning doesn’t mean I’m harassing my local legislator into sponsoring a measure banning parametric equations, madeleines and Scrubbing Bubbles.

If you’re not too intimidated, email me at aldiamon@herniahill.net.

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7 Comments

  1. Hmmm, I am not so sure this falls so neatly under the first amendment.

    Free Speech, and the right to assembly, are not quite the same as being free to videotape a person, esp. when it is accompanied by questioning and recording the person’s address, while that person is exercising their own constitutional rights.
    First of all, the ability to record video wasn’t even conceived when the first amendment was drafted.
    What if members of the Ku Klux Klan, wearing their outfits and openly carrying their constitutional carry weapons, stood outside of polling areas and selectively filmed people, then asked for their address?
    What if, people who were clearly identified as liberal, commie,pot smoking vegetarian tree huggers selectively recorded and got the addresses of those people who refused to sign anti bear baiting petitions?

    What if we made school children from select groups, children of color, or children of welfare parents, or children with red hair, what if we forced them to walk through a crowd of adults screaming and shouting disparaging comments as they walked to school?
    That did happen, in Alabama, back in the sixties. We brought in the National Guard.
    How is that philosophically all that different, from people yelling out comments to those who seek the (entirely legal) services offered at a Planned Parenthood?

    As to freedom of the press, I am sure that AL knows his history well enough to know about the anti sedition laws that were in place in our nation’s infancy. What constitutes “Free Speech” has changed over time and continues to be defined and redefined. That isn’t a bad thing.

  2. Just have counter video taping, radical free speech groups stand between the petitions and the people signing them and video tape the videotapers. Then we can watch as the Supreme court winds this, for years, through the system to see who really has the right of way.

  3. We ALL have the right of way.
    So…..bring your favorite recording devices and join the fun.

  4. Much ado about nothin. Where were all you crybaby liberals when the BDN wanted to publish the names and, addresses of concealed permit holders. Why was that OK and this not. Typical liberal double standard.

  5. so people who defend the 1st amendment are automatically crybaby liberals? does that mean people who defend the 2nd amendment are all bloodthirsty fascists? because that makes me feel very confused about my persona.

  6. How quickly people jump to defend their convictions, rather than examine them.

    What I was trying to point out in my first comments on this post, was that we accept limitations on our freedoms, thus limitations on the Bill of Rights. This has been true since they were enacted.
    For example:
    We deemed it unlawful for a person to yell “Fire” in a theater if it was a false statement.
    We don’t let just anyone own and use a grenade launcher or a missile.
    We don’t allow illegal drugs to be used in religious ceremonies.

    When Thomas Jefferson ran against John Adams, in our country’s fourth presidential election, Adams enacted sedition laws, that made it a crime to speak badly of the President. This, a man who was one of the most prominent of the founding fathers, who was instrumental in drafting the Declaration of Independence, The constitution and the peace treaty with England. Clearly, he had a different interpretation of the 1st. amendment at that time.

    It’s okay, to think about just what the limitations should be to the Bill of Rights. It’s healthy to have a discourse.
    It’s not healthy to be rigid.

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