Vol. 155: Speak up, dammit!

When lawyers hide under their beds

Upon reading my Contrarian’s Notebook #154 last week, an old friend endeavoured to set me straight about the infamous silences of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

“About eight or ten years ago,” he wrote me in a private email, “J. Thomas broke his long-standing rule and started asking questions from the bench.”

Besides, my friend said, “I recall that J. Thomas once said that he didn’t ask questions at Supreme Court arguments because he felt it was, literally, almost always a waste of time, since the cases were always so heavily briefed.”

For good measure, my friend added that he personally knows a sitting federal judge and a retired law professor, “both of whom know J. Thomas personally [and] hold him in high regard intellectually.”

I replied, as I always do to such messages:

“Your points are well taken. Why not let me post your reply as a public comment?”

I reiterated the primary rule of this column: You can say whatever you like here, as long as you identify yourself.

Which is another way of saying: Be honest— with yourself as well as with me and my readers— about who you are and where you’re coming from.

My friend, unfortunately, has other priorities. “Things on the Internet get passed around ad infinitum,” he explains, “and there are lots and lots of crazies out there. I realize that my name and personal info have already been compromised to goodness knows how many malicious hackers on the Internet, but I prefer to lay low except when necessary or when corresponding with people whose discretion I can trust. If I allow my name to be posted on Substack or other social media sites, I relinquish any claim to confidentiality or privacy.”

What would Navalny say?

Sigh. I’ve spent much of my career in alternative journalism trying to encourage people to speak up for themselves, instead of cowering in their attics or hiding behind pseudonyms. Across the globe there are oodles of people with something to say and no place to say it, which is one reason I launched this column three years ago. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Natan Sharansky, and Alexei Navalny would have rejoiced at the simple craziness of the unpredictable Internet.

When I was editor of Broad Street Review (2005-2013), I found that many of my readers were eager to avail themselves of the Internet’s exciting new free speech opportunities but unwilling to be held accountable for their words. “I gave you my name and email address,” one reader complained, when I tried to verify his identity. “What more do you want?”

Speaking out in public was a new and sometimes frightening experience for all those amateur bloggers joining the ranks of Internet commentators. In 2013 I expressed my vexation with such people, and not for the first or last time:

“Speaking your mind is one of a citizen’s most important duties. If you have something to say, Broad Street Review will give you the space and the audience. But we can’t give you the courage to stand up in the global town square. Nor can we give you the judgment to choose which publications and websites are trustworthy. For all the exciting and terrifying changes in media today, that much hasn’t changed.”

A friendly editor?

The Welcomat, the Philadelphia alternative weekly which I edited from 1981 to 1993, was in many respects a precursor of the Internet. We had no reporters and relied instead almost entirely on submissions from our readers, followed by pages of letters responding to those submissions. Into this weekly mix I added my own personal column, which was designed (like this column) to encourage readers to think of me not as some pompous high priest but as an approachable human being.

One day, a reader, apparently taking me literally, phoned me just to chat. I told him I was busy putting out the paper.

“But I thought we could have a conversation,” he said. “You seem like such a friendly guy.”

“Well, I’m not,” I replied.

Spokespeople for worthy (as well as unworthy) causes, accustomed to lobbying the media for sympathetic coverage, often didn’t know what to make of the Welcomat’s format. A public relations man took me to lunch to promote his solution to peace in the Middle East. “Why are you telling this to me?” I asked. “Just put your idea down on paper and I’ll be happy to print it.”

His unspoken message was: Dan, you possess a thick skin. And unlike most of us, you make your living by pushing verbs and adjectives against nouns. So, you must speak for those of us who lack your gifts.

Trump targets law firms

I can appreciate that. On the other hand, let’s circle back to the anonymous friend I quoted at the beginning of this column. He makes his living as a… lawyer. That is, he belongs to a profession that exists in part to stand up for people who can’t stand up for themselves.

During the past year, nine large and ostensibly powerful law firms struck deals with President Trump after he began issuing executive orders targeting them— offering him, among other things, nearly $1 billion worth of pro bono services to be used as he wishes. When I asked a lawyer at Paul Weiss, one of those nine firms, why they caved to Trump, he replied, “We could’ve been forced to dissolve the firm altogether.”

I ask you: If society’s professional hired guns are hiding under their beds, what hope is there for the rest of us, unless we learn to speak up for ourselves?

How to spend $1,000

I may or may not be a nice guy, but the purpose of this column is to provoke a public conversation, not a private one. To those who seek to argue with me in private emails, I say: I’m happy to hear from you, but my time is limited. I’m not a public official. I’m not the Supreme Court. Nor am I a social worker. I’m just a journalist sharing my insights, which you are free to accept or reject.

I do want to hear what you have to say, but only if you join our conversation. It’s easy: Just fill in the comments box at the bottom of this column. And it’s fun. Check out, for example, last week’s conversation.

Try it. You might like it. And in the process, you might discover that the Internet, not to mention Donald Trump, not to mention Vladimir Putin, not to mention the Wicked Witch of the West, isn’t as impervious to small voices as they would like you to believe.

My lawyer friend advises me that he and his wife recently signed up for “a new, supposedly super-duper service”— for about $1,000— to protect them from Internet hackers. As for me, I’m spending a similar amount (using funds provided by paid subscribers to this column) to shop for libel insurance. I figure that’s a small price to pay for the right to free expression.

My bottom line: I won’t surrender my right to speak up, to listen to others, and to offer the same opportunity to anyone who’ll take it. I hope you’ll join me. What did Lao Tzu say about a journey of a thousand miles?

Enjoy Dan Rottenberg’s new memoir, The Education of a Journalist: My Seventy Years on the Frontiers of Free Speech. You can also visit his website at www.danrottenberg.com