When Rhetoric Becomes Reality

David Neiwert is right: commentators and pundits' use of metaphors of violence and extremism might be explained away as jokes, but those "jokes" have a way of giving permission to angry people to turn them into reality.

Case in point: When Kevin Drum shot himself in the foot[1] last February over the issue of the prominence of women in political blogging, he said in passing, "My guess is that it's a bit of both, and the proximate reason is that men are more comfortable with the food fight nature of opinion writing — both writing it and reading it." [emphasis added] I'm not saying that Kevin is the first to compare punditry with food fights, but his use of the metaphor was picked up by many of the people who responded heatedly to his argument.

Food fighting must be in the psychic field. At the end of last month, conservative Uberpundit William Kristol was hit in the face with a pie by a student at Earlham College, where Kristol was giving a speech. Just two days later, a student doused commentator and sometime presidential candidate Pat Buchanan with salad dressing while Buchanan was speaking at Western Michigan University.

The latest example of a metaphor gone too far is the case of David Horowitz. A protestor hit Horowitz in the face with a pie at Butler University, where Horowitz was speaking, campaigning against what he calls liberal domination of college campuses.

There's more to a pie in the face than an old vaudevillean's joke. Teresa Nielsen Hayden will be the first to tell you. She was pied by Dan Steffan at Corflu 3 in 1986. (Her husband, Patrick, retaliated by squirting whipped cream up Steffan's nose.)[2] What might seem to be a lark or a joke bears a remarkable resemblance to assault. A pie, even a cream pie is remarkably solid.[3] The assailant, whose aim might merely to be to humiliate the victim or render them a laughingstock, might actually succeed in choking the victim, or getting food or crust in their eyes. It seems like harmless fun, as the saying goes, until someone loses an eye. The pie filling can stain the victim's clothes. The traumatic experience might trigger aftershocks from earlier traumas.

So let's be careful with our language. When we unmindfully toss around metaphors of facefuls of lemon meringue, are we no better than the Ann Coulter's advocacy of the truck-bombing of the New York Times or Tom DeLay's or John Cornyn's hints that murdering judges represent the rightful expressions of popular wrath?

[1] I am completely aware of my own use of a violent metaphor here. If angry or disaffected extremists see this as encouragement to inflict gunshot wounds upon their lower extremities, so be it.

[2] The roots of food fights and pie-throwing in political blogging run deep into the history of science fiction fandom: A decade before this, Ted White was pied at a Lunacon by an assailant allegedly hired by Charles Platt (father of Rose Platt). (The assailant bore Platt's namebadge, clumisly modified to read "Charles Blattey".)

[3] Experts recommend, when staging a pie-throwing, to use not a real pie but a tin pieplate – or even a paper plate – filled with whipped cream. Shaving foam is another good choice, one which reduces the risk of permanently staining clothing.