Duck Dynasty and Africa: freedom of speech in the digital age

It was quite a week for freedom of speech. From Duck Dynasty to AIDS in Africa, we had plenty to hate, love and every emotion in-between.

If you read the story this morning, a PR executive boarded a flight from London to Cape Town but before she took off, tweeted out the message, “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” This was undoubtedly not a wise thing to say, even if it was meant to be sarcasm pointing out a terrible truth…that Africans have a tragic epidemic of AIDS that is far worse among its blacks.

If it were a sarcastic U2 singer, we would have considered it edgy and biting, even provocative. But coming from a PR professional with no opportunity to reply for hours until she landed, it was a surefire way to become infamous.

No opportunity to respond

And she very quickly was. #HasJustineLandedYet quickly became a trending topic while Sacco was still in flight and remains in the top ten worldwide one day later. The lynch mob formed while she napped at 30,000 feet and was there to take a picture when she landed — judge, jury and executioner.

The Internet has taken on this issue with fury, much as with Phil Robertson, the Duck Dynasty patriarch who gave his distinctly conservative Christian views on homosexuality to a GQ reporter in an article that just came out a few days earlier. In a twist in the case of Robertson, Twitter quickly created two trending hashtags, #PhilRobertsonisStupid and #IStandWithPhil.

What about freedom of speech?

If anyone needs to be reminded, we live in very different times, but as a good friend of mine, a former Assistant District Attorney in Los Angeles pointed out on Facebook this morning, freedom of speech is alive and well in both of these cases:

The “Duck Dynasty” controversy perfectly expresses freedom of speech in the USA. Phil Robertson could not be stopped by any law from saying what he believes about race and sexuality or other issues. That is freedom of speech, that the government cannot outlaw your free speech. Likewise, A&E cannot be stopped, within the bounds of their contract with Robertson, from commenting on his comments, firing him or suspending the show, or taking whatever other action they may feel is wise. That is both freedom of speech and freedom of contract, among other freedoms. And the public has the right to debate and discuss the incident quite openly. You can debate whether this is a case of political correctness gone wild; or of either evangelical Christian or same-sex lobby arrogance; or of something else.

It may be a bit of everything. I hope that people on both sides of the debate will engage with intelligence and grace. But bottom line, this is not a case of American citizens losing the freedom of speech. In fact, it is quite the opposite. It shows freedom of speech in action, ugly and beautiful and confounding all at the same time. That’s kind of the point.

Freedom has its awkward moments, for sure. There’s much more that we can get away with saying than we should say if we’re not willing to face the impact. We should also be careful to judge others until we hear the reason for their words and we shouldn’t drop a bomb, rude or sarcastic, when we won’t be able to respond to the reaction — her comment was idiotic on many levels.

As my friend says, freedom of speech is both ugly and beautiful.

Editor’s note: For a great write up of the lynch mob aspects of the Sacco story, see Chris Taylor on Mashable.