Does Sam Brownback suck?

Today's random lunchtime surprise: High school tweeter gives Sam Brownback a political headache.

For those not particularly inclined to click on a link to read the LA Times, a Kansas teenager made a disparaging tweet about Kansas Governor Sam Brownback during a school trip. The Governor's office contacted the school, and the school principal demanded that the teenager write the governor a letter of apology. The student has refused, the district has supported her right to do so, and the Internet has blown up.

You know. As it does.

And, you know, this is the sort of news story that I'd normally let pass me by after a bit of reading except that it has some wheels turning, and that usually means I need to make words about it.

Not necessarily about whether Brownback does, as the student asserts, suck, though I can say in brief that I think his political views on things like abortion, social services, the arts, and separation of church and state certainly do. I'm more interested in how the story is being spun.

I'll be frank: as reasonable as a pithy "you suck" might be in the face of somebody like Sam Brownback, and as much as I basically agree with it, it's a molehill. As fabulous as the ability to say it to someone like Brownback is -- and as instructive as his staff's disproportionate response to it may happen to be in a larger conversation about civil liberties -- it's not a particularly stirring piece of political discourse. It's not the sort of thing upon which one should build a movement, a political campaign, or really even start a bandwagon.

(Also, one notes that the student never delivered her statement to the governor in the first place. The whole incident is less a case of speaking truth to power than one in which one speaks truth sort of within earshot of power's overzealous assistants, with bizarre results.)

So what to make of the whole thing?

I think it's a pearl. The thing itself -- the tweet -- is ultimately not a thing of consequence. On its own, it's completely uninteresting. It only gets interesting in the ensuing freak-out, and even then only as a jumping-off point for additional discussion about what useful speech is, or what kinds of speech are protected, and for whom.

Does Sam Brownback suck? Maybe so. But now that we've taken that first baby step toward discourse, let's have the real conversation about how and why he might, what would be better, and how we can achieve that goal.

(Amusing side note: Brownback has apologized for his staff's reaction.)

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com