Adding dose of modernity to First Amendment

It was just a joke, the writers of The First Amendment said, all just a joke.

Nine kids at Miami's Killian High thought it would be fun to get together and compile a pamphlet of their finest art, poetry and prose, and name it "The First Amendment." Their final product was certainly some piece of work – a vulgar collection of racist commentary, innuendo and crude depictions of sex.

One featured essay was entitled, "One Student's Complaint." Like all the other contributors to "The First Amendment," this one student remained ever so bravely anonymous while wondering "what would happen if I shot Dawson in the head?" Dawson, Principal Timothy Dawson, just so happens to be in charge at Killian High.

Those fluent in psychobabble have chalked the booklet up to adolescent angst, that term now used to justify what once was known in many cases as juvenile irresponsibility. Some airily dismissed it as just another example of the vulgarity that has become the societal vernacular. After all, it wasn't nearly as vile as some college-level writing that also dreams of passing as serious work or respectable journalism. Others claimed that it was a foray into the world of social commentary, an argument so feeble that I'll just leave it to crumble on its own merits.

Whatever one wishes to dub it, "The First Amendment" found a friend in its namesake, penned a couple centuries prior by a bunch of old guys that would have lost their wigs at the sight of this little pamphlet. The Constitution does give us the right to say whatever we please, whenever we please, no matter how socially unacceptable or downright wrong our words may be.

The law was impotent in this case, and rightly so. It's not the task of the Constitution to instill civility in society. It is, after all, the law and not an etiquette guide. But in the Killian case, one wishes the law could have done something with the kids, because the adults in their lives certainly couldn't. One imagines that adults are supposed to be civilizing role models, leading by example. But what began as a display of the blatant stupidity of nine teenagers degenerated into a farce involving school district officials, parents, lawyers and civil libertarians. It was one botched judgment after another, all made in the heat of the moment, without thought about consequences. To borrow three words from Alexander Pope, "fools rush in."

Our first fools were the Nonsensical Nine who put together a feast of garbage for the eyes and didn't even have the courage to sign their names to it. As if to explain, Bill Cox, the father of one of the authors, told the Miami Herald that the pamphlet "wasn't directed at anyone." Indeed, that's exactly why the kids made 2500 copies for their closest friends.

The next folly-full actor was Principal Dawson, who, with blood boiling, ordered school police to arrest the students on hate-crime charges. Had he taken, oh, two seconds, to think about the charges, based on a 1945 state law that barely anyone can justify and even fewer have used, he would have seen that his case died even before it left his desk. He would have seen that he was flinging the door wide open and shouting "welcome" to our perennial freedom fools.

The well-intentioned ACLU folks are always there to defend civil liberties, it seems, to the point of virtual anarchy. Now that the state attorney has formally dropped civil charges, the ACLU is plotting to foil the school district's attempts to discipline the students at all. Howard Simon, ACLU torchbearer for the students, said, "The price of free speech is that people have the right to express their ideas no matter how offensive they are."

That is a point well taken, especially by our fifth set of fools – the parents, or at least those amongst them who have publicly rushed to defend their children against any and all criticism. We've heard it all before: they're just kids. Well, they're really smart kids, and if I were one of them, I'd be pretty psyched that I had a band of lawyers and a whole pack of parents vehemently defending use of language that at any other time would have resulted in a mouth-washing and a bruised butt.

All our fools had the chance, at one point or another, to be a little wiser. They could have stopped well short of fooldom. The students obviously could have thought a little longer and harder about the consequences of their actions. And had the school district acted otherwise, the ACLU would have kept quiet.

Thanks to the ineptness of their elders, the biggest losers here are the students. Those supposedly responsible adults have missed a golden opportunity so far to do the task they've been given to do: to educate. Principal Dawson has wasted one golden opportunity after another to teach his students about the responsibilities that come with journalism or art, depending on your interpretation of the pamphlet.

Get the best of ‘the Prince’ delivered straight to your inbox. Subscribe now »

The parents have wasted their disappointment on the school authorities, when the ones who really deserve it are their kids. They've given the impression that what the students did was okay, that it was perfectly defensible. Under the letter of the law, it was. But in the informal court of civil society, it wasn't.

This whole episode produced one genuinely awesome soundbite, the first funny thing I've heard out of Miami all week. David Morales, one of the pamphleteers, said in an interview that the publication was a joke and his work was comparable to that of Chris Rock. If we can't educate these students about writing, about responsibility, about freedom, at very least we could educate Morales and let him in on a couple little secrets. His jokes aren't funny and he's no Chris Rock.