In praise of messy, unruly free speech

Opinion

There’s a lot of obnoxious and hypocritical talk about free speech circulating online, in editorial pages and at the family dinner table.

I find it fascinating there are so many competing narratives on the nature of free speech. And equal passion about who should control it.

Good luck trying to manage public discourse. Anyone tasked with overseeing the comments section of an online newspaper knows it’s impossible.

Free speech is unruly. It’s ungovernable. Which is what makes it so alluring — and central to democracy.

Social media has amplified our capacity to share, engage and debate. Who knew people were so excited to share their opinions?

In the Golden Age of newspapers, letters to the editor were a popular platform for the dissatisfied and the cranky.

Any time I want to sample this historic genre of writing, I unlock my garden shed — which doubles as an informal archive.

As my parents’ hapless executrix, I’m in possession of hundreds of letters written to my late father, journalist John Robertson. I just can’t bring myself to throw them out.

Mum, a legal secretary, screened dad’s daily correspondence for death threats and mad ramblers. It was her pragmatic aim to protect dad from the unhinged so he could concentrate on filing his daily newspaper columns on deadline.

One offending letter of note originated with the late Lubor Zink, a fellow Toronto Sun columnist, who was renowned for his anti-communist viewpoint. Zink was ahead of his time and would have been a perfect fit for Donald Trump’s cabinet.

Dad, who enjoyed a good prank, picked up the phone and called Zink directly about the letter in question.

“Lubor, some crazy bastard is writing to me under your name,” he taunted.

The line went quiet. That was the last letter from Mr. Zink that crossed John Robertson’s transom.

As a seasoned muckraker, dad was adept at dispatching opposition. And there was no shortage of reaction to his work, since he knew how to stir the pot. It was his job as a controversial pundit and open-line radio host to engage the public on politics and current events.

By today’s standards, much of John Robertson’s “stronger” material would have resulted in swift cancellation.

When I undertook women’s studies at York University, my head was swimming with radical new ideas. Dad and I would work out our “differences” on long runs around Etobicoke’s pathway systems.

I would wear my zebra multicoloured tights like a budding feminist David Lee Roth while Dad was clad in his traditional Adidas shorts, topped with a brown and gold Manitoba Marathon T-shirt.

We made quite a pair. What I recall most about those runs were the stimulating conversations, which often turned into heated debates.

I would rail on about sins of the patriarchy and dad would patiently nod his head.

After 20 minutes of my rabid lecturing, he would turn his head toward me and smile: “I just hope you don’t turn into a man-hater.”

My conservative Catholic father, who attended Winnipeg’s St. Paul’s High School, pitched for the Norwood Native Sons and served as an altar boy at St. Ignatius Church, was funding the socialist re-education camp, a.k.a. York University, where this 20-something zealot squandered days sipping Red Zinger tea and plotted the overthrow of the Mulroney government.

In 1982, when the Robertson family left Winnipeg for Toronto, I was granted part-time admission to the traditional and exclusive University of Toronto. Upstart York University, who were growing their student body, gave me full-time standing.

If U of T had admitted me, our runs would have taken on a different tenor. I would have parroted Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged instead of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

In today’s turbulent context, it’s all too easy to just consign people to exile instead of engaging in constructive debate.

Don’t agree with NDP cabinet minister Nahanni Fontaine’s social media comments on the tragic assassination of Charlie Kirk? Write her a letter. Pick up the phone. Challenge her to a public debate.

Kirk, who helped U.S. President Donald Trump secure the youth vote, was a deeply polarizing figure. While I disagree with Kirk’s rambling extremism, his right to free speech is protected under the U.S. constitution.

Why consign the late Kirk and his young MAGA followers to a punitive rhetorical gulag? Instead, we can mock Kirk’s canny widow’s Bible-based line of sportswear, Proclaim.

I was tempted to ironically buy the “They said Noah was a Conspiracy Theorist” T-shirt. But it’s sold out. Too bad. It would have made a great conversation starter for my daily jaunts to the post office.

Patricia Dawn Robertson welcomes your feedback. You can write her at PatriciaDawnRobertson.com