IP Democracy: Loren Feldman is No Sacha Baron Cohen

(I'm back again! This time no excuses for the blogging absence aside from 1. too much to do in my personal world 2. no inspiration and 3. a surprising and temporary boredom with the media/web/technology/telecommunications world. I have, however, stayed up-to-date in the celebrity realm. Best sites for gossip, BTW, are Gabe Rivera's superb WeSmirch, the incomparable Daily Mail, Gawker (goes without saying) and the always-witty What Would Would Tyler Durden Do.)

An interesting controversy kicked up over Loren Feldman's deal with Verizon Wireless to distribute via its V-Cast service his often-profane, frequently offensive, sometimes stupid and occasionally funny 1938 Media videos. Civil rights activists threatened to boycott the carrier if it continued to offer Feldman's videos because of a year-old video called TechNigga, which they contend is racist mockery.

The complaints hit the airwaves and Verizon Wireless quickly dumped Feldman from its roster of content suppliers. Verizon's quick decision to jettison Feldman has been criticized by some as corporate cowardice -- Feldman's video is a satire, they contend, that makes a salient social point. Mathew Ingram accuses Verizon of violating the fundamental precepts of free speech even as he himself finds the video offensive.

Many commenters in the blogosphere have asked why Feldman's video, in which he adopts (or tries to adopt) a black persona after expressing his belief that there are so few black tech bloggers, is any different from Sacha Baron Cohen's Ali G character, who speaks and dresses like a caricature of a black DJ. Both Feldman and Cohen are comedians and both perpetuate stereotypes by using venal slang terms, playing up illegal drug use and talking in fake black lingo.

Aside from the fact that the Ali G character is so clearly a white man trying to be cool by embracing black culture, and Cohen is far funnier than Feldman is, here's the main reason why this comparison falls apart: It's obvious to everybody that Cohen is, in fact, not a racist. To the contrary, Cohen's over-the-top humor is clearly aimed at exposing our unconscious racist beliefs with the express purpose of eliminating them (although Cohen has come in for his fair share of racist accusations too.)

It's not so obvious what, exactly, Loren is trying to do. It's even less clear after listening to audio recordings made by Loren that aired on Podtech, in which he says some awfully unfunny and seemingly not-ironic things about black people.

The issue, then, is whether Verizon Wireless yanked Feldman's videos because they did not want to be a party to racist views. If Verizon reviewed the video in question and decided it didn't want its platform associated with genuinely derogatory material, the company did the right thing. (If, however, Verizon caved to vocal protests just for the sake of its bottom-line with no moral analysis, it's a lily-livered corporate coward.)

For what it's worth, I don't think Feldman is a racist (I appeared on a panel with him at Mesh 07 and think he's an smart and sensitive guy, no matter how crazy he seems in his videos.) I do think he was trying to use barbed, albeit bad, humor to make a legitimate point about what he perceives to be an unfair imbalance in society as reflected by the tech blogosphere.

But to disagree with Mathew Ingram (with whom I almost always wholeheartedly concur), this is not a free speech issue. As many folks have pointed out, speech is always free except when the government interferes with it -- that's the essence of the First Amendment right to free speech. Last I checked, Verizon is not the government and in this instance (as opposed to another situation where the carrier blocked delivery of certain text messages requested by the recipients) has every right to pick and choose which voices get to speak on its platform. That's also the essence of free speech.

So nobody's free speech rights have been abridged. Loren Feldman gets to keep making and showing his videos and Verizon Wireless gets to keep choosing what videos it broadcasts to customers.

Posted by Cynthia Brumfield on July 8, 2008 12:36 PM to IP Democracy