I Blindly Walked into a Salman Rushdie Lecture and This is What Came of it

courtesy of http://media.salon.com/2012/09/rushdie_rect.jpg

      Yesterday, I had the privilege of hearing Salman Rushdie speak. Prior to signing up to attend this event I knew nothing about Mr. Rushdie except that I recognized his name. He's an author, I found out upon researching him, a controversial one. There was a book, The Satanic Verses, and it had do with Islam that subsequently caused Mr. Rushdie to go into hiding. Something like that anyway. Still, as I sat in a massive public space waiting for Mr. Rushdie to speak, I had little idea of what the next hour would be about. 
      He began by giving some background information on his books--he wanted us to know that he has written other books than the one that brought him death threats--and eventually, although I have an inkling it was planned, landed on the subject of free speech. He said this:

"Horrible writers have the freedom of speech. Dan Brown has the freedom of speech. E. L. James has the freedom of speech... Freedom of speech is freedom of speech for crap" 

      The crowd, full of intellectual yuppies, erupted in laughter. Funny guy, that Salman. Amidst all the laughs though, was an underlying message: regardless of the utterly horrible writing that gets published everyday in the form of books, magazines, newspapers, and blogs, all of those writers have the inherent right to publish that writing. 
      Later, in the dreaded Q & A session, someone asked a question asking if Mr. Rushdie believes that banning hate speech such as homophobic slurs or racial slurs is an infringement of free speech. That's a damn good question and Mr. Rushdie clearly thought so as well. He said that this was something he has given much thought to and, over the years, had changed his opinion on. In Britain, he said, they have a law banning such speech and he used to support that law. But now he believes that the United States' approach to such a question is favorable. He said this:

One cannot get rid of hateful ideas by banning speech.

      When you ban speech, he explained, the ideas go underground and you can no longer identify who the hateful people are. I want to be able to identify and point out the hateful people, he said. I agree with Mr. Rushdie. When banning hateful speech, where is the line drawn? At what point does a word or idea become hateful? Doesn't it matter the audience? It's a slippery slope. Let's let the hateful speak and then chastise and ignore them. 

      I still don't really know what The Satanic Verses is about. But I think that's okay; I think Mr. Rushdie would be fine with that. 

(Aside from the first block quotation, the above attributed ideas are paraphrased versions of Rushdie's speech as I do not have a transcript of the lecture.)