Mary Beard doesn’t deserve the abuse of the crazed social media mob

Comedians and academics must have the freedom to express sincerely held opinions
Under pressure: Mary Beard has been castigated on social media for recent remarks
Daniel Hambury/Stella Pictures
Matthew d'Ancona21 February 2018
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In very different ways academic life and stand-up comedy are crucibles of free speech: they are two of the most important laboratories in which we confront dilemmas, address intellectual conflict and relish the ironies of life. If they do their jobs, the sage and the clown are society’s most daring scouts.

So it is perhaps no accident that two very talented women — one a world-famous academic, the other a rising star in the arena of comedy — should find themselves simultaneously in deep trouble. It says nothing good about the state of today’s culture that this is so.

First there is Louise Reay, an award-winning comedian who is being sued by her estranged husband for allegedly defaming him in her routine. Outraged by her references to their failed marriage, Thomas Reay is suing her for breach of privacy and data protection and seeking £30,000 in damages plus legal costs.

What, in a sane world, would be a private matter between two individuals has lamentably become a test case in which the court will have to decide what distinguishes a joke from a defamatory remark. Indeed, it is no exaggeration to say that the limits of legally-permissible comedy might now depend upon a lone judge’s sense of humour.

When was the last time you listened to a stand-up whose routine did not allude to their personal life? Are we now so emotionally fragile that there needs to be a right not to be teased or subjected to assault with a deadly witticism?

Second, and more prominently, the classicist Mary Beard has been viciously pilloried in the past week for straying from the path of righteousness. In a tweet on Friday she addressed the Oxfam scandal, condemning the sexual misconduct of the aid workers, but — more provocatively — wondered “how hard it must be to sustain ‘civilised’ values in a disaster zone”.

Cue social media bedlam, in which Professor Beard was accused of colonialism and called a “pervert”, “sick cow”, “disgusting creature” and much else besides.

An award-winning comedian is being sued by her estranged husband for allegedly defaming him in her routine

Matthew d'Ancona

To add to the charge sheet in the digital dock, she was then quoted in the Radio Times, questioning specific aspects of the #MeToo phenomenon. There was, she told the magazine, “a tendency to cherry-pick events and take them out of context”. Her aim, she went on, “isn’t just to collect scalps but to make sure this doesn’t happen again”. Let us just say that this has not endeared her to the self-appointed custodians of online public morality.

As it happens, I disagree with Professor Beard on both scores. I don’t think it matters whether sexual misconduct takes place in lavish offices or in scenes of devastation. Indeed, the vulnerability of women and girls in the places where aid workers operate makes it all the more important that the rules are iron-clad and rigorously enforced.

On #MeToo, likewise, the whole problem has been precisely that men justify their alleged predations with reference to “context” — “She came to my hotel room”, “She dressed alluringly”, “She knew the score”. What is badly needed is to pay less attention to such traditional pleas in mitigation and to focus remorselessly upon basic standards of right and wrong. This is not “collecting scalps”; it is seeking justice.

But that is not the point. It should be perfectly possible for Professor Beard to make the alternative case in a thoughtful and considered way without the digital bulldozer flattening her. All too often the seething fury that unfolds on our screens is not public debate but mob rule — ochlocratia, for those of a classical disposition.

The Reay lawsuit represents the next potential contraction of permissibly comic material. “Invasion of privacy” is only the latest reason cited for this process of closure. In the era of safe spaces, trigger warnings and micro-aggressions, comedians are now routinely told what they can and cannot say. “Disparagement humour”, as it is called, is alleged to be no more than the expression of a poisonous power structure and, as such, to be curtailed wherever possible.

What is lost in such demonisation is the importance of irony and of nuance. Comedy is a rebellion against literalism, not an enforcement of it. Those who interpret jokes as statements of fact or of sincere belief misinterpret the most important social function of humour — which is to unsettle our certainties and our assumptions. The essence of a fool’s licence is to compel self-examination and to challenge the herd. One hopes that the judge in the Reay case grasps the perils of restricting this freedom.

As for Professor Beard, what is most alarming is the manic abruptness with which adulation can turn into ferocious denunciation. Her splendid short book, Women & Power: A Manifesto, was hailed before Christmas as an instant classic. You can get T-shirts with the slogan: “When I grow up I want to be Mary Beard”. She was recently named the new presenter of BBC Two’s arts show, Front Row.

But now what? Is yesterday’s national treasure really to be rebranded as today’s privileged pariah, accused of “genteel and patrician casual racism”? And who gets to decide?

The cocktail of moral absolutism and caprice is deeply disturbing. It represents a form of eternal digital probation in which a single expression of doubt or contrarian spirit can destroy a person’s life, career or both. It also imperils the very liberties that make progress possible. As Jonathan Rauch writes in his great defence of free thought, Kindly Inquisitors: “People who like authoritarianism always picture themselves running the show. But no one stays on top for long.” Wise words, which should give the pious — so energised and confident at present — serious pause for thought.

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