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During my off-and-on work as an editor, I have never been forced to make an decision concerning the publication of rantings of a terrorist like the Unabomber.
There would be the temptation to be noble, to say we
decide what we print here, and if we abdicate this time and
let one person with a gun or bomb determine what we
publish, then they'll all do it. What would be the point of
staying in business if we operate as no more than a
publicity machine for terrorists?
On the other hand, if publication could have prevented
some outrage, then what do you say to the families of the
victims when they approach and say You could have
prevented this, and you didn't? Are paper and ink indeed
that much more valuable than the lives of the people we
love?
Besides, people other than terrorists often try to influence publishing decisions. Advertisers sometimes attempt to throw their weight around, pressure groups will picket or boycott to influence coverage, and friends ask for favors.
Lawyers will threaten to drag an editor through the meat-grinder of our legal system, where even if you're in the right, you still spend four or five years, and thousands of dollars, in depositions, discovery and motions. This prospect makes one yearn for the duels of yore. A just society would provide the option of pistols at 20 paces.
Anyway, I feel grateful that I didn't have to make a decision about publishing the Unabomber's manifesto.
From what I gather, the fellow is a technophobe. If we'd just junk all this mass-production machinery and go back to some serene and pastoral lifestyle that folks presumably enjoyed before the Industrial Revolution, then we'd all be happy and healthy -- according to the Unabomber.
If he really believes this, then he's picked a curious way to place his views before the public. His text was doubtless set into type with the computers he says he despises. Then it was printed on high-speed presses.
Many historians of technology have argued that the printing press was the first implement of mass production -- the original machine that can turn out identical products, hour after hour -- and thus the instigator of the Industrial Revolution that the Unabomber also claims to loathe.
If he were sincere about his message, he would practice what he preaches, and he would preach in the time-honored traditional way of wandering from village square to village square, presenting his message in person, forgoing the evil technological mediations of writing and printing.
He's not the only hypocrite at large these days. Several
years ago, I ventured to a conference in Gunnison, among
whose speakers was one Roderick Nash, author of
Wilderness and the American Mind.
Nash argued, with some eloquence and logic, that our society should extend full civil-rights protections to rocks and microbes. He urged us to tread lightly upon the planet.
He also praised the beauty of the Crested Butte area, where he had a cabin. He had a house in Santa Barbara, Calif. He owned a fairly large boat, too, which enabled him to more fully appreciate the glories of the sea.
In other words, he had a solid upper-class lifestyle, consuming resources on a grand scale as he flew around the planet, telling the rest of us that we should be sparing in our use of non-renewable resources like jet fuel.
Presumably, the more we saved, the more would be available for him, and at lower prices on account of decreased demand, and thus he could travel more to spread his messages of non-consumption and the like.
This seems a curious way to improve the environment. If what he said was true about how our consumer lifestyles were destroying the environment, and if we all lived like him, then every ecosystem on the plant would collapse in a fortnight.
Nor is this hypocrisy confined to the prominent. Recall the woman who wrote to the Post last summer, complaining about the increased congestion on Interstate 25 between Denver and the Springs?
She knew about this horror first-hand because she commuted daily from her home in Colorado Springs to her office in Denver. Apparently it never dawned on her that she was contributing to very problem she complained about.
Nor does Roderick Nash ever seem to have considered the effects if his high-roller lifestyle were to spread to the masses. The Unabomber seems unaware that he relies on the very technologies that he says he despises in order to get his message before the public.
And it dawned on me that most of us who complain about real-estate developers do not live on some ancestral homestead, but on lots and blocks that were platted by, of all people, real-estate developers. Development is development, whether it happened in 1881 or in 1991.
Just think how boring public discourse would be if hypocrisy were illegal.
Of course, the Unabomber is more excitement than we need. If he had just walked around in robe and sandals to preach his jeremiad, he'd be on magazine covers and he'd get hours of fawning prime-time coverage. Some would tout him as a presidential candidate. We wouldn't be able to escape his message. When it comes to manipulating the media, novelty works much better than terror.
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