I was dismayed at the arrogance displayed in the editorial “Punishment for pie-thrower should be tempered (SN 9/01).” Not only did The State News editorial board members demonstrate their ignorance towards the specifics of (anthropology senior Ahlam) Mohsen’s case, but additionally demonstrated their ignorance toward social justice movements and activism more broadly.
The charges against Mohsen went unquestioned in the editorial, although they appear politically motivated and exceptionally weak at best.
(Felonious assault for chucking a pie and felonious stalking for a previous act of civil disobedience over a year prior to last month’s action?)
Law enforcement, in collusion with local prosecutors, often crafts negative images of the accused in order to discredit their actions and their motivations — a technique overlooked, and in doing so, validated by the editorial board.
Also unexamined by the editorial board are the actions of US Sen. Carl Levin as chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the utter devastation American foreign policy has enacted on people, nations and ecosystems all over the world.
Pieing political and social figures is a historically recognized, lighthearted protest tactic used in order to bring attention to social injustices and the individuals who, in some aspect, are responsible for the continuance of such violence or inequality.
In 1979, anti-gay spokesperson and activist Anita Bryant was pied, as was conservative hate-monger Ann Coulter in 2004 and Islamophobe David Horowitz in 2005. The 1970s “Yippie Pieman,” Aron Kay, is credited with having pied conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly as well as a handful of other political figures.
In 2000, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, pied Dan Glickman, US secretary of agriculture. Earlier this year, they also pied Canada’s Minister of Fisheries and Oceans Gail Shea for her support of the Canadian seal hunt. In fact, pieing political figures is so well identified as a mainstream protest tactic that in 2005 Newsweek’s Gersh Kuntzman declared “throwing a pie at someone who deserves it is one of the most celebrated traditions in our so-called culture.”
By passing judgement on political actions which they have demonstrated they know little — if anything — about, the editorial board has further cemented their role not as the “voice of students,” but as a mouthpiece for the administration, the police and the status quo.
Sept. 1’s editorial is just another example of the editorial board arrogantly and dangerously flaunting their privilege in the face of the powerless — both those who Mohsen sought to speak for in her pieing of Levin and those on campus trying to effect positive change for people whose lives have been torn apart by the actions of our political and social leaders.
Mitch Goldsmith, social relations and policy senior
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