Don't Mess With The Majority!

An op-ed piece on The New York Times' Web site discusses the applause given to Rick Perry, during last Wednesday's Republican Presidential debate, when moderator Brian Williams asked Perry about the fact that he has presided over a record number of executions while serving as Governor of Texas.  In the course of asking the question, Williams was interrupted twice by applause from the debate's audience--applause for Perry, that is, for being the record-holder in question.

Let's leave aside, for the moment, the main point of Williams' line of questioning:  whether Perry might have allowed an innocent man to be executed.  As the piece itself makes clear, there is a very good possibility that he has.  Instead, let's focus on the applause itself--and the somewhat smug defense thereof made by Matthew Sheffield at Newsbusters.org, whose "thoughts" on the subject are quoted in the Times' op-ed as follows:

As someone who makes his living by trying to appeal, at least in some fashion, to the emotions of crowds, Williams’s inability to understand the audience’s spontaneous outbreak of applause response to his declaration that Texas “has executed 234 death row inmates, more than any other governor in modern times” is a classic case of a liberal elitist being unable to compute that his smugly held opinions are not shared by others. It was the media analog of 1988 Democratic presidential nominee’s Michael Dukakis’s anodyne response when asked in a debate about whether he would want a hypothetical murderer of his wife executed.

But perhaps I’m selling Williams’s perspicacity short. One suspects he would likely have understood a similar audience reaction were it to applaud enthusiastically a Democratic candidate’s firm support for abortion legalization. Such a response could equally be perceived as grisly but it seems unlikely that Williams would entertain such a thought.

What, exactly, is he trying to say here?  That reporters have no business asking questions that challenge the majority opinion?  That the majority must always be blindly obeyed by the minority (for example, as the Republicans did in 2009 and 2010--not)?  Or that the "applause" is not, in and of itself, a kind of bullying attempt to silence Williams in advance (and props to Williams for not letting it stop him)?

And none of this even gets into the question of whether America is as gung-ho about gassing, frying or shooting up convicts as the crowd apparently was.  Polls may show majority support for the use of the death penalty, but they also show how qualified that support can be.  This reflects the fact that most people view the taking of a life by the State as a serious and somber matter--which, of course, was the point behind most of the criticism of the applause.  By ignoring that point, and attempting to make the whole incident a commentary on "liberal elitism," Sheffield effectively concedes it.  Thanks, Matt.

But, I'll give you your due.  Both sides are equally guilty of using debate applause for its own purposes.  Here's one memorable example.

Matt, neither of us is Jack Kennedy, Lloyd Bentsen or Dan Quayle.  But, the next time you want to try and take a cheap shot at a reporter, leave the reporter's First Amendment rights alone and otherwise stick to the substance of the facts.  Those rights are guarantee to all of us.