From the New York Times: Morality clauses in writers' contracts put careers in the hands of the PC police.
This past year, regular contributors to Conde Nast magazines started spotting a new paragraph in their yearly contracts. It's a doozy. If, in the company's "sole judgment," the clause states, the writer "becomes the subject of public disrepute, contempt, complaints or scandals," Conde Nast can terminate the agreement. In other words, a writer need not have done anything wrong; she need only become scandalous. In the age of the Twitter mob, that could mean simply writing or saying something that offends some group of strident tweeters.
Agents hate morality clauses because terms like "public condemnation" are vague and open to abuse, especially if a publisher is looking for an excuse to back out of its contractual obligations. When I asked writers about morality clauses, on the other hand, most of them had no idea what I was talking about. You'd be surprised at how many don't read the small print.
. . .
Jeannie Suk Gersen, a Harvard Law School professor who writes regularly for The New Yorker, a Conde Nast magazine, read the small print, too, and thought: "No way. I'm not signing that." Ms. Gersen, an expert in the laws regulating sexuality, often takes stands that may offend the magazine's liberal readers, as when she defended Education Secretary Betsy DeVos's rollback of Obama-era rules on campus sexual-assault accusations. When I called Ms. Gersen in November, she said, "No person who is engaged in creative expressive activity should be signing one of these."
It's not that a company should have to keep on staff a murderer or rapist, she added. But when the trigger for termination could be a Twitter storm or a letter-writing campaign, she said, "I think it would have a very significant chilling effect."
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The problem with letting publishers back out of contracts with noncelebrity, nonreligious, non-children's book authors on the grounds of immorality is that immorality is a slippery concept. Publishers have little incentive to clarify what they mean by it, and the public is fickle in what it takes umbrage at.
In 1947, the concern was Communism, and morality clauses gave studios a way to blacklist the Hollywood 10, a group of directors and screenwriters who denounced the House Un-American Activities Committee as illegitimate and refused to say whether they'd ever been Communists. All 10 went to jail, and all but one, who decided to cooperate with the committee, became unemployable until the 1960s, though some continued to write under pseudonyms.
Not long ago, publishers were hailed as countercultural heroes for backing works that offended public sensibilities. Barney Rosset, the publisher of Grove Press, introduced Americans to Samuel Beckett, Jack Kerouac, Malcolm X, Marguerite Duras and Kathy Acker, among scores of other writers considered avant-garde at the time.
Mr. Rosset fought doggedly to overturn laws that were preventing him from publishing D.H. Lawrence's "Lady Chatterley's Lover" and Henry Miller's "Tropic of Cancer," both of which contained scenes of graphic sex. The "Tropic of Cancer" case made it to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the book was not obscene. The feminist critic Kate Millet attacked Henry Miller's novels as misogynistic - she was quite right about that - but that didn't stop the PEN American Center from awarding Mr. Rosset a citation for "the free transmission of the printed word across the barriers of poverty, ignorance, censorship and repression."
Times change; norms change with them. Morality clauses hand the power to censor to publishers, not the government, so they don't violate the constitutional right to free speech. But that power is still dangerous.
Still think that worries over PC are silly, Vraith? Try publishing your novel and then have your publisher cancel the contract because of rants you've posted on Kevin's Watch! All it takes is for a small group of people to be offended by something you've said, and your career could be over--despite a contractual agreement!
As the article points out, publishers used to be praised for pushing social norms and offending sensibilities. These efforts often led to legal battles that went all the way to the Supreme Court, where legal victories in favor of free speech were hard won. But now publishers are becoming the censors, giving up the very victories they once enabled.
And what is the difference now? The difference is one of politics. When censorship affects people on the Left, they fight back--as history has shown. When censorship affects people on the Right, the Left becomes the oppressors. The only reason people let themselves think that the PC issue is insignificant now is because they imagine that it doesn't affect them, only their ideological opponents. But this is so mind-bogglingly foolish, I can't believe that smart people are lulled into this reasoning. (Never underestimate the power of us-vs-them thinking!) Liberals *are* being censored by soft-minded, easily offended snowflakes. Just because the most prominent examples are comedians, don't be lulled into thinking that it's a laughing matter. Imagine if Colbert or Kimmel had their contracts yanked because they offended the Religious Right! Think of the chilling effect this would have on political discourse that certain political views can't be mocked.
I believe that anyone can be fired for any reason. No one is guaranteed a job. But some jobs, like writing, are a risky business where the rewards are often not seen until months or years after the work has been done. This is why contracts are necessary in such industries. Both parties are taking a risk, publisher and writer. Both should have some kinds of protections. And a legal agreement to do business shouldn't be terminated merely because some snowflakes get their panties in a wad on Twitter. Freedom of expression should not be hindered by the fear of offending people. Imagine if Donaldson's portrayal of rape caused feminists to launch a campaign against him that ended his career! Liberalism is conditioning our culture to be a bunch of whiners and cry babies. And the danger of putting our culture and careers in the hands of the weakest, most closed minded people among us is FAR greater than Donaldson's fears of an "anti-intellectual" society. It's the self-proclaimed "intellectuals" at universities that are causing this shift into stifling free speech!
