Mary Katharine Ham on “End of Discussion” and the Left’s Outrage Industry

Mary Katharine Ham discussed her new book, End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun) with host Frank Gaffney on today’s Secure Freedom Radio. The complete audio can be found here.

Frank Gaffney: Welcome back! I’ve very pleased to say we’re joined—I think for the first time here at Secure Freedom Radio—by Mary Katharine Ham. You know her from her contributions to public debate at Hot Air Blog, and also as a political analyst for Fox News. She is also the author with Guy Benson of a terrific new book. It’s entitled End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun). Mary Katharine, great to have you with us. Congratulations on this important new book.

Mary Katharine Ham: Well thank you very much. It’s been a pleasure to talk to as many people as possible, sometimes for the first time on their show. I can’t believe I haven’t been on before!

FG: It’s our bad if you haven’t! But the point is you’re here with us now, and you’ve really hit such an important topic at such a timely moment, and I congratulate you for your perspicacity in anticipating it. Talk a little bit about what you’re getting at with this idea that there is an outrage industry and how it operates.

MKH: Well, Guy Benson, my co-author, who’s also a Fox News contributor, and I have joked that it’s paradoxically great for the book but terrible for America that we’re so on point in this particular news cycle. Since we’ve been talking about End of Discussion and going around the country and discussing it with people, this is a feeling that almost everyone feels. As Guy and I were coming up in political commentary we started noticing, “Oh my, certain subjects seem mighty off limits, and seem more and more off limits and more scary to talk about in the public eye, with so little grace for any mistake or any misplaced word.” It did bother me that it happened to us, but we’re public figures, we take some of the language policing on when we take this job; I know Media Matters is always listening to me, so I get that.

What bothered me even more was when it started trickling down to regular people who are now afraid to post something on their Facebook or Twitter because they’re sort of plausibly public just by having a social media profile, and can lose their jobs or become a national news story over something that they said about a news story.

FG: Mary Katharine Ham is our guest. She is of course a Fox News Analyst and Hot Air blogger. She is the editor-at-large, in fact, of the Hot Air Blog. She’s also a mighty contributor to our public policy debates about all manner of things, and I think it’s incredibly important that you’re addressing this question of are we now finding as a result of the kind of pressure from what you describe as the Left’s outrage industry in your new book End of Discussion, is a kind of self-censorship, as well as the pressure from those who adhere to this industry, or at least conform to its dictates. How is that translating into pressure on, as you say, just regular folks, as well as more visible political figures like yourself?

MKH: You see it all over the place. We’ve had several examples just since we’ve been promoting End of Discussion on the road. Unfortunately, we have terrible stories about a Miami principal who posted an opinion about a news story on the McKinney pool party video which went viral everywhere and was a huge national news story. He posted a comment on the Miami Herald’s website about that incident. He backed the cop, [and] some people happened to disagree with him. His comment was neither vulgar nor racist. There was nothing wrong with it, except that he disagreed with the people who could make a stink about it. And they got together and made a stink about it, and he lost his job. That kind of thing is really frightening, and it means that other people look at that and of course their speech is killed. They don’t want to put just a simple opinion out there.

Our argument in End of Discussion is, look, if you can’t hold even a mainstream opinion about a news story—pro-traditional marriage is another one, which up until several years ago and I think last Tuesday, Hillary Clinton held and Obama several years ago changed his mind. If you can’t hold that opinion and also hold you job, how free is your speech?

FG: Mary Katharine, I want to turn to something that has been very much on my mind of course, and I was speaking with General Jerry Boykin about it a moment ago, and that is a kind of red-green axis, it seems, that has been forged between, on the one hand, the Left—and you’ve just described their operations fairly vigorously—but also the Islamists. People who you’d think wouldn’t see eye-to-eye with the Left on just about anything. What I wondered about is when you are analyzing what’s happening here and this practice of essentially self-censorship, shouldn’t we be very concerned that freedom of expression itself is at stake if in deference to the sensibilities of Islamists—Islamic supremacists especially–we don’t talk about their efforts to bring their Shariah program here?

MKH: First of all, when it comes to free expression, yes, Islamists are not huge fans of that. It is interesting to watch the Left align with people who will literally kill you for making a cartoon. Liberals always say, and I’ve been on TV with plenty of them who say, “I’m all for free speech, but…” There’s no ‘but’ behind “all for free speech.” Even if the speech offends you, we are supposed to protect it. That’s how this works. It is immaterial what you think of Pamela Geller’s event, once someone tries to kill her for drawing cartoons. I’ve been so amazed and disheartened to see so many people cop out on that.

The Left, in service to multiculturalism and respecting other cultures—except for you know, the conservatives who disagree with them in their own country politely. Can’t respect those people—but in service to quote unquote co-existence, they end up giving up some of our core values. And frankly I think it’s a lot easier to talk about how Indiana’s religious freedom law is endangering all of us and turning the clock back—which of course it’s not—instead of talking about ISIS or Iran. Those are much harder things to talk about and much harder problems to solve than crushing Memories Pizza under your boot.

FG: But so important to do, as you say. Again, our guest is Mary Katharine Ham. We’re talking about her marvelous new book, which is entitled End of Discussion. One of the things I’ve been struck by, Mary Katharine, is that we are kind of endlessly hectored by the government, at every turn really, to respond when we see something anomalous that is dangerous, that could cost people their lives. Notably, an unattended package in an airport or bus station or something. But while we’re told we must say something about that, when we’re seeing these kinds of actions, these kinds of inroads really being made at the expense of our Constitutional rights, we’re being told “No, don’t say anything about that.” You’ve offered the admonition that you don’t want to gratuitously offend people, but you don’t want to be cowed either. How do you recommend we walk that fine line?

MKH: A couple things we talked about in End of Discussion is, look, the number of people who are truly offended by whatever made up thing everyone is being offended by today—because that’s part of the problem, right? These rules are capricious. They change all the time, and something new is offensive every day. I’m pretty sure someone raised a ruckus last night during the USA women’s soccer game—in which we took the World Cup—about making World War II jokes about defeating Germany and Japan. And it’s like, lighten up. This is not offensive. The Holocaust is offensive. This is not offensive. Since the rules change all the time, these people are making up being offended. There’s a handful of people who are pretending to be offended, and we should not be cowed by the tiny group.

We argue also in End of Discussion , look, if you’re going to be cowed by these people who are on Twitter, social media activists and a handful of those guys, of course you’re going to be cowed by people with guns. We’re not going to be able to stand up for anything. So it’s sort of training wheels to be able to say to the social media activists, “Look, your concerns are noted, but I’m going to continue to tell my joke. I’m going to continue to draw my cartoon. I’m going to continue to have the art that I enjoy, instead of listening to you neo-Puritans and your new rules.”

FG: Bless you, and thank you for that courage, and hope that you will inspire a lot of others to exercise it as well. As you continue to make the rounds, not just here but elsewhere, Mary Katharine Ham with your book End of Discussion: How the Left’s Outrage Industry Shuts Down Debate, Manipulates Voters, and Makes America Less Free (and Fun). Come back to us again very soon, if you would.