So I’m listening to TYT Nation on YouTube, and the host mentioned that Alex Jones now has White House press credentials. My husband, passing by, laughs, and says, “Really?” Then he proceeds to tell me a story about meeting Jones that I hadn’t heard before.
In about 2006 or so, when we were renting in the Hyde Park area of Austin, he and a co-worker stopped at the Hyde Park Grill for lunch. Now, mind, my husband is an African American man with dreadlocks, and his friend is a Pakistani guy. This is a fairly nice place, but neither of them needed to dress for work, so I’m guessing they looked even more casual than the other patrons (Austin casual often means shoes are optional). They went to the bar to try to order, and couldn’t get anyone to take their order. As they usually did back then, they started talking politics while they wait. His friend is young, so he would talk about how crazy it all seemed to him. My husband would get into explaining the practical implications of events, which was part of why his friend liked hanging with him. Just to note, my husband is solidly progressive and liberal.
There was a break in the conversation where the two exclaimed over how hard it was to get someone to take their order. Alex Jones, who was two stools away from them, told them that if they wanted food, they should have taken a table. He told them he had a table ready back in the restaurant and invited them to join him for a meal. They agreed, and went back with him to eat. He told them he was listening to their conversation, and said, “Oh, I’m Alex Jones, by the way. You’ve probably heard of me.” They told him, no, they hadn’t. He seemed kind of pleased. He told them he has a radio show, to which they responded, “OK, cool.”
They started talking politics. The waitress came, and Jones recommended the steak. They agreed, and he then proceeded to buy them both steak and drinks. They keep talking politics.
My husband says that Jones didn’t even seem terribly conservative, let alone radically so. He wanted McCain to be president. On local politics, he said that the city would find itself in more and more trouble as it became more and more beholden to the real estate market. All in all, he seemed to enjoy talking to the kind of people who he wouldn’t normally get to talk to.
My husband says that in hindsight, he seemed to enjoy the opportunity to just be himself. But it took a long time for him to gain that perspective, since he didn’t actually listen to Jones’ radio show. He says that for years he didn’t understand why people were hating on Jones. His only experience with the man was reasoned, analytical, and engaging, so people’s hatred seemed arbitrary and partisan.
In real life, Alex Jones is, or at least was, the kind of conservative who could hang with true Austin liberals and get along just fine. But as parents of the Sandy Hook massacre can attest, his on air persona is a far cry from reasoned, analytical or engaging.
Jones’ show is just that, a show. It’s performance art. His shtick is crazy right wing guy, and it brings him fame and fortune.
The work of men like Jones underscores what I’ve always believed about art. I’m all for art pushing boundaries or even breaking them. But that doesn’t mean it’s right to ignore when it hurts or intimidates people. We cannot simultaneously laud art for having an important positive impact on people, and then say it’s “just” art when that impact is negative.
I’m firmly against censorship. I think access to diverse ideas, including distasteful ones, is important to us as a society. But I’m just as firmly for (whole and inclusive) communities speaking up when they feel the effects of an institution, whether commercial or public, are damaging. Just because something is legal doesn’t mean it’s also ethical. I support freedom of speech. I also encourage all artists, regardless of their politics, to take time to consider the ordinary people they hurt when they use shock value to obtain success.
It’s very easy for artists to stay safe while looking edgy when they attack what others love or feel deeply about. To appear as if they're boldly taking risks when all they’re doing is trolling. I’ve never respected artists who are too cowardly to put their own hearts on the line while attacking what more open and honest people love.
I appreciate that Jones is the kind of conservative white man who would randomly treat a man like my husband to lunch, even after hearing his politics. But I think it’s terribly sad that he’s the kind of man who would troll grieving parents and agitate radicals whose core political stance is their right to kill people as easily as possible just to make money.
Being a successful artist doesn’t absolve you from needing to be a decent human being. Artists are just as beholden as everyone else at least try to keep from leaving the world a worse place.