Sin of the Month • Abby Bardi
	Freedom of Speech

You've probably heard about the recent cases of people getting in trouble for things they've said--Eason Jordan of CNN, Ward Churchill of the University of Colorado--but what may have escaped your notice is the story of Bob Pyle, media impresario and one of my best friends. 1

You may recall that in a previous sin-of-the-month ("Gossip," August 2003) I wrote about Bob's newsletter, The Main Street Rag , in which he lampooned and occasionally lambasted denizens of the town I live in, especially those who frequent Sarah & Desmond's Vegetarian Café and Bakery, where he hangs out.   One of Bob's primary satirical targets in the Rag was a steak house on Main Street that charges inordinately large amounts of money for hunks of cow flesh.   Because the steak house's proprietor has occasionally evinced a rather nasty disposition and, unlike Bob, I don't want to cross him, let's just call it Meany's House of Meat.

For four hours, law enforcement officers held Bob in the bowels of Kinko's and interrogated him about his weird sense of humor, which they apparently didn't share.

Let's be fair: Bob really had it in for Meany's.   There was scarcely an issue of the Rag that didn't feature drawings of Meany's customers with blood running down their faces or Meany with a butcher knife, or articles about Meany not paying his bills ("'Meany's House of Meat is cut off!' says driver for U.S. Food Service.   'It's cash only for them now.'"), or a review of Meany's opining that its patrons are vacuous and its décor has a "Satanic quality."   There was even a story blaming a recent hurricane on God's dissatisfaction with Meany's.   Bob went so far as to manufacture a T-shirt with one of his drawings of Meany on it; they immediately sold out.   Everyone on Main Street eagerly anticipated each issue of the Rag , even as they complained about its mean-spirited depictions of poor Meany, and the landscape was dotted with the Rag 's bright-yellow pages covered with lurid, hand-scrawled local news.

What did Bob have against Meany?   Two things.   First of all, Bob is a radical vegetarian who devoutly believes that meat is murder.   He has a history of peculiar actions on behalf of animal rights, including picketing the Heavenly Ham store on Route 40 dressed in a pig costume.   His recently released album, Apples and Oranges , is a collection of brilliant original vegetarian songs, including, "When They Close the Golden Arches," "A World Made Out of Spam," and "Petunia the Pig," a love song.   Bob's commitment to animals may take strange forms, but it's sincere, and a restaurant devoted to meat is the kind of thing that just gets his dander up.

The other reason is that Meany is mean.   Just plain mean.   When Bob and several other vegetarian activists, including my daughter Hortense, decided to hold a small anti-meat demonstration outside Meany's, Meany was so mean about it that one of the other shop-owners told me he was afraid someone would get hurt.   Maybe you don't blame Meany.   Maybe I don't blame Meany.   But the point is, as every teacher knows, when you want people to stop doing annoying things to you, getting nasty with them is not the best strategy.

In any case, after twenty issues and a lot of aggravation, including Meany at one point calling the cops, who confiscated that week's Rag , Bob got out of the Gossip business.   Maybe he quit writing the Rag because he was bored with it, or maybe because his album, years in the making, was finally done.   His decision left a terrible void in the heart of Main Street, but gradually, everyone was able to move on.

But you can imagine our delight when Bob decided to get back into journalism.   He had fallen from a ladder while on the job--he runs a gutter-cleaning business when he's not drinking coffee at Sarah &Desmond's--and was in a body cast, and I guess he felt the need to liven things up.   So once again, he scrawled an issue of a newspaper--not the Rag , but a new incarnation, which he called The Muslim News.   On its cover was a picture of Meany's House of Meat, and next to it, the face of a guy named Ben, who had often posed for the Rag 's weird photos, badly superimposed onto a picture of Osama Bin Laden and shrieking, "Holy Jihad declared against Meany's House of Meat!   One thousand plagues on Meany's!"   Bob was back in the media business.   Yes, it was tasteless.   Yes, it was probably offensive to Muslims, though this was not Bob's intention--after the presidential election, he had announced that he was ashamed of Christianity and was converting to Islam.   And it was certainly offensive to Meany.   But it was pretty funny, at least, I thought so.  

The funniest part of the News , in my opinion, was an item on the back page, "Some Muslim thoughts on the recent Bush Inauguration, translated from the Arabic by the State Department."   Here, Bob had written some fake Arabic characters, and then next to them, the "translations," such as, "We are overjoyed that President Bush never changes his mind!   What joy to have Christianity finally spread to the Muslim World!" and "What a lovely inauguration!   I especially admired the Bush twins' fetching lilac and mauve ensemble by Oscar de Laurenta."   The third item read, "Kill Bush!   Bastard!" and the translation, "The precious wellspring of democracy is a fountain we are eager to sip from.   Thank you, Americans!"

It was this last item that really troubled the FBI agents who surrounded Bob as he photocopied the News at Kinko's.

Apparently, the Kinko's in Catonsville thinks it is their job to report all suspicious copying; spotting the photo of weird Ben calling for Jihad, a manager phoned the cops, who arrived and then summoned back-up from the FBI.   For four hours, law enforcement officers held Bob in the bowels of Kinko's and interrogated him about his weird sense of humor, which they apparently didn't share.   They didn't charge him with any crime, and he was eventually released.   The following week, the police stopped him again as he photocopied the second issue of the News (which bore the headline, "Muslims Demand New U.S. President!"), but this time, they only questioned him for an hour, and one of the officers looked at some old issues of the Rag , which Bob had on him, and declared that it was "pretty funny stuff."

Things probably could have gone on like this indefinitely, with the Kinko's manager calling the police every week, etc., but last week, something happened that caused Bob to decide to retire from journalism once and for all.   What the police and the FBI couldn't do to strike fear into his heart, Meany finally did: he threatened not to serve on a Business Association committee with Sarah, of Sarah & Desmond's, unless she stopped Bob from producing the News , or the Rag , or any other publications.   To her credit, Sarah took a stand on behalf of free speech, but for Bob, the jig was up.   He didn't want Sarah to suffer for his bizarre weekly rantings, so as of now, the News is defunct, and Main Street is quiet again.

Here is what we may conclude from this story:

  · We live in a country where you can be detained and interrogated without probable cause.   (As a cause, the News would have to be classified as Improbable.)

  · Concerned patriots lurk everywhere, ready to drop a dime on you.

  · Very few law enforcement officers have a sense of humor.

· When you have done something someone deems "suspicious," you may be held for hours, without being charged with a crime, at the whim of your interrogators.

· If Andy Kaufman (with whom Bob is often compared) were alive today, he would probably be in Guantanamo.  

· Where threats of imprisonment may not deter a person from exercising his First Amendment rights, threats to his coffee supply may do the trick.

· If the TV discussion show from the early 1960s, "Your Right to Say It," were broadcast today, it would be called, "How Dare You Criticize the President."

· You can sleep tight tonight, because Kinko's has got your back.

· Nothing is funny any more.   It's all just sad.

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1 See the Baltimore City Paper, "In Detention:  

Baltimore County Police and FBI Detain an Ellicott City Man for Photocopying a Satirical Newsletter."   February 2, 2005. www.citypaper.com/news/story. asp? id = 9606