Tuesday, October 03, 2006
Mozart And The Taxi Driver
BWEST OF BWANA
AN OCCASIONAL BREAKFAST WITH BWANA FEATURE
October 3, 2006
MOZART AND THE TAXI DRIVER
The Deutsche Oper in Berlin canceled a performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo. Well, it wasn’t Mozart’s Idomeneo but a variation-on-the-theme production, directed by Hans Neuenfels in which, according to reports, King Idomeneo is shown staggering on stage next to the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon (Neptune) and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) which sat on a chair. Other reports had Kind Idomeneo pulling the severed heads out of a sack.
We have all read or heard that the production was canceled due to fears that enraged Muslims would commit acts of violence. Indeed, the Opera Company reported having received a telephone call threatening violence. No one can say if the call was made by a Muslim, a Buddhist, or indeed an enraged Mozartophile upset that the work of the great genius was being debased.
Some months ago, when the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published the infamous cartoons, I called it a gratuitous insult to Islam. Of course, the cartoons specifically depicted the Prophet (PBUH) in a derogatory way as cartoonist entrants in the misguided contest were charged to do. My initial reaction to the Idomeneo variation was similar – a gratuitous offense and since the production was not true to the original, what was the need for this? Hadn’t we previously dismissed claims of freedom of expression by saying that one who yells “FIRE!” in a crowded theater is accorded no protection? I then thought a bit more on this and asked myself, “What if there really were a fire and someone yelled ‘FIRE!’ in the crowded theater and a panic ensued?” Does the truth of what is said make the difference? Well, in actions for libel and slander, truth certainly does. Do the results of the speaker’s words make a difference?
Something gnawed at me about this, so I looked up Mr. Justice Holmes’ opinion in Schenck v. U.S., the 1919 case in which he wrote: “We admit that in many places and in ordinary times the defendants in saying all that was said in the circular would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Aha! So it was the falsity of the words that made them objectionable. It seemed to me that banning the opera was akin to banning a false shout of FIRE! Was it not established that the opera was not true to the original and that it might have an incendiary character? Note that the phrase “shouting fire in a crowded theater” does not occur in the original and was never used by Justice Holmes. And the question whether the results of the speaker’s words make a difference was answered in the affirmative when Schenck was modified by Brandenburg v. Ohio when the Supreme Court of the U.S. stated: “Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
But then I thought, what about freedom of art and expression? Does an opera have to be true to the original? This troubled me for a bit, but not long, as I pondered that musicians often write “variations” on a theme of another composer. Why, sitting in my own collection are many variations including Mozart’s own re-orchestration of Handel’s Messiah in which he replaces the English libretto of the original Oratorio with a German text (K. 572).
H.D.S. Greenway, a Boston Globe columnist writes in an October 3, 2006 column titled Censorship Through The Ages, that Mozart faced opposition from Austria’s Emperor Joseph II to the production of his Marriage of Figaro. Mozart was apparently able to convince the Viennese court that he had excised offending radical material and the opera was allowed to proceed. Similarly, he reports that Giuseppe Verdi too ran afoul of the censors in respect of his opera The Masked Ball. Verdi agreed to relocate the setting of the opera from Europe to North America and the murdered King of Sweden became the Governor of Boston – a sort of variation upon a variation, if you will.
So, perhaps there is nothing wrong with recognizing that, just as with opinions (as distinguished from facts as to which truth is ascertainable) art is art for art’s sake, variation or not. There is no truth standard applicable. Measured against this, the banning of the opera was a mistake of principle, but perhaps a good panic prevention measure.
On top of this, out comes form Minneapolis, Minnesota, a story that about three quarters of the taxi drivers at the airport are Somalis and Muslims. Many of them believe that the Qu’ran forbids transportation of alcohol and, ergo, they don’t want to carry passengers who have alcohol in their possession. Never mind that the Qu’ran only prohibits the consumption of alcohol, not transvection.
The city’s answer it appears is to require taxi drivers who will not carry alcohol to display special colored lights on their cabs. If they do not display the lights signifying that they will not carry alcohol, they must return to the back of the line, and face a three hour wait for another fare.
Now it seems to me this is turning common sense on its rear end – of course, keep in mind that for most people common sense resides in that area anyway.
A fundamental tenet of taxi service is that a taxi driver may not refuse to take a passenger wherever the passenger wants to go and the taxi driver may not refuse to take a passenger for discriminatory or other reasons unless the passenger is violent or evidences a refusal to pay.
The Minneapolis solution would make driving a taxi an inalienable right – life, liberty and the pursuit of non-alcohol carrying passengers. Doesn’t it make more sense to say that a Somali Muslim has a right NOT to be a taxi driver if he feels it infringes on his religious beliefs to carry persons with alcohol in their possession?
I recognize that an argument could be made that a person has the right to earn a living and in the course of that living should not have to do acts which violate his religious beliefs. For me, this does not answer the threshold question: why would you agree to do a job that entails activities that violate your religious beliefs in the first place? Perplexed by this, I asked a Muslim friend for her opinion. “Ridiculous!” she said, “does this mean that devout Muslims cannot be pilots [because passengers may have alcohol in their possession?]”
In May of this year, the Utah Supreme Court in State of Utah v. Holm, held Utah’s anti-bigamy statute constitutional against a claim that it infringed on the defendant’s religious right to engage in bigamy. That court rejected the notion that there is a fundamental liberty interest in engaging in such polygamous conduct. Parenthetically, readers might be interested that this claim was advanced on the basis of the Constitution of the United States as the Constitution of Utah expressly states: “polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited.”
It has long been held that matters of religious belief as distinguished from practices are at the core of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Just as polygamy is not a liberty, refusal to carry passengers because their luggage may contain materials offensive to a taxi driver, is not a liberty. What if the taxi driver said it was prohibited to carry an infidel?
The opposing decisions, the one to ban the opera and the other to allow taxi drivers to refuse fares are wrong. One wonders what would happen if an opera company director carrying a sack with props to be used as the heads in question were to get into a taxi and be questioned by the Somali taxi driver as to whether he had alcohol. If he said “I have the heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon, and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)” would he be justifiably evicted from the taxi? What about the fact that the claim is false? After all, the heads are not real.
I am pleased to report that according to Mr. Greenway’s column, with the consent of German Muslims, the production of Idomeneo may go forward in Berlin.
In Germany, Islamophobia kept an opera from being produced. In Minneapolis, phobia about being labeled Islamophobic kept a city from using common sense. Such is misguided political correctness, but it seems to me that the Germans reached out to the Muslim community to explain the difference between art and insult whereas the Minneapolis people simply came up with a variation on a theme.
Now, for another variation, a little breakfast music – Eine Kleine Frühstück musik.
Cheerz….Bwana
AN OCCASIONAL BREAKFAST WITH BWANA FEATURE
October 3, 2006
MOZART AND THE TAXI DRIVER
The Deutsche Oper in Berlin canceled a performance of Mozart’s Idomeneo. Well, it wasn’t Mozart’s Idomeneo but a variation-on-the-theme production, directed by Hans Neuenfels in which, according to reports, King Idomeneo is shown staggering on stage next to the severed heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon (Neptune) and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) which sat on a chair. Other reports had Kind Idomeneo pulling the severed heads out of a sack.
We have all read or heard that the production was canceled due to fears that enraged Muslims would commit acts of violence. Indeed, the Opera Company reported having received a telephone call threatening violence. No one can say if the call was made by a Muslim, a Buddhist, or indeed an enraged Mozartophile upset that the work of the great genius was being debased.
Some months ago, when the Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten published the infamous cartoons, I called it a gratuitous insult to Islam. Of course, the cartoons specifically depicted the Prophet (PBUH) in a derogatory way as cartoonist entrants in the misguided contest were charged to do. My initial reaction to the Idomeneo variation was similar – a gratuitous offense and since the production was not true to the original, what was the need for this? Hadn’t we previously dismissed claims of freedom of expression by saying that one who yells “FIRE!” in a crowded theater is accorded no protection? I then thought a bit more on this and asked myself, “What if there really were a fire and someone yelled ‘FIRE!’ in the crowded theater and a panic ensued?” Does the truth of what is said make the difference? Well, in actions for libel and slander, truth certainly does. Do the results of the speaker’s words make a difference?
Something gnawed at me about this, so I looked up Mr. Justice Holmes’ opinion in Schenck v. U.S., the 1919 case in which he wrote: “We admit that in many places and in ordinary times the defendants in saying all that was said in the circular would have been within their constitutional rights. But the character of every act depends upon the circumstances in which it is done. The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic.”
Aha! So it was the falsity of the words that made them objectionable. It seemed to me that banning the opera was akin to banning a false shout of FIRE! Was it not established that the opera was not true to the original and that it might have an incendiary character? Note that the phrase “shouting fire in a crowded theater” does not occur in the original and was never used by Justice Holmes. And the question whether the results of the speaker’s words make a difference was answered in the affirmative when Schenck was modified by Brandenburg v. Ohio when the Supreme Court of the U.S. stated: “Freedoms of speech and press do not permit a State to forbid advocacy of the use of force or of law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
But then I thought, what about freedom of art and expression? Does an opera have to be true to the original? This troubled me for a bit, but not long, as I pondered that musicians often write “variations” on a theme of another composer. Why, sitting in my own collection are many variations including Mozart’s own re-orchestration of Handel’s Messiah in which he replaces the English libretto of the original Oratorio with a German text (K. 572).
H.D.S. Greenway, a Boston Globe columnist writes in an October 3, 2006 column titled Censorship Through The Ages, that Mozart faced opposition from Austria’s Emperor Joseph II to the production of his Marriage of Figaro. Mozart was apparently able to convince the Viennese court that he had excised offending radical material and the opera was allowed to proceed. Similarly, he reports that Giuseppe Verdi too ran afoul of the censors in respect of his opera The Masked Ball. Verdi agreed to relocate the setting of the opera from Europe to North America and the murdered King of Sweden became the Governor of Boston – a sort of variation upon a variation, if you will.
So, perhaps there is nothing wrong with recognizing that, just as with opinions (as distinguished from facts as to which truth is ascertainable) art is art for art’s sake, variation or not. There is no truth standard applicable. Measured against this, the banning of the opera was a mistake of principle, but perhaps a good panic prevention measure.
On top of this, out comes form Minneapolis, Minnesota, a story that about three quarters of the taxi drivers at the airport are Somalis and Muslims. Many of them believe that the Qu’ran forbids transportation of alcohol and, ergo, they don’t want to carry passengers who have alcohol in their possession. Never mind that the Qu’ran only prohibits the consumption of alcohol, not transvection.
The city’s answer it appears is to require taxi drivers who will not carry alcohol to display special colored lights on their cabs. If they do not display the lights signifying that they will not carry alcohol, they must return to the back of the line, and face a three hour wait for another fare.
Now it seems to me this is turning common sense on its rear end – of course, keep in mind that for most people common sense resides in that area anyway.
A fundamental tenet of taxi service is that a taxi driver may not refuse to take a passenger wherever the passenger wants to go and the taxi driver may not refuse to take a passenger for discriminatory or other reasons unless the passenger is violent or evidences a refusal to pay.
The Minneapolis solution would make driving a taxi an inalienable right – life, liberty and the pursuit of non-alcohol carrying passengers. Doesn’t it make more sense to say that a Somali Muslim has a right NOT to be a taxi driver if he feels it infringes on his religious beliefs to carry persons with alcohol in their possession?
I recognize that an argument could be made that a person has the right to earn a living and in the course of that living should not have to do acts which violate his religious beliefs. For me, this does not answer the threshold question: why would you agree to do a job that entails activities that violate your religious beliefs in the first place? Perplexed by this, I asked a Muslim friend for her opinion. “Ridiculous!” she said, “does this mean that devout Muslims cannot be pilots [because passengers may have alcohol in their possession?]”
In May of this year, the Utah Supreme Court in State of Utah v. Holm, held Utah’s anti-bigamy statute constitutional against a claim that it infringed on the defendant’s religious right to engage in bigamy. That court rejected the notion that there is a fundamental liberty interest in engaging in such polygamous conduct. Parenthetically, readers might be interested that this claim was advanced on the basis of the Constitution of the United States as the Constitution of Utah expressly states: “polygamous or plural marriages are forever prohibited.”
It has long been held that matters of religious belief as distinguished from practices are at the core of the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion. Just as polygamy is not a liberty, refusal to carry passengers because their luggage may contain materials offensive to a taxi driver, is not a liberty. What if the taxi driver said it was prohibited to carry an infidel?
The opposing decisions, the one to ban the opera and the other to allow taxi drivers to refuse fares are wrong. One wonders what would happen if an opera company director carrying a sack with props to be used as the heads in question were to get into a taxi and be questioned by the Somali taxi driver as to whether he had alcohol. If he said “I have the heads of Buddha, Jesus, Poseidon, and the Prophet Mohammad (PBUH)” would he be justifiably evicted from the taxi? What about the fact that the claim is false? After all, the heads are not real.
I am pleased to report that according to Mr. Greenway’s column, with the consent of German Muslims, the production of Idomeneo may go forward in Berlin.
In Germany, Islamophobia kept an opera from being produced. In Minneapolis, phobia about being labeled Islamophobic kept a city from using common sense. Such is misguided political correctness, but it seems to me that the Germans reached out to the Muslim community to explain the difference between art and insult whereas the Minneapolis people simply came up with a variation on a theme.
Now, for another variation, a little breakfast music – Eine Kleine Frühstück musik.
Cheerz….Bwana
