CULTURE
Ozzie Guillen and the Doctrine
of Innocent Construction
By Don Rose
What’s wrong with us as a people today? Why have we lost the doctrine
of innocent construction?
I refer here to the recent episode wherein all the world—even Larry King himself—seems to have come down on poor Ozzie Guillen for using an epithet deemed unseemly and abusive to a segment of society. Poor Ozzie was sentenced to take a course in sensitivity. But I maintain there is an innocent construction to his scornful comment against Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti, as I shall demonstrate below.
The doctrine of innocent construction holds that if there is an innocent interpretation of a statement or situation, the lesser explanation should be the one we legally accept.
Let me give a weird example.
Back in the early 1960s, the avant-garde filmmaker Shirley Clarke made a movie out of the late Chicagoan Jack Gelber’s gritty play about drug addition, “The Connection.”
Throughout the play and film the addicts refer to heroin by the common four-letter slang term for excrement. Though it—and many worse terms—are in widespread use today in films, the word fell heavily on the ears of censors in New York and elsewhere at the time. The film was banned for more than a year while court battles ensued.
The judges finally ruled against the censors, using a convoluted doctrine of innocent construction by saying, in effect, that since the term in the play did not actually refer to excrement, which would have been offensive, but referred metaphorically to heroin, the film was not obscene and therefore could be shown to adult audiences.
On the other hand, a few years ago a congressional aide happened to use the word “niggardly,” which means miserly or tight-fisted, in a public document. He was reviled widely because the term, which has nothing to do with race or color, sounds like an ugly epithet that does.
The poor fellow was forced to apologize for his bad judgment and resign. No innocent construction even for the truly innocent.
A couple of weeks ago Sun-Times columnist Laura Washington kept the Guillen episode smoldering, as it were, by pointing out that the word “faggot” actually means a bundle of kindling wood.
She then quoted a rather far-fetched explanation of how it came to its current American use as a term of derogation for gay people. The legend is that when witches were burned at the stake and they ran out of kindling, gay people were thrown on the fires to keep them burning. Unfortunately, history shows no episodes of gays being burned at the stake or otherwise during the period they were igniting witches. There must be another explanation.
In any event, Mr. Guillen used the abbreviated form of the term for kindling as a slur against Mr. Mariotti.
I would like to take this one step further using the doctrine of innocent construction.
When I was growing up during World War II, a slang name commonly used for a cigarette was "fag." This was a holdover from pre-World War I British slang.
It is celebrated in the 1912 song, " Pack Up Your Troubles," whose familiar chorus goes:
“Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag
and smile, smile, smile
While you’ve a Lucifer to light your fag, smile boys that’s the
style”
Be assured also that the name “Lucifer” has nothing to do with Satanism, but refers to a match.
The term lasted well beyond the second war and is even in some minor use today. Therefore there is an innocent construction.
But why, you might ask, would Mr. Guillen want to angrily call the sportswriter a cigarette?
Well, we all know cigarettes are evil, cancer-causing agents.
I therefore posit that Mr. Guillen, in his rage at Mr. Mariotti—however unjustified—was comparing him to something as destructive as a cigarette. That’s pretty destructive.
In short, he damned Mr. Mariotti as a carcinogen.
Very bad, indeed, but there are far worse things one person can call another: well-known four-, eight-, ten- and twelve-letter words, for example, all unfit for a family publication.
If Mr. Guillen had called Mr. Mariotti, for example, that 12-letter word referring to maternal incest, there would have been no problem at all—it would be written off as typical locker-room banter.
So why all the fuss? Why sentence the guy to sensitivity training? Why not adhere to the doctrine of innocent construction?
Why can’t the Sox manager, in whatever fit of anger, call this sportswriter a metaphorical Pall Mall without being metaphorically burned at the stake?
Lighten up—even if you don’t light up—and smile, smile, smile.
