'Hokey Pokey'-banning sheriff among Muzzle award recipients

By The Associated Press

04.16.01

Printer-friendly page

A Louisiana sheriff who confiscated compact discs of the "Hokey Pokey" and a Missouri lawmaker who advocated force to stop people from burning the American flag are among this year's Jefferson Muzzle winners, given to those who restrict free speech.

The Charlottesville, Va.-based Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression slapped 10 individuals or organizations with the dubious award on April 13, the anniversary of Jefferson's birth. Among the recipients are two Essex County, N.J., officials who barred producers of "The Sopranos" from filming on county property.

The recipients, who are mailed a T-shirt of Thomas Jefferson with a zipper over his mouth, are usually shocked when they find out that someone has been watching their actions so closely, said Robert M. O'Neil, director of the center.

"The response usually runs the full gamut of contrite to defiant," O'Neil said. "They try to explain the position they're in and the responsibilities they have. We tell them we agree to disagree."

O'Neil, who spent the past year scouring press reports and the Internet, nominated a variety of people from different states and ideological backgrounds. The winners were picked by a board of media and film professionals:

• The Sacramento, Calif., Convention and Visitors Bureau, for agreeing to clothe a nude statue of the Greek mythological god Poseidon on its front lawn.
• The 106th U.S. Congress, for ordering schools and public libraries that participate in federal programs to install software that blocks access to Web sites considered inappropriate for minors. The government requires such filtering regardless of whether funds from federal programs paid for the computer terminals or Internet access.
• Sid Hebert, sheriff of New Iberia Parish, La., for confiscating compact discs from a skating rink where a fight had broken out. Hebert ordered deputies to seize about 60 discs of rap music, the "Hokey Pokey," "Jingle Bells," "The Bossa Nova" and the soundtrack for the animated Disney film "Tarzan." The sheriff claimed that the music, especially the rap, incited violence.
• Varina High School in Henrico County, Va., for banning Confederate symbols on campus. Two ninth-graders were suspended after protesting the ban.
• Missouri Rep. Sam Gaskill, for introducing a bill in the state Legislature that would authorize the use of force against someone who burns a flag.
• Georgia House Speaker Tom Murphy, for blocking a speech to the House by the 1999 Teacher of the Year after learning the teacher had criticized an education-reform bill.
• Essex County, N.J., Executive James Treffinger and Sheriff Armando Fontoura, for denying producers of the HBO series "The Sopranos" permission to shoot on county-owned property because they did not like the series' portrayal of Italian-Americans.
• The Bluestem Unified School District No. 205 in Kansas, which suspended an art student for four months unless she underwent psychological counseling. The student had made a poster about a madman demanding to know who killed his dog.
• The county commissioner of Montgomery County, Texas, for ordering the installation of filters on every public-access computer in the library system, even though the library policy prohibited Internet use by minors without parental permission.
• The administration of the Paxon School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville, Fla., for slicing pages from a textbook that contained a Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Tony Kushner. The play depicted the United States in the 1980s as AIDS began to spread. Some scenes were deemed unacceptable for high school students.

O'Neil says the awards are meant to publicize actions against free speech and to warn others of the impending ignominy associated with trampling on the First Amendment.

"It's totally unfair," said Robert V. Hall, a Henrico County School Board member, of Varina High School's award. "We weren't trying to oppress anyone's freedom of speech. We were trying to keep down the possibility of an uproar, a riot. We had an amicable settlement on the Varina situation," Hall told the Richmond Times-Dispatch.