Boo! Hiss!
Human beings have multiple methods of expressing disapproval, most of which are as old as time itself. I don’t know the exact circumstances when someone first stuck out their tongue in mockery, but I suspect it happened in a cave. And I’m sure that the gesture of putting your thumbs in your ears and wiggling your fingers followed soon thereafter. People have been hooting and hollering their boisterous displeasure with each other since the Garden of Eden.
But over time, certain noises have taken on symbolic meanings. For instance, while the short staccato “boo” is an age-old sound meant to frighten children, it eventually morphed into its lengthened form…no doubt as an onomatopoetic imitation of the impatient and hungry “moo” of oxen and cattle…as a way to exclaim disdain. Booing is a much simpler sound to sustain, certainly easier than repeatedly shouting “Pshaw!” or “Nonsense!".
And since previous generations lived within earshot of lots of barnyard noises…braying donkeys, neighing horses, bleating sheep, oinking pigs, quacking ducks, clucking hens, crowing roosters, etc…people naturally utilized these familiar sounds rhetorically. For instance, geese, who are quite territorial and fiercely protective of their goslings, “hiss” to intimidate and ward off perceived threats.
These common communication devices came to mind while I was watching all the heckling President Trump had to endure from Democrats in his recent speech before a joint session of Congress. Sadly, every president in recent history has had much the same problem. Heckling has become a theatrical tactic of organized disruption from both sides of the aisle. But frankly, I’m tired of it. I find it annoying and disrespectful no matter whose ox is being gored.
But annoyance and disrespect is pretty much the purpose of heckling. Hecklers interrupt to disrupt. But they do so by a clever rhetorical logic. For instance, in a theatre setting a heckler breaks the “fourth wall,” i.e., they dispel the illusion that there is the invisible wall between the stage and the audience. When the actors come onto the stage, they ignore their audience and begin dramatically enacting their imaginary world.
In a public speaking event, the invited speaker stands before an audience and does much the same thing. But a heckler interrupts the unidirectional flow of the speaker’s voice. They break the sustained fusion between the speaker’s words and the audience’s ears, thereby turning a calm speech into an angry exchange.
Hecklers, of course, cannot function in solitude. A heckler needs someone to heckle, and an audience before whom to perform either active heckling or passive heckling. We were treated to both kinds during Trump’s address.
Active heckling is a noisy interruption, standing up and shouting during a speech…think Al Green. Passive heckling is a milder form of disruption, like holding up paddles and signs during a speech…think most of the other Democrats.
Standup comics are routinely taunted by hecklers, and so must quickly learn various ways of dealing with them. However, most of us are not so adroit. Trump, however, has a knack for public speaking and he is pretty good at reading his audience, which he knew included a large number of unseen viewers on TV. So, playing to that audience in particular, Trump masterfully twisted the knife by calling out the Democrats’ shameless antics to their face:
“I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded, and these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements.”
Still, I find heckling annoying no matter who is speaking, be it Republican or Democrat. And I think the significance of an address to a joint session of Congress should govern everyone’s behavior. On such an occasion, America’s leaders should be putting their best foot forward on behalf of the best interests of the nation that they are all ostensibly serving.
To that end, I emailed the White House last night for the first time in my life. I offered the following suggestion to President Trump for all such future speeches.
Whenever the President of the United States stands before the collected leaders of our nation…members of both the Senate and the House of Representatives, Supreme Court Justices, high ranking members of our Armed Forces, etc…, as his first order of business and before he begins his speech, the President ought to invite the entire room to stand and recite with him, with hand over heart, our nation’s Pledge of Allegiance.
This is something that virtually every school child used to do every school day morning. Perhaps it’s time to reintroduce this tradition, beginning at the very top with all of our nation’s leaders.
I doubt that this gesture alone silences all of the hecklers, but I think it sets the right tone. And I think it would be to everyone’s benefit if our nation’s leaders publicly demonstrated their genuine devotion to our nation’s best interests by this simple and short exercise in national unity and loyalty.