Boner vs. Boehner: suppressing dissent in Ohio?

The Speaker of the House of Representatives faces a primary challenge this year from a divided Tea Party movement in his Ohio district. One of his challengers is J. D. Winteregg, a French-language instructor whose campaign posted what they considered a clever video to their website. Filmed in the style of a Viagra commercial, the ad claims that Boehner's district has suffered from "electile dysfunction." Playing off a common and often purposeful mispronunciation of the Speaker's name, it warns that those who've had a Boehner for 23 years -- his tenure in Congress -- should seek immediate medical attention. The symptoms of electile dysfunction, as illustrated, include an overly friendly attitude toward the President of the United States. Implicitly, Winteregg promises not to shake hands or play golf with the Chief Executive.

Along with teaching high-school French, Winteregg taught an online course for a local Christian school. He's now lost the gig with Cedarville University after the school decided that Winteregg's silly video didn't represent Christian values. Such uptight action isn't really surprising, and from the school's point of view it's probably entirely appropriate. But if something like this had happened in another country -- if a declared opponent of a powerful politician had lost a job for criticizing or mocking him -- the American media would say that that country was on the road to authoritarian rule, that the powerful politician had to be behind the opponent's dismissal, that it was all an attempt to silence the brave dissident, etc. They won't say that about Winteregg and Boehner, partly because few in the media care much for Tea Partiers and partly because it's reasonable not to assume a conspiracy behind the school's decision. If we see things differently as they happen in other countries, we aren't automatically wrong but we should acknowledge that we don't know other countries as well as our own. Too often we hear that a dissident is in legal trouble in his country and we jump to conclusions about tyrannical tendencies there. Foreign dissidents usually get the benefit of the doubt from Americans, with Russophone protesters in eastern Ukraine being a notable exception, but it's just possible that when a dissident anywhere gets into trouble he's simply screwed up as Winteregg has by pulling his boner. A lot of Americans like John Boehner little better than they like Vladimir Putin, but it doesn't mean that either man's opponents are always right.