Evan Cohen: The Foolery of Defending His Daughter

Defending the right of one’s daughter to be mean and nasty to another is very, very tricky business.  It is pretty much tantamount to winning the battle but losing the war.  Evan Cohen recently defended his daughter’s right to be mean.  The daughter had posted on YouTube a video that berated an 8th grade classmate at a Beverly Hills school, calling the female student such horrific names as “spoiled”, “brat”, and “slut”.  The school gave Evan Cohen’s daughter a two-day suspension; and he, a lawyer, came to her rescue.  What a dad!

Of course, Cohen is absolutely right.  The 1st Amendment gives his daughter the right to say and post nasty things about others, including fellow classmates—or so it is just so long as we do not have a case of slander.

Yet, I contend that in defending his daughter, Evan Cohen made a tragic error.  The victory is very much a Pyrrhic one.  This is because the constitutional lesson that he forged for his daughter is most certainly overshadowed by the very unfortunate moral lesson that he has taught his daughter, namely that it is all right to use the law in order to protect mean behavior.

Evan Cohen’s daughter’s daughter is in the 8th grade, which makes her roughly 14 years of age.  There were two lessons that he had the opportunity to teach his 14-year old daughter: One is that posting on YouTube harsh negative comments about a member of one’s class is very much a morally indecent thing to do.  The other is that the 1st Amendment gives one the right to say that most malicious things about another, even if they are untrue.  Which lesson would have been the more valuable lesson to teach his daughter?  Surely, it is the first one.

Indeed, I would go so far as to say that fatherly love would counsel teaching the daughter the first lesson.  For in the immortal words of King Solomon: “Unto everything there is a season”.  The father has privileged a legal victory over a moral one; and, under the circumstances, this was very much a mistake.

The more important lesson that the Evan Cohen should have taught his daughter is that there are some things that we should not do even if we are fully entitled to do them.  It is very easy to think of examples of this sort.  If I should insist that a struggling mother re-pay me that $100 she borrowed from me, even though it is clear that she has acted responsibly in every conceivable way, I am surely a moral bastard.  The fact that I am entirely entitled to the money is utterly irrelevant.

There is no doubt that Evan Cohen is right about the legal rights of his daughter.  But he could have taught her that precious lesson without pursuing the legal victory that he obtained on her behalf; for in obtaining that victory, he overshadowed the moral significance of acting decently even when one is fully entitled to act otherwise.

Again, if a student has just lost both of his parents in a tragic accident and he submits a plagiarized essay, surely I am none other than a callous man if I should insist that he be academically dismissed, as university regulations might require for such behavior.  There are probably not many times when leniency should be shown to someone who has plagiarized an essay.  Yet, I assume without hesitation that a student who has just lost both parents is precisely such a case.

Alas, what Evan Cohen has taught his daughter is how to be an incredibly spoiled brat.  And that is what has to be the case.

The case of Evan Cohen is an absolutely poignant case of having a warped perspective of what counts as parental love.  Parental love at its best does not just give a child every advantage.  Quite the contrary, giving the child advantages is tempered by building the child’s character.  The idea is to give one’s child every advantage but to do so only in the right way.

Evan Cohen gave his daughter a tremendous advantage, but he did not do so in the right way.  Indeed, unless there were extraordinary conversations between them, she did not learn the values of decency and respect and self-control.  Nor, again, did she learn to think about how her actions might negatively impact upon others.

Let me put the point another way.  I pity the college professor who has Evan Cohen’s daughter as a student.  While Evan Cohen has taught his daughter a quite powerful lesson about one of the rights she has, he has left her quite unschooled about how to exercise that right.  And at the age 14, and under the circumstances, the latter lesson is a far more valuable one.

It would be a different matter entirely if Evan Cohen’s daughter was being deprived of some fundamental good or, in any case, was being made to endure an enormous setback.  Again, the two-day suspension by the Beverly Hills school hardly seems cruel and unusual punishment for what she did.

I understand very well the point being made by those who defend the 1st Amendment.  In fact, I stand as a staunch supporter of it.  Alas, we should not confuse 1st Amendment rights and the deep political lessons thereunto appertaining with the moral lessons of life that 14-year old children should take from their parents.  To conflate the two is to make a very grave mistake.  Indeed, conflating the two constitutes a remarkable display of foolery.  Evan Cohen should be ashamed of himself.