(I don’t think Indiana Lieutenant Governor-elect and far-right pastor Micah Beckwith understands how the First Amendment works. I could teach him, but I’d have to charge…)
THE LEAD: Shortly after being elected as Indiana’s next lieutenant governor, Micah Beckwith decided to take his newfound power out for a test drive by threatening the Indiana Daily Student newspaper with censorship:
WHO IS THIS GUY? Beckwith is a 42-year-old, hard-right Republican, who has never held any political office prior to winning the lieutenant governor position. He came in third in 2020 while running for a U.S. house seat in Indiana. He graduated from Huntington University, a private college affiliated with the Church of the United Brethren in Christ.
After graduating with a business/economics degree in 2005, he worked for two years with EmbroidMe and two more as a “Co-Owner” of an LLC. After that, he found his calling as a pastor for the White River Christian Church. After five years there, Beckwith took a gig as a pastor at Northview Church in 2014. Critics deemed him a “white Christian nationalist,” who has compared vaccines to rape, opposes all LGBTQ issues and has engaged in book banning. He also runs a podcast called “Jesus, Sex and Politics.”
While campaigning, he threatened to fire any state employee who works with his office who uses pronouns in their email signatures, something Beckwith gamely tried to walk back later. Beckwith also referred to his Democrat opponents as evoking the “Jezebel spirit,” a sexist and racist term that reaches back to the Jim Crow South.
In short, an overall fun guy…
A QUICK BREAKDOWN: Here’s a quick look of how this situation is dumber than a bucketful of hair:
First, the students did not call Donald Trump these things. They literally QUOTED people who WORKED WITH TRUMP on the cover of the paper to make a point. If he looked at the people who said this stuff, I have a hard time believing Beckwith could get away with calling ANY of them “woke.”
Even more, people who are more politically aligned with Beckwith are pointing out on X how he completely misread this situation:
Screenshot
(Let’s also sidestep the whole “this is what your taxes are paying for” thing, as a) they are not, b) even if they were, financing a free press isn’t a bad thing and c) there are far dumber things tax money goes toward…)
Finally, the First Amendment guarantees the right to a free press, unfettered by the whims of governmental figures. Punishment for free speech of this kind is not allowed in this country (whether we’re truly a “democracy” or not). It’s unclear how Beckwith will “stop it for them” but I doubt it would be legal.
COMMENTS ON THE SITUATION: I reached out to co-EICs Marissa Meador and Jacob Spudich for a comment on the controversy and they were nice enough to respond:
“While we welcome criticism of our newspaper and its content, we are staunch defenders of the First Amendment and the freedom it grants to the press — including student journalism. Our front page clearly attributes the quotes to former allies of Donald Trump, which we collected from several articles across the New York Times and CNN. Beckwith’s statement implying he will attempt to control or suppress what we publish is deeply concerning, not just for staffers at the Indiana Daily Student but for our constitutional principles overall.”
I messaged Beckwith’s office with several questions and a request for comment. I received nothing to this point, but if I do I’ll post it here. (Don’t hold your breath on this one…)
Still, my favorite response of all of this came from the admin at Indiana University. As we covered in a four-part series last month, the Media School was trying to force the IDS to be part of a converged media environment under its rank and dominion. When this thing hit, here was the university’s response:
When asked if IU had any comment on Beckwith’s claims about IU and his potential action toward the IDS, IU spokesperson Mark Bode said “The Indiana Daily Student is editorially independent from Indiana University.”
In case you are unfamiliar, that’s what it sounds like when someone jumps ship…
DOCTOR OF PAPER HOT TAKE: This is the kind of ham-handed, saber-rattling stupidity that comes from people who claim to love this country but consistently fail to understand what our country actually protects and allows. The same freedom of speech that allowed Donald Trump to call Kamala Harris “a shitty vice president” and allowed Beckwith to refer to his opponents as having the “Jezebel spirit” also protects speech that Beckwith DOESN’T like.
I could also go back to that famous line about never picking a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel, and add that you shouldn’t take on a media outlet that has 10 times the number of followers you do on X.
I often get responses to posts like this calling me “an academic liberal” or a “lefty professor,” both of which are not only untrue, but so far afield they’re likely to make my mother laugh so hard she could pass an entire Subway footlong through her nose.
In truth, I’m neither left or right, but I am definitely anti-bully and anti-hypocrite. I see this guy as being in both zones, so that’s why he really needs a reality check.
ACTION OFFER: If you want to tell Beckwith what you think about this, you can hit him up on Twitter/X, or email him through his campaign website here. Maybe if he hears enough from enough people, he’ll learn something.
That said, the guy literally thinks that Jesus pushed him to take the Beckwith Model of Intolerance and Stupidity ™ to the political sphere, so I somehow doubt he’s going to back off.
