Usually I curse the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Who gave them the right to make decisions in Boston that limit my personal freedom to do whatever I want? But even broken clocks are correct twice a day, and so I’ve got to commend them for their recent ruling reaffirming my right to be rude.

The Barron v. Kolenda decision upholds the American tradition of being an obnoxious jerk to public officials during meetings. At the next school board meeting I’ll bring my thesaurus so I can have handy all the synonyms for idiot that I can find. Now everyone has the right to be rude, but some people have the right to be more rude than others.

Here in Hadley, we’ve always had the practice of being rude to newcomers, that way they stay out of town politics and leave the running of town government to the local incompetents who don't know that they’re being insulted. See, in the past a comment like that would have gotten me thrown out of the Select Board meetings, but not anymore.

Now, as soon as a town official is sworn in, they can be sworn at. Of course the problem with the ruling is that it doesn’t go far enough. Sure I can exercise my right to be aggravating, annoying, distressing, disturbing, exasperating, incommodious, irritating, rebarbative, repugnant, troublesome, and vexatious (but not necessarily in alphabetical order) in public meetings. But what about in everyday life? We need to rely less on so-called polite society and more on our innate ability to put others down in order to feel better about our own pathetic little lives. What’s more American than that?

Some say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, but town officials won’t have time to catch flies because they’re busy catching hell from us. But I digress. The truth is that we may have the right to be rude in Massachusetts, but what about the rest of the country? We need a constitutional amendment enshrining our right to be rude in every part of our great nation. So say goodbye Minnesota nice, and say hello to Massachusetts mean. It’s time for obnoxious people to make a stink and fight for your right to be rude regardless of the ramifications, not just at meetings, but in all situations, everywhere, all the time. I have a dream that one day all Americans regardless of race, color or creed, will enjoy the same right to be rude that we have here in Massachusetts. The only possible exception I can foresee is if people are being rude to me. I wouldn’t like that, I’m very sensitive.

Andy Morris-Friedman

Hadley

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