Heckling is as old as performing, but our digital cult and culture of narcissism, which has made everyone an instant celebrity, has given it a trending obnoxiousness. President Joe Biden was heckled by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and the other MAGA Republicans at the State of the Union address. Harry Styles was heckled by Beyoncé fans at “The Grammy Awards.” Novak Djokovic was heckled by a drunken “Where’s Waldo?” quartet at the Australian Open. And Sydney Warner, wife of San Francisco 49ers linebacker Fred Warner, was among the Niners contingent heckled at the Eagles-49ers National Football Conference championship game.
"The first time a sitting president was screamed at during a speech, we clutched our pearls.” says leadership and empathy coach Nicole Price, Ph.D., referring to President Barack Obama being called a liar by Rep. Joe Wilson at his 2009 State of the Union address. “It demonstrated a lack of decorum. I posit that it also demonstrated a lack of empathy.
“Empathy requires that we ask ourselves to imagine we were giving a speech and someone screamed ‘liar’ at us. How would we feel? What would we want to happen instead? Interestingly, I was in a parent meeting recently and a parent screamed ‘liar’ at a superintendent. Our nation's most powerful leaders have to own their responsibility for creating a national culture that seeps into the behaviors of our citizens. This is the problem with a public display of a lack of empathy."
With respect to Price, empathy — or the lack thereof — is the last thing heckling is about, for at its heart is a jealousy worthy of Iago and a quest for power.
Basically, the heckler is a type of narcissist who thinks s/he would be up there doing what the performer (and by performer I mean everyone from a public speaker to an athlete) does but for some cruel quirk of fate. Remember: A narcissist is at once the best and yet the most put-upon.
Fueling the heckler’s desire to seize control of the performance and thus master the performer is the illogical notion that successful people deserve to suffer, because, after all, they’re successful. It’s as if the heckler equates heckling with accountability. But why should someone be held up to ridicule for doing a job you probably couldn’t do?
The odd thing about heckling is that it’s so counterproductive. In seeking power over another, the heckler just exposes his/her powerlessness. Greene could wear showoffy, furry white accented by a white balloon — was she protesting Biden’s handling of the Chinese “weather balloon” or reminding her boss, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, that she’s got him by his, um, tiny weather balloons? — till the cows come home. She could not throw Biden, an old congressional hand, off his game. He just kept serving and volleying, getting the Republicans to acknowledge they’re all for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — contrary to their hatred of entitlements. It was masterful.
Djokovic took a different tack, the counter-performance, acknowledging to the umpire that the “Where’s Waldos” were getting in his head — then proceeded to win the match and, days later, the tournament. He’s now on target to beat Steffi Graff’s record for most weeks at No. 1 (377) as he looks to surpass first Serena Williams and then Margaret Court Smith for most Slams. So much for being in his head.
As for Styles, well, he still went home with his Grammy, didn’t he? And Sydney Warner went back to her life, after vowing never to set foot in Lincoln Financial Field again. All of them demonstrated that no one can degrade you. Only you can degrade yourself.
So heckling would appear to be futile and thus innocuous — except when it isn’t. Warner heard an Eagles’ fan say he hoped the 49ers’ plane would crash. New York Yankee rightfielder Roger Maris, who was endlessly taunted in his pursuit of Babe Ruth’s single-season home run record in 1961, had chairs, bottles and nails thrown at him.
Sometimes the violence comes true: Remember the man who heckled Broadway singer Rena Stober at Rao’s restaurant in Manhattan in 2003? He ended up dead, shot by someone who thought he should’ve shown more respect.
But heckling’s brutality is also psychological, holding all of us hostage with our silence and perhaps our secret enjoyment. Maybe we don’t like the person being heckled. Maybe we’re too afraid to speak out. (Djokovic thanked the one fan who told the Waldos to leave him alone.)
Heckling reminds us that there are three parties to its wicked game — the heckler, the heckled and us, the audience that may be deprived of an opportunity. Doug Griffin, whose daughter Courtney died of a fentanyl overdose at age 20, was at the State of the Union address to hear Biden talk about how people like Griffin are trying to combat the opioid crisis. But Taylor Greene had to announce from her seat that the drug comes from China.
“At that moment he was trying to tell (Courtney’s) story and get a response to the story and (Greene) broke the momentum of that moment,” Griffin said.
“I traveled a long way for me and my wife to be there to hear it and she crossed the line and broke the momentum of the minute.”
But that’s what hecklers do. That’s what narcissists do. Remember: It may be your story, your tragedy, your triumph, but it’s always the heckler’s moment.
Until, of course, we reclaim the moment.