CENSORSHIP

Everyone exclaims, "I'm against censorship in any form!" You're simply not kewl if you don't hate censorship. In fact, hating censorship is one of the mandates of being a genuine red-blooded American.

I have a confession to make. Sometimes I find myself thinking censorship wouldn't be so bad. Because it's obvious that some individuals have no sense of responsibility with regard to their own actions. If you're reading this, you've probably been around the net enough to see some of the absolute garbage that's out there. And I seem to stumble across it on a semi-regular basis without even looking for it. Case in point: Someone posted a message to an urban legends board regarding photos on a website, and asked if they were real without describing their content. When I went to investigate, I only saw the thumbnail screen before leaving in a hurry. They were photographs of a real-life murder where a woman and her lover murdered her husband, mutilated his body, then took snapshots to record the event. Needless to say, the pictures were nauseating. Another category on the site was titled "Suicides", and I believe a third was called "Autopsies". I didn't enter those areas, but I can imagine what lay inside. The surprising thing was that all these photos were in a subdirectory of a business site which sells computers over the internet. As much as I'd love to discredit their name, I refuse to give them any publicity here. I did send an e-mail to the site webmaster (the absolute first and only time I've ever sent a letter complaining about objectionable content to anyone) and stated I found the photos disturbing and inappropriate for a public forum. To his credit, he replied, but only to give me the time-worn line of "If you don't like it, don't look at it" and to caution me not to "burn any books".

Okay, let's think about this. "If you don't like it, don't look at it" may work for bad TV shows and softcore skin magazines, but does it really apply here? If someone complains about a toxic waste dump in their backyard, can you honestly tell them just not to look at it? The photos in question have absolutely no purpose being on display other than to cater to the depraved interests of certain brain-damaged individuals with low self-esteem. Argue with that all you want, but you know it and I know it. How would you feel if a loved one of yours was featured in the "suicide" or "autopsy" section? Do you think this loser asks the next of kin before he posts this crap? Curiously enough, the ACLU (that staunch advocate for individual liberties) seems to feel that individuals have the right not to have images they find offensive present in their society. They lobbied hard on behalf of atheists to have public nativity displays removed. Sure, it was a separation of church and state issue, but why couldn't the objectors simply be told not to look at the displays if they objected to them? Seems to me we've got a bit of a double standard going here.

Of course, the "don't burn any books" argument is ludicrous in this situation. I'd love to hear this guy's explanation of what ideas he's trying to express with these pictures. Actually, no I wouldn't. But I would like to point out that the U.S. government is legally allowed to censor or suppress books if it has a good reason. If you don't believe me, do a little research on the history of Victor Marchetti's tome The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence. And of course there are restrictions on cigarette and alcohol advertising in the media. The point is that the belief that U.S. citizens can publish anything they want without fear of censorship (and that that is what makes America great) is demonstrably false.

Which brings me to the recent fiasco in New York City regarding the painting of the Virgin Mary "adorned" with pornographic photos and elephant dung. The anti-censorship zealots crawled out of the woodwork when Mayor Rudolph Giuliani had the nerve to object to its display in a New York City museum. Never mind that the museum is supported by taxpayer money, and that he is the mayor after all. "Censorship in any form is heresy," the zealots proclaimed. "This artist's ideas must not be suppressed," they shouted from the rooftops. Now you know and I know this artist is not expressing any ideas with this literal piece of crap. He made something deliberately designed to offend and create an uproar, knowing it was an expressway to fame and notoriety in the Western world. And what the anti-censorship wackos don't seem to realize is that for every instance of something outlandish like this being foisted on the American public, more and more Americans start to believe that some form of censorship is necessary. What should have been done in this case? The museum curators should have exercised better judgement regarding which works they would include in their show. Strictly speaking, this isn't even censorship, since selecting which exhibits will and won't fill their finite amount of space is part of the everyday operations of any public exhibition hall. Lacking responsible behaviour from the curators, Mayor Giuliani had every right to try to stop the exhibit himself.

Ultimately, those who blatantly abuse our freedom of speech pose a much greater danger to our first amendment rights than any conservative fundamentalist ever could.

From http://www.msnbc.com/news/370483.asp , an article titled "Museums walk a fine ethical line" by Andras Szanto:

This state of affairs results in much-publicized flashpoints, like the controversy that surrounded “Sensation”, the exhibition of British artists from the Saatchi Collection in London that closed last month at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. As is widely known, the BMA and its director, Arnold L. Lehman, endured a public hazing after New York’s Mayor Rudolph Giuliani threatened to withdraw funding and evict the museum from its landmark building - all for exhibiting Chris Ofili’s allegedly offensive “The Holy Virgin Mary.” ...

...The Brooklyn Museum deflected the challenge on First Amendment grounds. But documents subpoenaed during the court proceedings revealed juicy details about the pragmatic underpinnings of such large museum shows. People outside the art world, including some of the journalists who reported on the controversy, were nonplussed by reports of Charles Saatchi’s $160,000 donation to mount the show. Eyebrows were raised by news of checks written by collectors and dealers with a commercial stake in some Saatchi artists...

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