Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Friday, March 23, 2007
In Defense of Trash Talk
Trash talk on the internet has been a hot issue lately, not only here in Northampton because of Moporn, but nationally, too.
The March 7th edition of the Washington Post ran an article about AutoAdmit, a popular on-line law school discussion board. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030602705.html.) It slammed AutoAdmit for failing to remove trash talk that anonymous posters left. It focused upon the stories of a few women who are (or were) Yale Law School students that held the trash talk responsible for their failure to obtain any job offers, for becoming uncomfortably self-conscious of their appearance in public and even for jeopardizing their personal safety. Truly, the trash talk went to the depths of depravity, to say the least.
Then this Monday I noticed a March 19th guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of Prozac Nation, etc., and now a Yale Law School student. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117425870594940896-search.html?KEYWORDS=trash+talk&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month.) She, too, was upset about how these classmates had been wronged by anonymous posters at AutoAdmit. The trash talk had been indeed responsible for preventing at least one of these promising students from securing employment, or so she said.
Ms. Wurtzel complained the women’s woes were all the fault of the first amendment, “because once again, for about the 80th time in my memory and 80,000 time in the life of this country, here is an issue in which the right to free speech – as opposed to the need for everyone to just shut up – is going to overwhelm us all … the firstness of the first amendment trumps everything that competes with it.” Sound familiar?
Because we are “delicate people,” she lamented at length that the first amendment jeopardizes any effective legal means to coerce us to be civil and sensitive, and bemoaned the fact that all she could do was “plead for civility.” I couldn’t disagree more with Ms. Wurtzel’s insinuation that we should relax the protections the first amendment affords us.
This popular attitude is a very dangerous attitude for the law and society to adopt. For when we become more solicitous of the feelings of “delicate people” than the right to share, review and judge for ourselves improvident trash talk, we risk sacrificing any scraps of truth that may get thrown out with it.
What is trash talk today may very well be tomorrow’s chic political correctness. Imagine how openly gay literature and advocacy would have characterized by champions of public morality and appropriateness in our less secular past. The irony extends to trash talk of a factual nature, too. After all, there are times when the truth turns out to be stranger (and more sordid) than the fiction. JFK’s extra martial infidelities – they went far beyond a sole mistress on the side – were verboten in the early 1960s, but now…
Both articles focused only on stories of women wronged by messages left at AutoAdmit, but there’s no reason to believe men had not been wronged, too, even wasps, like me. Trash talk is very egalitarian. Recently, I was wrongly vilified on-line, too, by the most heinous insinuation one can level at a man these days. A (male) sexual predator seems to lie beneath every rock, thanks to the hysteria whipped up by the likes of Nopornorthampton. To be sure, when I read the defamatory posts, I felt as if I’d taken a cannon-ball in the gut, and it stuck there.
In my case the next day I posted a responsible response to the malicious posts, and supporters chimed in with their own responsive posts. The trash talkers beat a hasty retreat and hoisted the white flag. So, the “more speech cure for bad speech” proved to be very effective and immediate relief, and far less of a burden for me and society to bear that any law or legal action would have been.
In the case of these “delicate” law students, are they ready to be lawyers in the combative arena of law if they can’t effectively deal with this sort of trash talk by themselves? Why are they (and Ms. Wurtzel) not publishing the name(s) of the naïve law firm(s), etc. that would base their hiring decision(s) on anonymous trash talk and not take into account any responsive comments the women and their supporters posted?
Because justice is not what this is all about, clearly. Employers of Yale Law School graduates are not that naïve. All this whining (by the activists, not the people actually victimized by the defamatory comments) is about the power to control not only how we behave, but also how we think, by controlling what we can hear. The likes of Ms. Wurtzel form a confederacy of activists insidiously campaigning for the passage of laws to curtail how we may express ourselves and what we may learn, and thus ultimately how we think in more ways than one. All to protect “delicate people’s” feelings – just like Nopornnorthampton would entirely outlaw degrading and objectifying porn, and mold our thoughts, if it could.
Is this fear mongering on my part? I don’t think so. If China can control the internet, then it can be done anywhere. Don’t be deceived. While Ms. Wurtzel said, “I could never advocate censorship,” she later put her foot down and said “[The internet is] unpoliced, which demands that we be better people, gentler and more humane.” “Demands” implies coercion here, which means institutional codes of conduct and governmental regulation where the targeted conduct is expresssion. So, she’s merely paying lip service to the first amendment, just as Nopornnorthampton does, in my opinion. Though it’s possible she’s not really thought it through enough to understand this, like so many...
To refrain from and be wary of trash talk on the internet may be an advisable choice for an individual to make; but, it should be and remain your own choice, not Ms. Wurtzel’s or Nopornnorthampton’s.
Go Moporn, go!
Yours/Always Controversial
PS – About the women’s inability to secure employment: are the best law firms and other organizations who Yale Law School graduates seek to be employed by, and their sophisticated clients, donors, etc., put off by controversial behavior engaged in by the students’ themselves? At least one of the women, “Jill,” admits “ … I run a feminist blog where I curse and say all sorts of inflammatory things …” - her own trash talk. (See http://feministing.com/archives/006649.html#more.) She complains she just can’t win because she is both beautiful and smart; men (she presumes) trash talk her and otherwise scandalize her personality on the web (probably, I suspect, in retaliation for her inflammatory rants); and, her preferred employers, feminist organizations, can’t see that trash talk for what it is – or so she believes. Well, Jill, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, I’m afraid.
The March 7th edition of the Washington Post ran an article about AutoAdmit, a popular on-line law school discussion board. (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/06/AR2007030602705.html.) It slammed AutoAdmit for failing to remove trash talk that anonymous posters left. It focused upon the stories of a few women who are (or were) Yale Law School students that held the trash talk responsible for their failure to obtain any job offers, for becoming uncomfortably self-conscious of their appearance in public and even for jeopardizing their personal safety. Truly, the trash talk went to the depths of depravity, to say the least.
Then this Monday I noticed a March 19th guest editorial in the Wall Street Journal by Elizabeth Wurtzel, the author of Prozac Nation, etc., and now a Yale Law School student. (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB117425870594940896-search.html?KEYWORDS=trash+talk&COLLECTION=wsjie/6month.) She, too, was upset about how these classmates had been wronged by anonymous posters at AutoAdmit. The trash talk had been indeed responsible for preventing at least one of these promising students from securing employment, or so she said.
Ms. Wurtzel complained the women’s woes were all the fault of the first amendment, “because once again, for about the 80th time in my memory and 80,000 time in the life of this country, here is an issue in which the right to free speech – as opposed to the need for everyone to just shut up – is going to overwhelm us all … the firstness of the first amendment trumps everything that competes with it.” Sound familiar?
Because we are “delicate people,” she lamented at length that the first amendment jeopardizes any effective legal means to coerce us to be civil and sensitive, and bemoaned the fact that all she could do was “plead for civility.” I couldn’t disagree more with Ms. Wurtzel’s insinuation that we should relax the protections the first amendment affords us.
This popular attitude is a very dangerous attitude for the law and society to adopt. For when we become more solicitous of the feelings of “delicate people” than the right to share, review and judge for ourselves improvident trash talk, we risk sacrificing any scraps of truth that may get thrown out with it.
What is trash talk today may very well be tomorrow’s chic political correctness. Imagine how openly gay literature and advocacy would have characterized by champions of public morality and appropriateness in our less secular past. The irony extends to trash talk of a factual nature, too. After all, there are times when the truth turns out to be stranger (and more sordid) than the fiction. JFK’s extra martial infidelities – they went far beyond a sole mistress on the side – were verboten in the early 1960s, but now…
Both articles focused only on stories of women wronged by messages left at AutoAdmit, but there’s no reason to believe men had not been wronged, too, even wasps, like me. Trash talk is very egalitarian. Recently, I was wrongly vilified on-line, too, by the most heinous insinuation one can level at a man these days. A (male) sexual predator seems to lie beneath every rock, thanks to the hysteria whipped up by the likes of Nopornorthampton. To be sure, when I read the defamatory posts, I felt as if I’d taken a cannon-ball in the gut, and it stuck there.
In my case the next day I posted a responsible response to the malicious posts, and supporters chimed in with their own responsive posts. The trash talkers beat a hasty retreat and hoisted the white flag. So, the “more speech cure for bad speech” proved to be very effective and immediate relief, and far less of a burden for me and society to bear that any law or legal action would have been.
In the case of these “delicate” law students, are they ready to be lawyers in the combative arena of law if they can’t effectively deal with this sort of trash talk by themselves? Why are they (and Ms. Wurtzel) not publishing the name(s) of the naïve law firm(s), etc. that would base their hiring decision(s) on anonymous trash talk and not take into account any responsive comments the women and their supporters posted?
Because justice is not what this is all about, clearly. Employers of Yale Law School graduates are not that naïve. All this whining (by the activists, not the people actually victimized by the defamatory comments) is about the power to control not only how we behave, but also how we think, by controlling what we can hear. The likes of Ms. Wurtzel form a confederacy of activists insidiously campaigning for the passage of laws to curtail how we may express ourselves and what we may learn, and thus ultimately how we think in more ways than one. All to protect “delicate people’s” feelings – just like Nopornnorthampton would entirely outlaw degrading and objectifying porn, and mold our thoughts, if it could.
Is this fear mongering on my part? I don’t think so. If China can control the internet, then it can be done anywhere. Don’t be deceived. While Ms. Wurtzel said, “I could never advocate censorship,” she later put her foot down and said “[The internet is] unpoliced, which demands that we be better people, gentler and more humane.” “Demands” implies coercion here, which means institutional codes of conduct and governmental regulation where the targeted conduct is expresssion. So, she’s merely paying lip service to the first amendment, just as Nopornnorthampton does, in my opinion. Though it’s possible she’s not really thought it through enough to understand this, like so many...
To refrain from and be wary of trash talk on the internet may be an advisable choice for an individual to make; but, it should be and remain your own choice, not Ms. Wurtzel’s or Nopornnorthampton’s.
Go Moporn, go!
Yours/Always Controversial
PS – About the women’s inability to secure employment: are the best law firms and other organizations who Yale Law School graduates seek to be employed by, and their sophisticated clients, donors, etc., put off by controversial behavior engaged in by the students’ themselves? At least one of the women, “Jill,” admits “ … I run a feminist blog where I curse and say all sorts of inflammatory things …” - her own trash talk. (See http://feministing.com/archives/006649.html#more.) She complains she just can’t win because she is both beautiful and smart; men (she presumes) trash talk her and otherwise scandalize her personality on the web (probably, I suspect, in retaliation for her inflammatory rants); and, her preferred employers, feminist organizations, can’t see that trash talk for what it is – or so she believes. Well, Jill, what's good for the goose is good for the gander, I’m afraid.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
NPN: Lessons from the Stigma of Segregation Apply to the Stigma of Porn
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Bong Hits 4 Jesus
Monday, the infamous “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” case was argued before the Supreme Court. Kenneth Starr argued for the Alaska high school principal who ripped down a 14 foot banner that a student in her high school unfurled outside the school. The students had been released temporarily from class to watch the 2002 Olympic Torch Relay under teacher supervision, and as the torch bearer passed, out came the banner. The school band played a part in the festivity as well.
The principal ended up expelling the student for many days. The principal testified that she acted specifically because of the message she believed the banner conveyed – do drugs – not because of a rule, if any, about banners in general. The student claims he unfurled the banner merely for kicks – to aggravate the principal, among others – not to convey a pro-drug message. You may not believe that was really his sole purpose, but that is the position he takes.
If the principal had acted because unfurling a banner, regardless of its message -- “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” or “Jesus is Lord,” – was prohibited, then probably no credible constitutional claim could have been made. It would have been enforcement of a content neutral rule, however, by the principal's own admission, it was not. The leading Supreme Court case applicable here, Tinker, allows schools to take action when a student’s speech is “disruptive,” and this case is another chance for the court to clarify what it means by that erstwhile content neutral rule.
If the principal is found guilty of violating the student’s first amendment rights, then the court may award money damages, though they might not amount to much. What’s the cost of a banner that was created for merely kicks, after all? And the student’s subsequent notoriety has more than compensated him for his expulsion, in my opinion.
I read the transcript of the argument before the court. Starr specifically argued that the school and principal should have the right to censor and punish students whose expression is disruptive to, or undermines, its anti-drug educational mission. Indeed, Starr went so far as to argue the school could censor and discipline speech which conveys any message that’s “disruptive” to its “educational mission,” as defined by the school in its sole discretion.
What if a school doesn’t like a student’s pro-gay or anti-gay message because it runs counter to parents’ politically correct or religious sensibilities as embodied in its “educational mission”? There are all sorts of controversial issues upon which student speech could be squelched – are we really going to educate our young adults if we do not allow them to begin to express themselves in the context of school supervised activity, however erroneous they happen to be? Painful as it may be, that’s how we learn.
Indeed, when I was in high school I wrote a letter to the editor of the school newspaper which argued that the ban against recreational use of marijuana was unfair – what alcohol was to my parent’s generation, pot was to mine. But it was a letter to the editor, not a banner with a message that had nothing to do with what the school supervised “field trip” was all about, and, while it created a bit of a stir among the educators, no school educational or recreational activity was disrupted.
I’m a free speech advocate, obviously. Nonetheless, I think the school could have constitutionally ripped down the banner and disciplined the student. The purpose for which the school temporarily released the students under its supervision was to see and celebrate the passing of the Olympic torch through the town, and the banner “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” had nothing to do with that. Behavior, speech or otherwise, that materially disrupted that school activity could have been and should have been disciplined. The students knew what the purpose of their release was; it wasn’t recess.
From my review of the transcript, I suspect that is what Justice Kennedy believes, and, as the swing vote on the court, his opinion might very well end up being the one to which the court eventually gravitates.
So, I don’t think our first amendment rights need be threatened here, unless the Supreme Court opts to adopt the content based rule advocated by the school principal and Kenneth Starr, and then there is a lot to be worried about.
Yours/Always Controversial
The principal ended up expelling the student for many days. The principal testified that she acted specifically because of the message she believed the banner conveyed – do drugs – not because of a rule, if any, about banners in general. The student claims he unfurled the banner merely for kicks – to aggravate the principal, among others – not to convey a pro-drug message. You may not believe that was really his sole purpose, but that is the position he takes.
If the principal had acted because unfurling a banner, regardless of its message -- “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” or “Jesus is Lord,” – was prohibited, then probably no credible constitutional claim could have been made. It would have been enforcement of a content neutral rule, however, by the principal's own admission, it was not. The leading Supreme Court case applicable here, Tinker, allows schools to take action when a student’s speech is “disruptive,” and this case is another chance for the court to clarify what it means by that erstwhile content neutral rule.
If the principal is found guilty of violating the student’s first amendment rights, then the court may award money damages, though they might not amount to much. What’s the cost of a banner that was created for merely kicks, after all? And the student’s subsequent notoriety has more than compensated him for his expulsion, in my opinion.
I read the transcript of the argument before the court. Starr specifically argued that the school and principal should have the right to censor and punish students whose expression is disruptive to, or undermines, its anti-drug educational mission. Indeed, Starr went so far as to argue the school could censor and discipline speech which conveys any message that’s “disruptive” to its “educational mission,” as defined by the school in its sole discretion.
What if a school doesn’t like a student’s pro-gay or anti-gay message because it runs counter to parents’ politically correct or religious sensibilities as embodied in its “educational mission”? There are all sorts of controversial issues upon which student speech could be squelched – are we really going to educate our young adults if we do not allow them to begin to express themselves in the context of school supervised activity, however erroneous they happen to be? Painful as it may be, that’s how we learn.
Indeed, when I was in high school I wrote a letter to the editor of the school newspaper which argued that the ban against recreational use of marijuana was unfair – what alcohol was to my parent’s generation, pot was to mine. But it was a letter to the editor, not a banner with a message that had nothing to do with what the school supervised “field trip” was all about, and, while it created a bit of a stir among the educators, no school educational or recreational activity was disrupted.
I’m a free speech advocate, obviously. Nonetheless, I think the school could have constitutionally ripped down the banner and disciplined the student. The purpose for which the school temporarily released the students under its supervision was to see and celebrate the passing of the Olympic torch through the town, and the banner “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” had nothing to do with that. Behavior, speech or otherwise, that materially disrupted that school activity could have been and should have been disciplined. The students knew what the purpose of their release was; it wasn’t recess.
From my review of the transcript, I suspect that is what Justice Kennedy believes, and, as the swing vote on the court, his opinion might very well end up being the one to which the court eventually gravitates.
So, I don’t think our first amendment rights need be threatened here, unless the Supreme Court opts to adopt the content based rule advocated by the school principal and Kenneth Starr, and then there is a lot to be worried about.
Yours/Always Controversial
Friday, March 16, 2007
On Smoking and Other Things
Author’s note: The following article is commentary about the proposed ban on smoking in private clubs which the local board of health is considering. Smoking is already banned in Northampton from bars, restaurants, etc. While the article does not concern freedom of speech, directly, the reader will see that these subject matters involve many of the same underlying concerns that the reader may find worthy to think about, as I do.
There are undesirable secondary effects to a lot of things besides smoking and pornography (the latest two vices the City has been eager to banish as a practical matter). For instance, alcoholic beverage consumption leads to alcoholism, traffic fatalities, domestic violence, etc. Smoking is harmful, at least to those who regularly smoke, no doubt about it. But, government and political leaders should focus instead on ameliorating undesirable secondary effects in less intrusive manners, in my opinion.
For example, if people don't like people smoking outside, then the City could bring it back inside, with air filtration systems and no smoking areas to "protect" those who are sensitive to it, instead of trying to control the intimate details of people's private social lives. Requiring extra sales taxes to be paid for tobacco products is an example of where government regulation does directly address undesirable secondary effects, rather than the intimate private behavior of the citizen. (There’s solid evidence that smokers place a disproportionate financial burden on the health care system.)
I am concerned by how many liberals and conservatives, alike, feel justified to dictate intimate aspects of our private lives (albeit often in different respects), and turn a blind eye to how they would encroach upon our rights to be wrong, as well as right, in how we choose to live among ourselves. The more we allow the will of the majority to dictate intimate aspects of our lives, be it a conservative or liberal majority, we may have more democracy, but less and less freedom.
We need to accept the notion that tolerance of those who would voluntarily live differently than we would wish them to live with respect to their private lives, is essential for a community and a society that is to be rightly called free, as well as democratic. Otherwise, one day we may find ourselves trapped, suffocating in a place which is more totalitarian than free, except in name.
Yours/Always Controversial
There are undesirable secondary effects to a lot of things besides smoking and pornography (the latest two vices the City has been eager to banish as a practical matter). For instance, alcoholic beverage consumption leads to alcoholism, traffic fatalities, domestic violence, etc. Smoking is harmful, at least to those who regularly smoke, no doubt about it. But, government and political leaders should focus instead on ameliorating undesirable secondary effects in less intrusive manners, in my opinion.
For example, if people don't like people smoking outside, then the City could bring it back inside, with air filtration systems and no smoking areas to "protect" those who are sensitive to it, instead of trying to control the intimate details of people's private social lives. Requiring extra sales taxes to be paid for tobacco products is an example of where government regulation does directly address undesirable secondary effects, rather than the intimate private behavior of the citizen. (There’s solid evidence that smokers place a disproportionate financial burden on the health care system.)
I am concerned by how many liberals and conservatives, alike, feel justified to dictate intimate aspects of our private lives (albeit often in different respects), and turn a blind eye to how they would encroach upon our rights to be wrong, as well as right, in how we choose to live among ourselves. The more we allow the will of the majority to dictate intimate aspects of our lives, be it a conservative or liberal majority, we may have more democracy, but less and less freedom.
We need to accept the notion that tolerance of those who would voluntarily live differently than we would wish them to live with respect to their private lives, is essential for a community and a society that is to be rightly called free, as well as democratic. Otherwise, one day we may find ourselves trapped, suffocating in a place which is more totalitarian than free, except in name.
Yours/Always Controversial
Sunday, March 11, 2007
News Flash: NPN Would Like to Banish More than Porn!
Recently Nopornnorthampton officially notified me that they will no longer publish my comments at their website. Had my comments been pornographic or indecent? defamatory? No.
It all started in a short email from Adam advising they wanted me to “withdraw [my] participation from Mopornnorthampton starting now. If you are unable to make this pledge, I regret we will no longer publish your comments on NoPornNorthampton.”
Adam and Jendi have been naturally very upset with the “savage” personal attacks made about them by Mopornnorthampton. They also didn’t like the fact that I played the Toss Adam’s Head game at the Moporn site. You can play it, too, at http://www.mopornnorthampton.com/node/67. I actually got a respectable 6969!
I admit, on the one hand, at times I’ve regretted that I played the head tossing game, but, on the other hand, noticed that this sort of thing comes with the territory of speaking out in public on controversial issues. Welcome to public life, Adam and Jendi. But if the kitchen is getting too hot for you, then get out of the kitchen!
Adam and Jendi just aren’t into head tossing games, and any other fun and games, it seems, based upon his reply and my experience with them. Heaven forbid they ever “lighten up.”
In a follow up email he continued “…I have begun feeling rather foolish providing a forum for you and making efforts to be fair and on-topic while you participate with Mopornnorthampton and let their tactics take place without criticism. I am also tiring of your consistent misrepresentation of our views, as in this comment which I will not publish:
‘I think I asked this before when you brought up Gloria [Steinem]: where does she actually argue for the legal banishment of pornography, as you do, in addition to vigorous criticism of it?…’”
As I replied to Adam, “[t]here doesn’t seem to be a porn regulation that NPN doesn’t want or believes violates the first amendment. So, for that reason, and the reasons I’ve cited before and with which I trust you are familiar, my view of your view is that you advocate the banishment of porn, as a legal and practical matter. … … I’m really not aware of where NPN would stop with respect to the mere ‘regulation’ of porn.”
Of course, after reflecting upon the request I didn’t pledge to withdraw my participation from Moporn. But I am not the first person who has been ostracized from NPN. I follow the mysterious and insightful Doug Shubert, who announced at Moporn earlier this year that Noporn had officially stopped accepting his comments. But no reason was given. Doug Shubert’s comments were better than mine, more often than not, in my opinion.
I don’t think NPN was primarily motivated by the fact that I left comments at Moporn as I do at Noporn – my published comments were pretty mild relative to comments left by others -- and the head tossing game was old news. No, they just can no longer deal with criticism for which they really have no good reason not to agree with, and they long to live with their own intellectual hypocrisy undisturbed.
Heaven forbid they admit they would have us repeal the first amendment – even though few countries actually elevate the right to free speech to constitutional status. If NPN finally did admit that this is the consequence of their position, they would be actually in agreement with most of the international community, like China.
In addition, I suspect the request was an attempt to pull back from the process they had begun at my request of spelling out in specific and concrete detail what Cap Video would have to do to resolve NPN’s objection to its opening a store at 135 King Street. They faced, perhaps for the first time, the end of the very purpose for which they exist.
In my opinion, as many others in the anti-NPN community will continue to share my view that NPN argues for the banishment of pornography, they have accomplished little more than further straining the credibly their website may have, and it certainly makes their claim to be “educational” duplicitous. It is too bad NPN does this sort of thing to me, Doug and God only knows who else. For as critical I have been of the materials they post and the positions they take, we do need credible voices informing us and reminding us that not all is harmless fantasy in porn land.
Yours/AC
P.S. Adam also mentioned that NPN views are “nuanced and balanced.”
It all started in a short email from Adam advising they wanted me to “withdraw [my] participation from Mopornnorthampton starting now. If you are unable to make this pledge, I regret we will no longer publish your comments on NoPornNorthampton.”
Adam and Jendi have been naturally very upset with the “savage” personal attacks made about them by Mopornnorthampton. They also didn’t like the fact that I played the Toss Adam’s Head game at the Moporn site. You can play it, too, at http://www.mopornnorthampton.com/node/67. I actually got a respectable 6969!
I admit, on the one hand, at times I’ve regretted that I played the head tossing game, but, on the other hand, noticed that this sort of thing comes with the territory of speaking out in public on controversial issues. Welcome to public life, Adam and Jendi. But if the kitchen is getting too hot for you, then get out of the kitchen!
Adam and Jendi just aren’t into head tossing games, and any other fun and games, it seems, based upon his reply and my experience with them. Heaven forbid they ever “lighten up.”
In a follow up email he continued “…I have begun feeling rather foolish providing a forum for you and making efforts to be fair and on-topic while you participate with Mopornnorthampton and let their tactics take place without criticism. I am also tiring of your consistent misrepresentation of our views, as in this comment which I will not publish:
‘I think I asked this before when you brought up Gloria [Steinem]: where does she actually argue for the legal banishment of pornography, as you do, in addition to vigorous criticism of it?…’”
As I replied to Adam, “[t]here doesn’t seem to be a porn regulation that NPN doesn’t want or believes violates the first amendment. So, for that reason, and the reasons I’ve cited before and with which I trust you are familiar, my view of your view is that you advocate the banishment of porn, as a legal and practical matter. … … I’m really not aware of where NPN would stop with respect to the mere ‘regulation’ of porn.”
Of course, after reflecting upon the request I didn’t pledge to withdraw my participation from Moporn. But I am not the first person who has been ostracized from NPN. I follow the mysterious and insightful Doug Shubert, who announced at Moporn earlier this year that Noporn had officially stopped accepting his comments. But no reason was given. Doug Shubert’s comments were better than mine, more often than not, in my opinion.
I don’t think NPN was primarily motivated by the fact that I left comments at Moporn as I do at Noporn – my published comments were pretty mild relative to comments left by others -- and the head tossing game was old news. No, they just can no longer deal with criticism for which they really have no good reason not to agree with, and they long to live with their own intellectual hypocrisy undisturbed.
Heaven forbid they admit they would have us repeal the first amendment – even though few countries actually elevate the right to free speech to constitutional status. If NPN finally did admit that this is the consequence of their position, they would be actually in agreement with most of the international community, like China.
In addition, I suspect the request was an attempt to pull back from the process they had begun at my request of spelling out in specific and concrete detail what Cap Video would have to do to resolve NPN’s objection to its opening a store at 135 King Street. They faced, perhaps for the first time, the end of the very purpose for which they exist.
In my opinion, as many others in the anti-NPN community will continue to share my view that NPN argues for the banishment of pornography, they have accomplished little more than further straining the credibly their website may have, and it certainly makes their claim to be “educational” duplicitous. It is too bad NPN does this sort of thing to me, Doug and God only knows who else. For as critical I have been of the materials they post and the positions they take, we do need credible voices informing us and reminding us that not all is harmless fantasy in porn land.
Yours/AC
P.S. Adam also mentioned that NPN views are “nuanced and balanced.”
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