God Bless the USA!

Well here are just a few more reasons why I definitely don't want to move to either China or any country run by a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. These two stories about web surfing in the not so free world just sealed the deal. Check them out here and here.

Aside from being identified by Reporters Without Borders as the country that exerts the most censorious control over the Internet in Asia, China is also deeply concerned about the moral rot Internet pornography may bring about in young and impressionable minds. Therefore, they want to censor the Internet even further. All computers sold in China, apparently, must be fitted by porn-blocking software. As an educator of college students who understands the importance that rest, relaxation, and entertainment to overstressed and overworked students, this sort of censorship just appalls me! It APPALLS me!!!

The second piece about the new Microsoft search engine, Bing, seems to hint that some software developers might have been Boy Scouts in a previous life. They plan ahead. Apparently versions of their software marketed in Islamic countries already have blocking functions built in, not allowing access to pornographic videos.

While this is an entirely easy shot to take, I will definitely take it...because it's just so much fun and so satisfying: The censorship of so-called "smut" and "indecency" usually goes hand in hand with general censorship, intolerance of dissent, and totalitarianism. Those are words - meaning "totalitarianism," "dissent," and "intolerance," - such American guardians of morality like the Traditional Values Coalition, the Family Research Council, and (my all-time favorites) the Parents Television Council should look up in a dictionary.

And I think I will now check out some of the search functions on Bing...

See, I Told You So!!

Check out this interesting little story about a killer attempting to shift the blame onto media use for his behavior.

Some vicious lunatic slit a man's throat and now he and his lawyers are arguing that it was all because of a pornographic video he was shown by a "third party."

So he shouldn't be punished so severely, right? It wasn't really his fault.

Yeah, right! Sure!!

Just as I argued before that all these ridiculous, idiotic, absolutely unfounded arguments about the effects of media violence and porn are a boon for lawyers trying to keep their scumbag clients from being punished, anti-media-violence and anti-porn do-gooders are the best friends every violent criminal in this world has.

And take note of how this pornographic tape has mysteriously vanished...like it never existed in the first place.

Here's an invitation to all the "family" advocacy groups, the media watchdogs, our good buddies and pals in organizations like the Parents Television Council: if you really believe that a porn tape made this piece of human garbage kill, please contact me right away. I have this great big stone and concrete and metal thing that spans the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn to sell you. It's mine! I own the deed! Trust me! You believe me, don't you?

Comparing "Sexting" to Child Porn is Ludicrous

Check out this latest article about how a budding new moral panic, the teenage cell phone phenomenon of “sexting” is about to turn into the next salvo on free speech and expression in America.

The ACLU, to its credit, is at least taking on this Pennsylvania county’s paranoid and destructive attempt at prosecuting teenage girls who sent provocative pictures of themselves to their boyfriends over the cell phone. And this prosecution is taking place despite the fact that THE TYPES OF PICTURES SENT BY THE GIRLS ARE NOT CLASSIFIED AS ILLEGAL IN PENNSYLVANIA!!!!!!!! So what the &^$%ing %#&* happened to equal protection under the law?

What happened is the latest case in the ages-old social phenomenon of the moral panic. A moral panic usually ensues when some strange and unusual event, some aberant occurrence is suddenly blown out of proportion (most easily by the mass media) and cast as a pernicious crisis threatening all of society. Sexting is just the latest moral panic, right after the scientifically baseless media violence hysteria, the steroid paranoia, the violent video game hysteria, the Satanic heavy metal hysteria, the comic book moral panic of the 1950s, the Red Scare, and all the way back to the colonial witch trials.

Sexting, as so perfectly argued by Fordham Professor Paul Levinson on today’s Culture Wars radio show, is not child pornography. It is not created under the same circumstances and it is in no way an equivalent of child pornography. Child pornography is the victimization of children, the videotaping or photography of children against their will by a pornographer, for distribution and sale. Sexting is teenagers voluntarily taking pictures of themselves and controlling those pictures by distributing them to friends and boyfriends. It is sexual experimentation and rebellion by kids at an age when every generation of teenagers had been rebellious, when they have experimented with sex and sexuality. Comparing sexting to child pornography is ludicrous.

But sexting is also a wonderful boon to various groups of censorious crackpots and control freaks like the Parents Television Council (check out their web page where they bemoan the creeping immoral menace of sexting) and the rest of their meddling ilk who use this as an opportunity to push for more intrusive laws and regulations that control private behavior. And just be sure and take a look at the part of the Pennsylvania sexting article that describes some of the punishment the authorities want meted out to these girls. A forced “re-education” program? RE-EDUCATION?? The Soviet Union used to have re-education programs in the Siberian gulags!!!

So don’t believe for a microsecond that all the moral watchdogs and media crusader groups are as appalled and saddened and outraged by sexting as they claim. These folks are happy as can be every time they imagine another kid “sexting” a picture of herself. The more kids sexting, the better, they must no doubt be gushing in their most private moments. Every such incident is just more ammunition for these parasites to launch their assaults on free expression and civil liberties.

Octomom Should Do Porn (?)

...and that was the question for our listeners on the last episode of Culture Wars.

With the nice turnout of opinions on the great chimpanzee controversy, we'd love to know what Culture Warmongers think of the last strange turn in Nadya "Octomom" Suleman's bizarre saga. Apparently she has gotten a $1 million offer to do a porn flick with Vivid Entertainment. Check out the story here.

It is interesting to read that Suleman will be given as much input on the "plot" and the overall development of the film one would expect any major star to get. Vivid CEO Stephen Hirsch has promised to work out the deal with Suleman in such a way that she will be satisfied and comfortable with the finished product. Whoever said the porn industry was sleazy?

So let us know what you think? Should she do it because the money she's earning will keep her from leaching off California's citizens? Or have you had enough of Suleman and wish all news of her would just disappear? Is this tacky and morally offensive? Or maybe you can't wait until it comes out so you can add the video to your library of Vivid Entertainment classics?

Send your comments to wspcradio@gmail.com