“Okay, why the hell is that a trending topic?” I thought.

(For those of you wondering, a Trending Topic on Twitter is something that’s mentioned very frequently by multiple posters — enough to become a trend.)

It turns out, Facebook had allowed groups centered on Holocaust denial to be created on their site, and various people (including Mark Cuban’s brother) were calling for the groups’ removal. Much like recent debacles over Amazon accidentally removing listings for all books featuring sexuality (which means 99% of GLBT-centric books) and LiveJournal running an ad for National Organization for Marriage, the InterTubes were once again in a pitchfork and torch-wielding rage over people saying, posting, or believing stupid things.

*sigh*

Recently, one of the free local newspapers in my area ran an anti-gay editorial. The four-paragraph hate-rant was full of religious rambling and completely free of any logic, facts, or historical evidence to support the author’s claim that God created marriage, because, well, no supreme being did, in fact, create marriage. I could give you the historical evidence about marriage being a Church-instituted ceremony in the late middle ages to generate wealth after the selling of indulgences and other favorite money-making schemes became passe. I could point you toward books about the nature of human beings, which is evolved from a psychological proclivity to serial monogamy. I could use logic and reason to show how, even if you believe that homosexuality is a sin in your religion, you should still tolerate the difference of opinions between yourself and others and allow for human rights to be equally granted to all human beings, regardless of sex, gender orientation, sexual orientation, race, religion, or intelligence. I could even argue it from a religious perspective — let he who is without sin cast the first stone — and point out all of the other sins committed on a daily basis, by Christians, which are considered an abomination by the very same chapter that demonizes homosexuality (such as wearing a cloth made of a blend of more than one fiber!)

I would do all of that, except there’s a notice at the bottom of the page which says the paper does not publish letters to the editor.

And that, dear readers, is where the difference between Facebook and the bigot in The Hamiltonian ends. Because when you put one opinion out there, and you leave no room for debate of that opinion, that newspaper or website is, in fact, endorsing that opinion. The Hamiltonian is, in fact, saying that it as a newspaper supports gaybashing and bigotry. So I’m writing a letter demanding they stop putting their newspaper in my mailbox because of the are a hate-filled tabloid.

What I am not doing is demanding a retraction, demanding an apology from the author or even for the author to be fired. He has a right to free speech, and private companies have a right to publish what they want. It is not the right of the individual to dictate what speech can and cannot be published in a private area. It is not my right to demand a retraction. It is my right, however, to tell them to go fuck themselves and stop subscribing.

It is the same for Amazon and for LiveJournal. If you do not like their content, leave. Tell them why you’re taking your business elsewhere, and leave. There are alternatives — Barnes and Nobel and DreamWidth, respectively. Take your business elsewhere if you do not like what they do or how they treat your group — and if you want to say, tell them that you’re regrettably leaving. Don’t make demands or create ultimatums — that’s what immature people do. Just take your business elsewhere and see what happens. In the case of both Amazon and LiveJournal, as soon as they realized what they’d done had upset their customers, they fixed the problems posthaste.

However, I’d point out, that in the case of Facebook, people threatening to leave, writing hateful letters, and otherwise tantrum is beyond unreasonable. Unlike Amazon and LiveJournal, where the questionable actions seemed to come from an internal source and therefore espoused the negative, bigoted beliefs, Facebook’s content in question is user created, and a group for Holocaust survivors, believers, apologists, etc. could just as easily be created to counter the information, to present truth to counter the lies, to balance the perspective so that an individual searching the term “Holocaust” could find all the information and make up their minds about it as an individual.

Oh, but people don’t LIKE that! There’s a general thread the connects conservative and liberals, Republicans and Democrats, atheists and Christians, and it goes like this: all people should only think nice thoughts, good thoughts, the thoughts that I approve. Hate speech and hate crime legislation is an example of this. The goal of crimes against bigoted, unintelligent, uninformed thoughts and speech is to keep all alternative opinions closeted, buried, to give the appearance of a uniform consciousness of society that is only good and benevolent. Alternative ideas must be buried, and those that are particularly disdainful removed from public sight.

Why?

When we bury ignorant hate speech, when we make bigotry a thought crime, we are giving credence to the paranoid belief of most extremists that they are a persecuted mass whose numbers would grow if they were not being deliberately and systematically oppressed by the Government.

When we bury hate speech, we are in direct violation of the very principles this country was founded upon — the idea that all speech, no matter how repugnant, was protected as long as you didn’t incite others to violence. Burying hate speech is possibly the least patriotic thing you can do.

When we add additional punishment to the sentence an individual receives for committing a crime because he was thinking thoughts that society deems incorrect and morally reprehensible, we are creating Thought Crimes. We are marching, in lock step, toward the dystopian future of 1984.

When we punish someone for thinking bigoted thoughts, we are only solidifying the thoughts in that person’s mind.

Hate speech and hateful thoughts will always exist; we cannot control or wipe away the ideas of the human mind. Someone will always think that homosexuality is bad, just as there are people today who believe that interracial marriage is immoral and wrong. Just as electing a black president did not officially end racism, censorship of those who deny the Holocaust will not end anti-Semetism, nor will it bring back the millions of people, Jews and gentiles alike, who were killed by the Nazi regime.

All censorship does is provide fertile breeding grounds for the ideas that are being censored.

When a publication endorses an opinion we do not like, we have the right to vote with our dollars to take our business elsewhere. When a publication allows equal time to all sides of an argument, we have the duty to support the enlightened side, not by bashing, censoring, or harming the opposing side, but by offering to debate with reason, by showing love and unwavering support for the human being that is behind the horrible ideas they spout.

My parents, I am embarrassed to say, are racists, especially my mother. She’ll even tell you as much, though she has a few black friends, “The good ones,” she says. She drops the n-word a lot when discussing matters of race. It was how she was raised, by parents who were authoritarian and for whom she still holds a child-like reverence. It has been a long, hard struggle for me to accept that I can still love my family for the good people they are and overlook the ignorance in which they live. When my mother makes a blanket generalization about black people, I have to stop myself from yelling at her, and instead look at her and say, “Now, you don’t really believe that’s true, do you? What about your friend Anna*? She’s a nice person, and she’s black, right?”

“Yes, but she’s one of the good ones.”

“Maybe they’re all ‘good ones’ and maybe the man that cut you off just now is just an asshole?”

She sulks and stops talking, possibly because she knows I’m not going to let her win this one, but possibly because she knows, in her heart, that I’m right.

I would urge everyone to treat those in the world who are complete fucking morons and believe that the Holocaust never happened, that gay marriage will destroy the world, that Arabs hate our freedom and will destroy America with the same compassionate argument. They are not always our mothers, but in a wider sense, in the sense of the human spirit, they are our brothers and sisters, and they need to be educated, the need to be encouraged to question the ignorant beliefs they hold. They should not be shouted at, pushed down, and forced underground where they can sew more seeds of hatred. We need to keep them on the surface, to prepare our counter arguments, to see what they’re saying and why they’re saying it so that we can present a reasoned, intelligent, and compassionate response.

Instead of shutting down the Holocaust deniers, let’s talk to them.

I know that reason and logic will always be anathema to some very hateful, very stupid, very ignorant people, but in censoring them, are we not stooping to their level, going to any length to “shut them up.” Are we, ourselves, not committing hate crimes by targeting our vengeance upon a specific group of people — the ridiculously ignorant — for no reason other than the fact that they will not listen to reason? And if we can’t shut them up, what next? Jail time? Forced re-education? Lobotomies for the haters? Fear is what breeds hate, and isn’t threats of silencing their voices at any cost just giving a real and logical fear to back up illogical ones?

Being an idiot is not a crime; we need to accept that and move on as a society. Maybe only when we can tolerate all thoughts — intolerant or not — and accept that not everyone is going to think nice, happy thoughts can we, as a society, make the appropriate steps toward ending hatred and bigotry in our society.

David Blunkett may be blind, but even he can see that Jacqui Smith’s national ID card scheme for the UK is a bad idea. But still, the brave Home Secretary — a woman who wants to replace Margaret Thatcher as the most hated women in the UK and who was once called “pocket dictator”_[1]– presses on, rolling out the much hated National ID cards in Manchester.

Why is Ms. Smith in favor of bringing about an authoritarian Creeping Socialist Nighmare Regime of Orwellian proportions? Normally, I’d tie this to Ms. Smith’s membership in Labour before it was “New Labour, when it was still apart of the Socialist Labor party — except the socialists and Marxists want nothing to do with a woman who is being investigated for alleged fraud. So no, it can’t be about fulfilling Marx’s manifesto. In fact, if you look at civil libertarians and socialist complaints, these two polar political opposites seem to believe this is a power grab, a totalitarian, a little Napolian in heels if you wish.

But that’s not what it’s all about, Ms. Smith insists. It’s all about YOU! It’s for your own good, for the good of the country! It will have real benefits, in real terms, for every man, woman, and child in Britain. Just look at how this benefits you:

ID cards will deliver real benefits to everyone, including increased protection against criminals, illegal immigrants and terrorists.

Because when terrorists hijack a plane, a chipped piece of plastic with your demographic details will keep you safe — or at least help identify your corpse later.

This is not the first of Ms. Smith’s creepy, Big Brotherish moves. Earlier last week, Ms. Smith’s proposed plan to create a national database of every phone call, text message, and email sent by every person in Britain — to fight the terrorists, you see — was rejected. Instead, telcoms will be asked to keep that information themselves — so every call you make, every letter you text, every breath you take … the telcoms will be watching you.

Kinda makes me want to go and hug Maggie Thatcher. Kinda, but not really. But almost.

Cites:

• My farewell plea to MPs: defend liberty
• Jacqui Smith to announce email and internet tracking plans
• 
  Jacqui Smith says DNA database profiles of 800,000 innocent people will be axed
• Manchester will be the first city where people can voluntarily sign up for an ID card, ministers are set to confirm.

Being able to hold politicians, companies, and individuals accountable for their actions by publicly calling them out for their misbehavior is what makes the internet a powerful tool for the consumer and the voter, what gives the silent majority a voice against tyranny and oppression.

So naturally, such a voice should be oppressed. But how?

Introducing The Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act would make it a felony punishable by up to two years in prison to transmit an electronic communication (”including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages”) “with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person…to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.”

Whoever transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication, with the intent to coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person, using electronic means to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both….

["Communication"] means the electronic transmission, between or among points specified by the user, of information of the user’s choosing, without change in the form or content of the information as sent and received; …

["Electronic means"] means any equipment dependent on electrical power to access an information service, including email, instant messaging, blogs, websites, telephones, and text messages.

Now the death of Megan Meier was a tragedy, I have no disagreement with that. There is something absolutely psychologically wrong with any adult who colludes with teenagers to systematically torment and psychologically torture a teenager with a well-known history of mental instability. It is morally wrong and in some states illegal to put a loaded handgun in the hand of a suicidal person and tell them, oh I don’t know, how about, “Everybody in O’Fallon knows how you are. You are a bad person and everybody hates you. Have a shitty rest of your life. The world would be a better place without you.”_[1]

However, while free speech is not protected if it is with the intent to provoke or promote harm (can’t yell fire in a crowded theatre if there’s no fire, for example), the broad message of the new law is far greater that that. It goes farther than what your mother always said, “if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all,” and actually gets into the Orwellian territory of “If you say bad things, you’ll go to jail.” We’re not just protecting the Megan Meiers of the world any more. We’re now dancing in the territory of censorship.

UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh outlines six ways that this law could punish Citizen Journalists (like yours truly), newspaper reporters, personal bloggers, and posters on social networking sites:

1. I try to coerce a politician into voting a particular way, by repeatedly blogging (using a hostile tone) about what a hypocrite / campaign promise breaker / fool / etc. he would be if he voted the other way. I am transmitting in interstate commerce a communication with the intent to coerce using electronic means (a blog) “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior” — unless, of course, my statements aren’t seen as “severe,” a term that is entirely undefined and unclear. Result: I am a felon, unless somehow my “behavior” isn’t “severe.”

2. A newspaper reporter or editorialist tries to do the same, in columns that are posted on the newspaper’s Web site. Result: Felony, unless somehow my “behavior” isn’t severe.

3. The politician votes the wrong way. I think that’s an evil, tyrannical vote, so I repeatedly and harshly condemn the politician on my blog, hoping that he’ll get very upset (and rightly so, since I think he deserves to feel ashamed of himself, and loathed by others). I am transmitting a communication with the the intent to cause substantial emotional distress, using electronic means (a blog) “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” (I might also be said to be intending to “harass” — who knows, given how vague the term is? — but the result is the same even if we set that aside.) Result: I am a felon, subject to the usual utter uncertainty about what “severe” means.

4. A company delivers me shoddy goods, and refuses to refund my money. I e-mail it several times, threatening to sue if they don’t give me a refund, and I use “hostile” language. I am transmitting a communication with the intent to coerce, using electronic means “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” Result: I am a felon, if my behavior is “severe.”

5. Several people use blogs or Web-based newspaper articles to organize a boycott of a company, hoping to get it to change some policy they disapprove of. They are transmitting communications with the intent to coerce, using electronic means “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” Result: Those people are a felon. (Isn’t threatening a company with possible massive losses “severe”? But again, who knows?)

6. John cheats on Mary. Mary wants John to feel like the scumbag that he is, so she sends him two hostile messages telling him how much he’s hurt her, how much she now hates him, and how bad he should feel. She doesn’t threaten him with violence (there are separate laws barring that, and this law would apply even in the absence of a threat). She is transmitting communications with the intent to cause substantial emotional distress, using electronic means “to support severe, repeated, and hostile behavior.” Result: Mary is a felon, again if her behavior is “severe.”

Cites:

• Everybody’s a Critic—and a ‘Cyberbully,’ Apparently
• Federal Felony To Use Blogs, the Web, Etc. To Cause Substantial Emotional Distress Through “Severe, Repeated, and Hostile” Speech?

So, it is with mixed emotions that I say this: Kathi-Anne Reinstein, you are a Masshole.

What is Ms. Reinstein’s great offense that has caused me to label her a Masshole you ask? The fact that the woman seems in complete denial about a simple fact of life and geriatric psychology: seniors (I’m talking pensioners, not the high school variety) and the mentally handicapped have sex. Often. Consensually.

Massachusetts House Bill 1668 [is] a proposed amendment to the state’s child pornography law that would make it a serious crime to photograph with “lascivious intent” a person over the age of 60 or a person with a disability who has been declared mentally incompetent.

State Representative Kathi-Anne Reinstein says the bill she sponsored was intended to protect vulnerable populations from sexual predators, but some disability advocates and law buffs have criticized the amendments as restricting the sexual freedom of seniors and people with disabilities.

I don’t know if any of you remember a show in the 80s called Life Goes On, which featured a family whose oldest son, Corky, had Down’s syndrome. At some point in the show, Corky got married — to a young woman with Down’s syndrome as well — and they wanted to start a family of their own. They wanted to have sex, but LOL! (in the days before we were completely sensitive to the feelings of the disabled) they didn’t know how! Ha ha ha! How funny!

Apparently, this is the kind of understanding of the mentally disabled that Ms. Reinstein (who has never seen an episode of The Golden Girls) has of the disabled and elderly — they’re so childlike, so infantalized in her Masshole mind, that they have no idea of the concept of sex. Ergo, if someone takes a sexual photo of them, it’s clearly exploitative.

Quick, someone call Farrah Fawcet! She was horribly exploited by Playboy when she posed for the cover at the age of 50! And they might want her to do it again! And she’s only ONE of several women over the age of fifty who’ve posed for the lad’s mag!

But enough about those horny seniors (and, if you’ve studied geriatric psychology, you know that they are, in fact, quite randy in their old age). Let’s talk about the handicapped.

Some observers have noted that the specification “declared mentally incompetent” appears only in one portion of the proposal. Says law professor Eugene Volokh, “The law is not limited to people who are mentally handicapped and thus unable to consent, or who are photographed against their will by their caretakers (the justification discussed in this story). The operative provisions cover people over 60 and the disabled whether or not they are incompetent.* One provision, relating to people’s being “deemed incapable of consenting,” would cover only “an elder or a person with a disability adjudicated as incompetent by a court of the commonwealth,” but I don’t see how this would stop liability under the other provisions, since consent is no defense under the other provisions in any event.”

* – emphasis my own

So, if you’re handicapped, elderly, or otherwise not a young person between the ages of 18-59, you’d better get out the chastity belt — or at the very least, don’t take pictures doing your dirty, horrid deeds. Because no civilized person wants to see that unless their exploitative monsters who are taking advantage of you! And if you’re doing this yourself — “sexting” at sixty! — you’d better get your ass in jail with the 16 year olds. It’s for your own good, you sick pervert!

First, there was the decision to uphold the FCC’s right to fine people for swearing and other verbal slips:

The Supreme Court said yesterday that the Federal Communications Commission may penalize even the occasional use of certain expletives on the airwaves but left for another day the question of whether such a policy is constitutional.

The court’s narrow ruling said the FCC — prompted by Cher’s use of the F-word during a 2002 live broadcast and similar remarks by what Justice Antonin Scalia called “foul-mouthed glitteratae from Hollywood” — was justified in changing its policy in 2004 to fine broadcasters up to $325,000 every time certain words are allowed on the air.

This from a man who laughed as Stephen Colbert flipped him off (Italian-style) at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a few years ago. Then again, the WHCD is just one massive circle jerk when the media and the politicians in bed with said media get together for an orgy of mutual masturbation.

Fox Television Stations and other networks had challenged FCC’s actions under the Administrative Procedure Act. They said the agency did not adequately explain why it changed its policy, which previously held that one-time utterances of expletives did not constitute a violation of FCC rules.

…Fox said it was disappointed but “optimistic that we will ultimately prevail when the First Amendment issues are fully aired before the courts.”

For Christ’s sake, Supreme Court, you’re making me side with FOX on this one? Something is seriously wrong here.

My favorite quote, however, once again comes from the Justice I love to hate the most. Mr. Scalia, take it away:

“Whether [the policy] is unconstitutional will be determined soon enough, perhaps in this very case,” Scalia wrote in sending the case back to the appeals court. In the meantime, any suppressed “references to excretory and sexual material surely lie at the periphery of First Amendment concern.”

Essentially, if it refers to sex or feces, it’s automatically naughty! Because we’re not going to go by the intention of our Founding Fathers — especially not the so-called Constitutionalist Scalia. Oh no. We’re going back further, to the true founders of this country, the Puritans! They knew the score, and that is to say that scoring is bad, mmm kay. Sex is bad, it’s something we do, but we should still be kind of ashamed of, because we enjoy it! And we shouldn’t! It’s dirty! It’s wrong! It is animalistic and uncivilized! It’s horrid! WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE STOP THINKING ABOUT SEX! DIRTY!

Then, to drive the point home, the Supreme Court decided to send the FCC fine of CBS over Nipple Gate back to the lower courts for reconsideration.

The high court on Monday directed the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia to consider reinstating the $550,000 fine that the Federal Communications Commission imposed on CBS over Jackson’s breast-baring performance at the 2004 Super Bowl.
…
Last year, the appeals court threw out the fine against CBS, saying the FCC strayed from its long-held approach of applying identical standards to words and images when reviewing complaints of indecency.

The appellate court said the incident lasted nine-sixteenths of one second and should have been regarded as ”fleeting.” The FCC previously deviated from its nearly 30-year practice of fining indecent broadcast programming only when it was so ”pervasive as to amount to ’shock treatment’ for the audience,” the court said.

But, ah, see the Supreme Court just decided two things in Tuesday’s ruling: sex is always naughty and not protected by the First Amendment on it’s face (THANKS SCALIA!) and that “fleeting” does not equal “excusable”. So, if you’ve been dying to see Janet Jackson’s nipple again, you’re in luck, because this case just won’t go away! The nip slip seen and heard round the world returns, and this time, it’s personal.

Or something like that.

References:
Supreme Court Revives Fine Over Super Bowl Incident
Supreme Court Rules that Government Can Fine for ‘Fleeting Expletives’

http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?9,651569,651569#msg-651569

Thank you for submitting nin: access to the App Store. We’ve reviewed nin: access and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it contains objectionable content which is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

The objectionable content referenced in this email is “The Downward Spiral”. Since the app is live on the App store, please make the necessary changes to the application as soon as possible, and resubmit your binary to iTunes Connect. Thank you

It’s worth noting that The Downward Spiral is available from the iTunes store, that Trent himself doesn’t seem to know what they hell they’re referring. The song? The album? It’s so unspecific!

But don’t worry. If you want an actual objectionable app, you can always get the frequently reappearing Shaken Baby app!

Well, The Shrub through there were no dinosaurs, so it stands to reason that President Jesus would try to deny the existence of shrubbery by sending all of The Shrub’s White House tweets down the memory hole. (Aside: thank you, George Orwell, for providing us with the term Memory Hole. I’m sure it will come in handy in the next three and a half years, at least!)

From ValleyWag:

Barack Obama’s Webheads are getting ready to launch a new Twitter feed for President Change. But the White House already had a Twitter account. It has disappeared down the memory hole.

Given the widespread belief that Obama invented the Internet, many will scoff at the idea that the Bush White House had a Twitter account. But it did — and the administration handed over twitter.com/thewhitehouse at noon on Inauguration Day, just like it did with the whitehouse.gov website. Google still has the old account, with Obama’s tweets, in its cache.

Valleywag alum Paul Boutin suggests on Gadgetwise that this is a simple rationalization of accounts, matching the definite-article-free “whitehouse” username the Obama team uses on Flickr and YouTube. But Obama’s Twitterers didn’t just change the username on the account; they started fresh, wiping out all of the White House’s existing Twitter followers, and the entire archive of messages.

Perhaps it’s safe to assume that the dwindling fans of the Bush White House wouldn’t want to transfer their allegiances. And many of the Bush tweets were just broken pointers to pages on 43’s now-archived website. But there ought to be something about the White House that transcends its occupant. A new president doesn’t move his residence from 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. There’s something about this move that smacks of change for change’s sake.

Someone who enjoyed bringing babies into the world by attending births could be a midwife, a birthing coach, or a maternity nurse to avoid dealing with the termination of pregnancy. But that would greatly decrease his or her ability to bring in revenue for annual PAP smears, treating women with HRC, etc.

So, when those who’d opt out via the “conscience” clause say it’s about religion, what they’re really saying is that it’s about the money, honey.

A federal judge in Scranton issued a temporary order preventing the Wyoming County district attorney
from filing criminal charges against three teenage girls accused of sending nude or semi-nude photos on a
cellphone, or “sexting.” Last week the girls and their mothers, represented by the American Civil
Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, sued the district attorney, George P. Skumanick, arguing that by
threatening to prosecute the girls for being in photos he considered “provocative” he was violating their
constitutional rights. The judge, James M. Munley of Federal District Court, found that the girls and their
mothers “are reasonably likely to succeed on the merits” in their lawsuit. He ruled that his order would
be in effect at least until a June 2 hearing that could make the order permanent until the girls’ federal
civil lawsuit is resolved.

Thank God I’m not a teenager today. I’d have a criminal record and be a registered sex offender, as I don’t think there’s a guy I dated out there who doesn’t have nude photos of me.