The first heading
NOTE:
This is written by a retired Trail Judge and and Assistant
Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas
THE X-ON CONGRESS: INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT
by Steve Russell
American Reporter Correspondent
SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- You motherfuckers in Congress have dropped
over the edge of the earth this time. I understand that very few of the
swarm of high dollar lobbyists around the Telecommunications Bill had any
interest in content regulation -- they were just trying to get their
clients an opportunity to dip their buckets in the money stream that
cyberspace may become -- but the public interest sometimes needs a little
attention. Keeping your eyes on what big money wants, you have sold out
the First Amendment.
First, some basics. If your children walked by a public park
and heard some angry sumbitches referring to Congress as "the sorriest bunch
of cocksuckers ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that
"the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck the lobbyists'
dicks and fuck the people who sent you there," no law would be violated
(assuming no violation of noise ordinances or incitement to breach the
peace). If your children did not wish to hear that language, they could
only walk away. Thanks to your heads-up-your-ass dereliction of duty,
if they read the same words in cyberspace, they could call the FBI!
Cyberspace is the village green for the whole world. It is the
same as the village green our Founders knew as the place to rouse the
rabble who became Americans, but it is also different. Your blind
acceptance of the dubious -- make that dogass dumb -- idea that children
are harmed by hearing so-called dirty words has created some pretty stupid
regulations without shutting down public debate, but those stupid
regulations will not import to cyberspace without consequences that even
the public relations whores in Congress should find unacceptable.
In cyberspace, there is no time. A posted message stays posted
until it is wiped. Therefore, there is no way to indulge the fiction that
children do not stay up late or cannot program a VCR.
In cyberspace, there is no place. The "community standards" are
those of the whole world. An upload from Amsterdam can become a download
in Idaho. By trying to regulate obscenity and indecency on the Internet,
you have reduced the level of expression allowed consenting adults to that
of the most anal retentive blueballed fuckhead U.S. attorney in the country.
The Internet is everywhere you can plug in a modem. Call Senator Exon an
"ignorant motherfucker" in Lincoln, Nebraska and find yourself prosecuted
in Bibleburg, Mississippi.
In cyberspace, you cannot require the convenience store to sell
Hustler in a white sleeve. The functional equivalent is gatekeeper software,
to which no civil libertarian has voiced any objection. Gatekeeper software
cannot be made foolproof, but can you pandering pissants not see that any
kid smart enough to hack into a Website is also smart enough to get his
hands on a hard copy of Hustler if he really wants one?
In cyberspace, there is the illusion of anonymity but no real
privacy. It is theoretically possible for any Internet server to seine
through all messages for key words (although it seems likely the resulting
slowdown would be noticeable). Perhaps some of you read about America
OnLine's attempt to keep children from reading the word "breast?"
An apparently unforeseen consequence was the shutdown of a discussion group
of breast cancer survivors. Don't you think more kids are aware of "teat"
(pronounced "tit") than of "breast?" Can skirts on piano legs, er, limbs be
far behind?
But silly shit like this is just a pimple on the ass of the
long-term consequences for politics, art and education. You have passed
a law that will get less respect than the 55 m.p.h. speed limit dead bang
in the middle of the First Amendment. Indecency is nothing but a matter
of fashion; obscenity is the same but on a longer timeline. This generation
freely reads James Joyce and Henry Miller and the Republic still stands.
The home of the late alleged pornographer D. H. Lawrence is now a beautiful
writers' retreat in the mountains above Taos, managed by the University of
New Mexico.
Universities all have Internet servers, and every English
Department has at least one scholar who can read Chaucer's English
-- but not on the Internet anymore. Comparative literature classes might
read Boccaccio -- but not on the Internet anymore. What if some
U. S. Attorney hears about Othello and Desdemona "making the beast with
two backs" -- is interracial sex no longer indecent anywhere in the country,
or is Shakespeare off the Internet?
Did you know you can download video and sound from the
Internet? Yes, that means you can watch other people having sex
if that is interesting to you, live or on tape. Technology can make
such things hard to retrieve, but probably not impossible. And since
you have swept right past obscenity and into indecency, the baby boomers
had better keep their old rock 'n roll tapes off the Internet.
When the Jefferson Airplane sang "her heels rise for me," they
were not referring to a dance step. And if some Brit explains the line
about "finger pie" in Penny Lane, the Beatles will be gone. All of those
school boards that used to ban "The Catcher in the Rye" over cussing and
spreading the foul lie that kids masturbate can now go to federal court
and get that nasty book kept out of cyberspace.
But enough about the past. What about rap music? No, I
do not care much for it either -- any more than I care for the
language you shitheads have forced me to use in this essay -- but
can you not see the immediate differential impact of this law by
class and race? What is your defense -- that there are no
African-Americans on the Internet, since they are too busy pimping
and dealing crack? If our educational establishment has any sense
at all, they will be trying to see more teens of all colors on the
Internet, because there is a lot to be learned in cyberspace that
has nothing to do with sex.
There are plenty of young people in this country who have
legitimate political complaints. When you dickheads get done with
Social Security, they will be lucky if the retirement age is still
in double digits. But thanks to the wonderful job the public schools
have done keeping sex and violence out, we have a lot of intelligent
kids who cannot express themselves without indecent language. I have
watched lawyers in open court digging their young clients in the ribs
every time the word "fuck" slipped out.
Let's talk about this fucking indecent language bullshit.
Joe Shea, my editor, does not want it in his newspaper, and I respect
that position. He might even be almost as upset about publishing this
as I a about writing it. I do use salty language in my writing, but
sparingly, only as a big hammer. Use the fucking shit too fucking much
and it loses its fucking impact -- see what I mean? Fiction follows
different rules, and if you confine your fiction writing to how the
swell people want to see themselves using language, you not only
preclude literary depiction of most people but you are probably false
to the people you purport to depict.
Do you remember how real language used by real people got on
the air and in the newspapers? Richard Nixon, while he was president,
speaking in the White House about official matters. A law professor
and a nominee for Supreme Court Justice arguing about pubic hairs and
porno movies during Senate hearings. Are these matters now too indecent
for the Internet? How much cleansing will be required of the online
news services? Answer: Enough cleansing to meet the standard of what
is appropriate for a child in the most restrictive federal judicial
district.
This is bullshit -- unconstitutional bullshit and also
bad policy bullshit. To violate your ban on indecency, I have been
forced to use and overuse so-called indecent language. But if I
called you a bunch of goddam motherfucking cocksucking cunt-eating
blue-balled bastards with the morals of muggers and the intelligence
of pond scum, that would be nothing compared to this indictment,
to wit: you have sold the First Amendment, your birthright and
that of your children. The Founders turn in their graves.
You have spit on the grave of every warrior who fought under the
Starsand Stripes.
And what mess of pottage have you acquired in exchange for
the rights of a free people? Have you cleansed the Internet of even
the rawest pornography? No, because it is a worldwide system. You have,
however, handed the government a powerful new tool to harass its critics:
a prosecution for indecent commentary in any district in the country.
Have you protected one child from reading dirty words?
Probably not, if you understand what the economists call "substitution"
-- but you have leveled the standards of political debate to a point where
a history buff would not dare to upload some of the Federalist v.
Anti-Federalist election rhetoric to a Website.
Since the lobby reporting requirements were not law when the
censorship discussion was happening, I hope you got some substantial
reward for what you gave up. Thirty pieces of silver doesn't go far
these days.
-30-
(Steve Russell, retired after 16 years as a trial judge in Texas,
is Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of
Texas at San Antonio.)
This article may be reproduced free forever.