Ho no
It didn’t take long for the first presidential candidate to get on the censorship bandwagon, and we can thank Don Imus for that. Or maybe Al
Sharpton.
Republican presidential nobody Mike Huckabee says that if Imus
gets the boot for “offensive comments,” so should everyone else, like Rosie
O’Donnell and Bill Maher.
Huckabee didn’t specify exactly what these two said that deserved
firing, but it was probably something he didn’t agree with. And of course racist
hate speech is the equivalent of someone stating opinions contrary to your own.
This is the hornets nest that Sharpton kicks over when he says
that Imus was just “round one” in this crusade and now we should go on a witch hunt to eradicate all other aspects of “racism and
misogyny” in entertainment, art and the media. Starting, presumably with the Old
Testament. The problem is that once censorship gets legitimized, there’s no
guarantee that you’re going to remain the one who decides what’s acceptable.
As big a pig as Imus
is, canning him ultimately will result in three unintended consequences:
1. He will become a martyr, he has in fact already has, for those
who think the same way. No doubt he will have a venue on Fox TV before long.
2. It will be open season on free expression. Not just movies,
but print, internet, TV, radio will be scrutinized for objectionable material
that any opportunistic politician or group can turn to their advantage by
condemning.
3. We will never learn the truth about 9/11. But don't get me started on that...
Speaking of censorship backfiring, the Federal Trade Commision
has put pressure on the gaming industry to tighten up on under 17-year-olds
getting access to M-rated games that offer graphic violence that impressionable
minds might want to imitate.
Are they crazy? Do you want the terrorists to win? Don’t they
know that the Army has bought a channel on the Global Gaming League website
where they can allow access their own top ten ranked game “America’s Army”
and others as a means of recruitment. Of course we want impressionable minds to
imitate graphic video game violence; somebody’s got to fight the evildoers in Iraq.