Tuesday, July 15, 2008
Censorship seem far worse than satire
Before burning down the ascforum blog in the manner of some righteously-indignant hysterical mob trashing a newspaper office in some frontier town, why not just hire an outside consulting firm for big bucks to determine if Lafcadio’s political satires are protected or not by First Amendment freedoms? Or just think it through yourselves. Do we promote critical thinking here at UT or not? Review the evidence on the blog itself. Censorship seems far worse than satire.
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5 comments:
Hear hear
Indubitably!
Please don't throw around words like censorship when they don't apply. Asking people to restrain themselves from giving into their basest prurient tendencies is not ordering them not to speak. It's is asking them to think it through first.
How about practicing a little self-censorship in the name of allowing a coherent message of needed reforms to be heard?
This seems more like the "satire" of the New Yorker than the meaningful and culturally useful satire of a Mark Twain.
And what political satire is being expressed here? Is Dean Lee running for an elected office I'm unaware of?
Further, was any thought given to the many faculty on this campus from Asian nations or cultural backgrounds? Wouldn't the knowledge that some of our peers might be offended be enough to ask people to hold back?
Diogenes, you and Lafcadio are burning down this blog with posts, and defenses of posts, like the magic bus.
of course lafcadio's political satires are protected by the first amendment. he/she can post them all over her/his front porch. this blog is not her/his front porch, and if the people in charge see them as offensive and decide to remove them, well, i have not asked a constitutional lawyer, but i doubt that lafcadio has a case...
diogenes also asks "Do we promote critical thinking here at UT or not? Review the evidence on the blog itself." on reviewing the evidence, we seem to be promoting uneducated, puerile thinking.
heaven forbid that i would agree with none!
Whether or not the original cartoon was racist, whether or not the First Amendment applies here, what remains is that this would not have become such a big deal if none hadn't made it one--almost as if none had been looking for something to be offended by. (I wish I had that much free time!)Maybe asking someone to think things through before they write isn't censorship, but keeping at it as none has done--with all the vitriol and vehemence--has turned it into censorship. And if censorship is worse than satire, ignorant and hypocritical censorship is worse. I'm with Dio on this one.
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