THE
X-ON CONGRESS: INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT
Steve Russell
Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas
at San Antonio
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 On Line'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 am 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 Stars and 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.
# # #
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