Another Perspective

The Devil's Workshop

For the third and final installment of my rant about censorship, we'll recap my not-so-hypothetical tale about where even casual tolerance of any kind of effort to censor another may find you.

We pretended that I had declared war on the White Aryan Resistance (WAR) and the North American Man-Boy Love Association (NAMBLA). I began my "intelligence gathering." Three weeks later, the Secret Service busts my door down and finds my Anarchist Cookbook, my girlfriend's underwear and the newsletters from WAR and NAMBLA.

The Emerald and all the networks run bits about that cross-dressing, anarchistic, racist, pedophile, Hezbollah terrorist bomber who ran the U of O's student station.

The reason for the visit from The Man is that it seems I have threatened world peace by publishing an article that connected three readily available dots: The President, the wife of the V.P. and her pet-project organization that called the Star of David "satanic."

Of course this tale is false, but it is not unlike the very true tales of Jello Biafra, Jim Goad and Michael Diana. Each of these people have experienced firsthand the extent to which our government fails to support the rights it is supposed to guarantee.

Jello, whose only crime was recording albums, was the first of the three to experience the kind of senseless yet very real home invasion that can result from saying things that some people don't like. Posters enclosed in new albums earned him a visit from a small army of police armed with search warrants.

Since the charge was distribution of obscene material, what the police were in search of remains as unclear as it is frightening. My understanding of the purpose of a search warrant is to obtain incriminating evidence that isn't likely to be turned over voluntarily. Seeing as how the incriminating poster was included in every copy of the album sold, there was little to suggest that an effort was being made to conceal the crime, if freedom of expression is in fact a crime. The search resulted in a myriad of far-flung allegations, most notable of which was one officer's suggestion that perhaps Mr. Biafra knew where all the missing milk-carton children were.

Tipper Gore claimed credit in the Tennessee Metro for the pillaging of homes and subsequent trial of Biafra. Calling the tactic of landing controversial messengers in court for any reason a "cost-effective" means of quieting dangerous messages is the common defense; bankrupting an individual with legal expenses is apparently the cheaper and more constitutional way of battling obscenity than actually trying to ban obscene material. For the first time in American history, Tipper, wife of the Vice President, claimed credit for putting a band on trial for an insert in a record they produced.

Jim Goad, publisher of Answer Me! magazine (a magazine of such small circulation it's classified as a "fanzine"), wasnąt named specifically in the obscenity suit against the bookstore in Bellingham, WA that stocked Answer Me!, but the case drew enough attention to Goad and the magazine that he was ultimately called before a Grand Jury in D.C. Apparently Francisco Martin Duran had a copy of Answer Me! in his truck.

The Secret Service found it while investigating what possessed Duran to take pot shots at the White House. What role a magazine featuring the top 100 serial killers throughout history played in the desperate act of a stupid man is unclear, but a good many of your tax dollars were spent to find out why. Following the hearing, Goad himself was as much at a loss as the Grand Jurors apparently were. Had Goad not landed a two book deal with Simon and Schuster, the trip would have probably put the magazine out of business.

Another publisher (with a whopping 300 person circulation mailing list) had his First Amendment rights stripped by a judge in Boca Raton, Florida. Boiled Angel publisher Michael Diana was fined, put on probation, given community service, barred from contacting people under 18 and is visited regularly at home by his parole officer without a warrant. Diana was also ordered by the judge not to produce any more "obscene material" under threat of incarceration. Apparently the definition of obscene was to be determined by the same judge that handed down the sentence. The content of the magazine was decidedly offensive, however no evidence of pedophilia or child pornography was found in the material or in his home. The ruling effectively bars Diana from continuing on with his vision for Boiled Angel. As if that were not a harsh enough sentence for publishing material that others consider offensive, the ruling also effectively bars Diana from having children.

Extreme or obscure as these examples are, there are plenty of mainstream examples, such as the power exerted by retailers like K-Mart, Wal-Mart and Blockbuster Video. K-Mart and Wal-Mart refused to carry Nirvana and Beck albums due to cover art that the retailers found offensive. The artists weren't exactly asked to capitulate with new covers, although the David Geffen Corp. made sure Trojan horse covers were issued specifically for the shelves of K-Mart and Wal-Mart. Blockbuster is quite a bit bolder in that it dictates to filmmakers exactly how and where films should be edited if they ever hope to see Blockbuster shelves.

While not exactly a logical extension of censorship, Pete Wilson introduced legislation that sought to ban baggy clothes in schools and the school board of Boca Raton, Florida banned baseball caps with NFL logos. When the government begins to censor expression on the fashion front, can speech be far behind?

Perhaps the people to ask are the Reverend Phil Phillips (who would like you to know that the Smurfs are satanic), or the Reverend Joe Chambers (who would like you to know that Barney promotes homosexuality), or perhaps Donald Wildman (who says Mighty Mouse promotes drug addiction, and was responsible for having pulled all car ads from Playboy, Madonna from Pepsi, and is a champion of "Reconstructionism," a movement that seeks to reassert right-wing totalitarian strict Old Testament rule over the masses). If they are unable to convince you, there's always the notorious Bob Larson, whose more infamous allegations are that Stevie Nicks, Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and John Denver are all satanic.

J. Pierson, General Manager of KWVA, is a featured columnist for the Oregon COmmentator