Another Perspective

It's Still Censorship

I finished up my last installment with a list of what other people consider satanic, evil, obscene and essentially ripe for removal from our cultural fabric. Initial feedback indicated that many found the list humorous, yet few were surprised by its existence. What might be surprising is where such a list comes from.

Some people might think that censorship is as partisan an issue as affirmative action, health care and Lite beer from Miller, but that is just not the case. It is one of the few issues where one can find the likes of Clinton, Gore, Reno, Dole, Falwell, Robertson and Dworkin all snuggled up tight together in the bed of thought control through media and individual censorship. Our allies and adversaries would appear to be each other's consort with regard to the orchestration of a continuous attack upon our freedom of producing and consuming whatever form of speech we feel is appropriate for ourselves.

When better than 80 percent of the world's mass media is controlled by eight or 12 global corporations, the 1996 Federal Communications sell-out act will only help narrow that number to three or four in almost no time. While Bill Clinton had the opportunity to veto this bill, it apparently seemed to be the kind of "harmless" legislation that would appease an otherwise cantankerous, conservative and fiercely partisan Congress. The signing satisfied the Congress from both the morally-rightist and corporate-liberty clans. Truly a savvy move for a "liberal" in an election year.

I forget where I read it, but I must agree that Bill Clinton is by far and away the best possible candidate for the Republican Presidential nomination. Unfortunately for Republicans, heıs already got a date for the Presidential campaign ball.

While Bill Clinton was running for President the first time around (does any politician ever really stop running?), he vowed to throw out the executive order put in place by George Bush regarding the NEA Some might remember this executive order for its use of Robert Mapplethorpe and another famous Frohnmayer as first-class, blue-ribbon, bona-fide scapegoats. This promise almost convinced me to end my tradition of third-party voting in presidential campaigns, but the temptation was squelched when I remembered the spousal issue. Not Hillary, but Tipper.

Clinton kept his promise to rescind the order, only to hire Janet Reno who then attempted to reinstate the exact text of Bush's executive order by way of the judicial process.

In an uncharacteristically "liberal" move, Janet Renoıs Department of Justice wouldn't back up the suit instigated by the State Attorney General in an obscenity suit in Bellingham, WA, involving Jim and Debi Goad's Answer Me! magazine with similar federal charges. She did, however, find it in her heart to call the small-time, nickel and dime self-financed independent publisher before a grand jury in Washington, D.C. to question him as to why a copy of their magazine was found in Francisco Martin Duran's vehicle after his arrest for taking potshots at the White House. This is a move inspired by none other than the wife of the Vice-President, Tippy: Create enough legal harassment of small-scale, independent producers of media that legal costs render them fiscally insolvent, effectively killing the message without actually censoring it in legal terms. Tipper would later parrot a California police detective in calling such tactics "cost-effective." While it would be a stretch to call the recent communications bill and the "Gore tactic" a conspiratorial effort to silence all but the most powerful mainstream media, each tactic certainly complements the other.

When these tactics are placed in the context of Bob Dole's recent campaign against Hollywood and the record industry, the call for a boycott of Time-Warner due to the offerings of the Interscope Records subsidiary begins to make sense in a way that it might not otherwise: While boycotting oxygen would probably be easier, if the media is allowed to monopolize itself with the help of the government, and small-time media is shut out by the cost-effective means of the ³grass-roots² censorship tyrant's ends, thought control of the masses and censorship becomes as easy as accusing the large media monsters of poor corporate citizenry. As we all know, it's much easier to rally public support for the legislative reining-in of the evil, profit-minded corporate monster than it is to rein-in the evil, profit-minded public itself.

Again, to call it a conspiracy would be a serious stretch. For any of the culprits to have the genius necessary, wholly or severally, to orchestrate such an elaborate plan would imply a level of genius that fails to manifest itself anywhere else in the landscape of their individual or collective endeavors.

Everyone in mainstream and not-so-mainstream media seems to relish the debate over Hillary Clinton and the prominent role she allegedly plays in ruining her husband's Presidency. All the while, another presidential wife quietly toils in the wings. Tipper Gore's homepage carefully mitigates her role in creating the Parent's Music Resource Center and the "Back in Control Center" by conveniently omitting the names of these organizations. However their power, influence and role in the landscape of censorship and thought control is no mystery to some of these organizationıs biggest contributors, most notably organizations headed by Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell.

Like Hillary, Tipper insists that she's a "liberal feminist." I was raised to believe and subsequently decided for myself that liberal feminism is usually about as progressive as it gets.

So when did such a progressive woman begin sounding like Pat Robertson or Louis Farrakkhan?

It happened when Tipper felt it necessary to play that credibility card amidst the throes of the war she started with the "liberal media" over record labeling in the late 1980's. Whether Tipper's rhetoric was hurting hubby, then-Senator Al Gore, or whether plans were already in the works to mainstream the Gore camp to make White House ambitions more marketable, Tipper's personal campaign suddenly ceased. This is not to say that her campaign ceased however; the P.M.R.C. and the Back in Control Center carry the torch as high and proud as ever.

So while we might expect someone like Louis Farrakhan to off-handedly remark that the Star of David is a satanic symbol, I wonder what brand of hysteria would ensue if it came from the mouth of, say, the wife of the Vice President...

The good news is, Tipper never called the Star of David satanic. The bad news is, Tipper's Back in Control Center puts out a pamphlet that tells parents to be wary if their children begin to sport the Star of David and listen to Fine Young Cannibals.

Why? Because, according to the Back in Control Center, both are sure-fire indicators that those same children also worship the devil. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell are donating more money than ever.

When the voice of the enemy sounds just like the voice of the erstwhile ally, we are forced to evaluate the situation on a whole different level.

If we, by our own reactionary tantrum, were to attempt to silence any member of this Punditocracy (as Jello Biafra, former vocalist from the Dead Kennedys, likes to call them), would we in fact be shutting them up?

Tipper was likely shut-up by the Clinton-Gore advisory team, but did that shut-up her Back in Control Center?

Fortunately, no.

Fortunately, you ask?

Of course. How else would we have been able to find out that a group or person can go so far left and another so far right that they meet on the other side?

I think the more important question is, "If you never knew this to be the case, would you have ever bothered to ask?"

I'll venture your answer would have been, "No."

The right of free speech and of the press is a sword that cuts both ways, and in order for it to cut as you would have it, you must also let it cut for the other (though itıs doubtful that they would be for hate, violence and evil deeds, as statistics show that true deviants are generally quiet, loner types who don't necessarily want to be the center of attention).

Though I'm no racist or pedophile, I would be intrigued to find out what lies between the pages of the newsletters for the White Aryan Resistance or the North American Man-Boy Love Association for no other reason than to find out what they're thinking and perhaps more importantly, how they are thinking about what they are putting into print. Often times, this says a great deal more than the words themselves.

If I didn't think that my copy of the Anarchist's Cookbook would cause me enough trouble when the thought police invade my home in search of material that might be influencing my feeble, impressionable and therefore subversive mind, I might consider trying to obtain some of this material.

Lest I find my own words being used against me at some future date, I'd like to emphasize that I consider pedophilia and racism despicable scourges. Neither one can really exist without innocent victims, and for that reason, it is my opinion that the world would be a better place without them.

So, let's pretend that I have declared war on WAR and NAMBLA. Like a true soldier, the better I know the enemy, the better I can fight it. I want to learn all I can about the two. Despite my aversion to financially benefiting groups that I would just as soon blow-up with a bomb I learned to make using my Anarchist's Cookbook, I instead subscribe to both publications, so I can begin my "intelligence gathering." Three weeks later, the Secret Service busts my door down and finds my Anarchist's Cookbook, my girlfriend's underwear and the newsletters from WAR and NAMBLA.

But alas, it seems I have run out of room once again and will have to finish this in the next issue. I promise Iıll wrap up this hypothetical tale, as well as finally come clean with who it is that's telling the world that you can either censor Bruce Springsteen, John Denver, Barney, the Smurfs and Stevie Wonder, or wind up a drug-addicted, homosexual devil worshipper.

J. Pierson, UO legend, was the Franklin Roosevelt of Another Perspective for the Oregon Commentator