Post
by Zhust » Sun Feb 11, 2007 1:24 pm
The events in Boston surrounding this is the kind of thing rubs me entirely the wrong way -- exactly the same wrong way as how censorship is implemented in America.
Ok, so with censorship it's like this: the Federal Communications Commission has rules where a broadcaster can be fined if a broadcast event offends the community standards. Now, "community standards" are not explicitly defined, and are theoretically measured when people who received the broadcast report that it offended them. In practice, it depends on complaints and on the judgment of FCC officials -- my standards include never making ad hominem arguments yet, to be blunt, nobody will ever be fined because it doesn't have to do with seeing boobies on TV.
So what happens is the broadcasters are saddled with deciding which content is appropriate and which is not. If you work for a large network, they can absorb some fines, but why would they not pass the punishment onto the person responsible for the "offensive" content? In the college radio station where I'm part of a talk-radio show, the on-air DJ is responsible for the time-delay "dump" button -- any fines would bankrupt the station so the DJ is saddled with full responsibility.
In the end, any DJ (or TV show editor, etc.) not wanting to get hit with a $250,000 fine for some arbitrary reason will be absolutely overzealous in their censorship of materials played on the air. Although there is "no censorship of free speech in America", well, there is.
Now we have a new "community standard": terror.
The effects of somebody being frightened is in the hands of the people creating arbitrary artwork. They are held responsible for the viewer's perception.
So where does that leave us? Not safer, that's for sure -- I mean, if you have heard about bombings in Iraq, the idea is to make a bomb that looks as commonplace as possible -- but it does leave us more terrified.
Creators are now afraid to create. People are even more scared of things that are new and unusual.
What we need to find bombs is intelligent investigation. A bomb isn't going to be marked with bright, blinking lights. It's going to look just like things we see every day and ignore -- trucks with roving billboards, or the bins for those free apartment guides.
Artists are out to surprise people and keep them alive. Terrorists are out to surprise people and kill them. The difference is in the killing.
But I'm going a long way in one direction to make a comment in another.
If these guys did not plant bombs -- did not intend to kill people -- then they are not terrorists. They not guilty of any crimes. In whatever manner they choose to conduct themselves, that is their right. To say they should have "behaved better at their press conference" only serves to take those rights away.
I am very pleased to see they stood their ground and made a mockery of the system that attempted to terrorize them by charging them with being terrorists.
May your deeds return to you tenfold,
---Zhust, Curiosityist
emily
