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I heard an Alanis Morissette song a couple of days ago and I was reminded of her publicity stunt last year. It was after the Janet Jackson boob fiasco, and Alanis went on stage wearing a "nude suit" to express her anger against American censorship laws...


My views on censorship

Censorship is a tricky issue with me. I'm on both sides of the fence depending on the case.

When I think "censorship," my first instinct is to think of Nazi book burnings, the Soviet Union, or 1984. But then I remember being in public school and hearing books being placed on the "banned list" by the school board. It made me want to find those books and read them.

In my mind I suppose I thought these were radical books, or hate literature or something. Or perhaps they were books like The Anarchist Cookbook and taught kids how to get high legally or how to build pipe bombs. When I actually looked into it, though, it was more often books like Catcher in the Rye, Slaughterhouse-5, or Huckleberry Finn. This didn't make sense to me.

So what that Huckleberry Finn says "nigger"? So what that Catcher in the Rye teaches indolence and dispondency? Better that we approach dangerous topics in a classroom environment than that we learn about it for the first time out in the real world. Isn't that one of the reasons we read books?

And yet, I also have no problem with a neighborhood or city being zoned to keep adult cinema and sex shops out. If the people want it that much, they can order it online or go to the nearest big city. A person's convenience does not outweigh my right not to see smut on a streetcorner. Capitalism is not moral by nature; however, if a society is moral then capitalism can be a valuable tool.

So when Alanis Morissette gets pissed at the FCC for being too conservative, she should really be getting pissed at the American people for being too conservative.

Freedom of speech is not a blank check. Everyone takes the First Ammendment and stretches it every which way to suit their purposes: whether it be walking around naked or burning a flag or having sex in public. "Freedom of speech" has become "freedom of expression"...which has now become "the right to be obnoxious."

There should always be a balance act between freedom of speech and freedom from speech. The problem is that it's a really a fight over public domain. Obviously, certain things are alllowed in public and certain things are not -- but who decides? The problem comes when liberals protect the most repugnant and abusive elements of society in their right to free speech, while simultaneously denying moral and religious free speech...and always under the guise of being politically correct.