Censorship: An American Value

This whole train of thought was sparked by this post by Patrick at Daily Dish. As is usual with that blog, there's no commentary -- doesn't have anything to do with Oakeshott or being Catholic. Jeet Heer's article, however, is interesting, if flawed:

Wertham was particularly concerned about the violence, misogyny, and racism that were endemic in comics (and other popular art forms). He wasn't wrong on this point. Many of the comics now nostalgically celebrated by Hajdu and Chabon were extremely unsavory in their social attitudes. . . .

So, who is right, Hajdu or Beaty? Did Wertham have a point? Beaty's revisionism is valuable in forcing us to see Wertham as a complex historical figure, not an easy-to-dismiss cardboard crank. Still, Hajdu is right to point out that Wertham's ideas of proof were extremely primitive, more forensic than scientific. (Wertham had often testified in court cases, which skewed his sense of evidence.) Wertham thought he could prove his point by stringing together many anecdotes collected from his clinical research, making his claims virtually unverifiable.

Two points here, neither particularly pro-Wertham. First, of course, is that mass media do not create cultural norms, they reflect them. In fact, they are usually behind the curve (much like Congress). Witness the outcry over the fact that the gay couple of As the World Turns is not getting into as much hot and steamy as the straight couples: the audience is ready for it, but it seems the writers are not. If you don't believe me about the media reflecting trends, read Hans Christian Andersen in the context of the nineteenth-century bourgeoisie, particularly in regard to the role of women. (I'd venture to guess that one reason the press is getting such heat over its political reporting is that it has transgressed that boundary: it is shaping opinion, not reflecting it.)

The second point is the tendency of reformers to overreach, and overreach badly, usually based on a warped sense of what's actually happening. It's best, of course, if you can scare your targets into censoring themselves -- witness the film rating system.

The second strand to catch my eye was this post by Steve Benen at Crooks and Liars:

This week, the AFA decided McDonald’s is the new national scourge.

The “problem,” if you want to call it that, is the company’s vice president of communications, Richard Ellis, who has joined the board of directors for the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce. In an “action alert” sent to supporters yesterday, the AFA’s Wildmon expressed his outrage.

The AFA, of course, is all about censorship -- it's the underlying theme of all of the "pro-family, traditional values" groups. I've discussed this syndrome before, so let me just state it simply: they are not at all interested in free discussion of issues, and will use any means at their disposal to silence those they disagree with. They are, in their basic natures, censors. (Look at the tactics employed to introduce Biblical creationism into science classes -- the goal is, as much as anything else, to eliminate evolutionary theory from science education, which has been all too successful.)

(Sidebar: Benen links to this story, about the military's ban on making pornography available to soldiers. This is worthy of comment:

Rep. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., who sponsored the law, says the military is skirting Congress' intent. He notes the material also could contribute to a hostile environment for female military personnel. "If soldiers want to read that stuff, they can walk down the street and buy it somewhere else," Bartlett says. "I don't want (the military) to help."

There is, as usual, no evidence to support the idea that pornography leads to rape or any such thing -- in fact, there are studies that point to the opposite conclusion.)

Tristero mentioned this story at Hullabaloo:

Johns Hopkins University said Friday that it had programmed its computers to ignore the word “abortion” in searches of a large, publicly financed database of information on reproductive health after federal officials raised questions about two articles in the database.

Fortunately, the dean of the school is lifting the ban, but this is demonstrative of the kind of atmosphere the push for censorship has created.

It seems to be an ongoing tendency in America that certain groups or individuals have the need to limit the kinds of information others can seek out. Perhaps it's a relic of our Puritan heritage -- remember that, in spite of what you were taught in school about how upstanding the Puritans were, an essential element of their culture was spying on your neighbors to be sure they weren't doing anything you disapproved of. This is the kind of thing that religious conservatives are trying to bring back, after we spent two hundred years getting rid of it.

I could write a lot more about this -- noting attempts to ban books in school and public libraries, book burnings organized by "religious" leaders, the undue influence of religious extremists on the FCC in the interests of controlling what you can watch on airwaves you're paying for -- but you probably don't have the patience to read it. I'm getting hungry, so I don't really have the patience to write it.

About all we can do is fight it every time it rears its ugly head.