Mr. Dan Kelly’s blog

I prefer the ease of LastFM to Vox for musical offerings. Please stop by!

http://www.last.fm/user/mrdankelly

I'm going to take a stab and say that someone bombed the living shit out of LiveJournal and SixApart for their slavish acquiescence to some parental action group I've never even heard of, and that's why I can't get on my LJ right now. So, like a man in a bunker a mile beneath an earth scorched by nuclear bombs and biowarfare devices, I'm posting this to say, "I'm still here. Is anyone else?"

I won't blow this up into something bigger than it is, but I find it interesting that just when this country started moving away from terror fear and ultra-right-wing isolation and overreaction, and moving toward the idea that we need to fix things rather than blow them up, the old child protection panic has been implemented at LiveJournal.

You know something? I'm going to take a stand and say you shouldn't fuck kids. It's crazy, I know, but it's about time someone said that diddling the little ones is bad. Very bad indeed. Anyone who tries to molest or assault a child should be arrested, tried, and (if found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt) locked up. Call me an iconoclast.

Thing is, you don't really have to go much further than that. But as is the case with most panics, people mistake the map for the territory and start burning books, banning blogs, and demanding loyalty oaths when they think the pervs aren't being rounded up and shot fast enough. This moves on to demolishing any quasi-representation of the objet d'panic, enforcement usually based on the perceptions of people who imagine trench-coated perverts in every bush. It's like using a sledgehammer to swat flies. As an aside, I've always been of the mind that those who complain the loudest are mentally struggling the most, and they want to spread the self-flagellation around. In the old days they formed monasteries and whipped each other in private. Now they start crusades.

I am a writer, a creator of content. As such I cannot support any form of censorship. I don't make exceptions, and not because of any slippery slope fears, but because it's wrong to censor people, however disgusting or repulsive they might be. If they keep their hands clean, who gives a damn what they write or draw, sez I. You want to isolate sleaze? Fine. But don't destroy it.

I may very well move away from LiveJournal if they can be so arbitrarily and easily influenced into stifling expression without careful analysis.

If you want the final hardcore American reason for arguing against censorship, here it is: I paid for this service. You don't get to shut it off unless you have absolute proof I'm up to no good.

From Danger: Diabolik!

Danger: Diabolik!

Valmont's GoGo Pad

Ennio Morricone

For Jerry Falwell.

Neil Young

Southern Man

Neil Young