The Unofficial Ministry of Control

Posted on January 25, 2009 in Censorship Scoundrels

You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done.
-Barack Obama

I don’t forsee any effort by the Obama administration to shut down the freedom of speech that racist gits like Rush Limbaugh have been using to the hilt lately ((I invite them to keep on doing it. It wins us elections!)) . The imagination of the wRong is rife with efforts to wire their jaws shut and cut their fingertips off so they can’t communicate their odious ideas. But that’s not their real fear. They are most afraid that people will not listen to them.

I have the view that nothing in the Constitution requires me, Private Citizen Joel, from having my ears stuffed full of radioactive cauliflower. So I freely set rules for this blog, set /ignore on chatters in IRC, and out of the goodness of my heart block especially rabid dorks from listening in on my Twitter remarks.

Last night one of these called me a censor and I laughed at this. Excuse me, the Bill of Rights has this clause about freedom of association. If you’re going to be a virulent ass and address me in terms such as “jackass” or “whiner” for my views, I don’t want to associate with you. There’s also this little problem with the definition of censorship which says that it is a thing that a government does to its citizens. I’m not a government nor am I keeping anyone from saying crude falsehoods about our president: I’m just exercising my right to ignore them.

But it grows deeper and darker than that. The one thing I could say about the barrage of propaganda that characterized the last eight years ((A fact that I will keep harping on because Bush is responsible for the mess we are in.)) is that I retained my right to not watch television, not to read the news, not to submit myself to listening to it. It’s the same right that the wRong has and I would not take it from them. If they want to listen, they can. If they don’t, they don’t have to.

What is insidious about their demand that I not block them, that I listen to their garbage is that it leads to an Orwellian world. Imagine having to listen to Bush or Obama as you got up, as you went through the day, and at bedtime. At no time could you say “But I don’t want to hear this. I want to have quiet or listen to Celine Dion.” No, the voice of the State says. Your undivided attention is required.

And there’s the danger: they want to strip from us the decision what we get to listen to, who gets to hear what we say. It’s a world of loudspeakers and wiretapping against which they want us to be helpless.

If you’re proud of being a citizen, insist on this right where it is appropriate and defend it for others. Expose these Svengalis for what they are.