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DTH Omnibus Page 6 Thursday October 1, 1992 1 5-?'tyytySg& - DTH Omnibus Page 7 Thursday October 1, 1992 PreeJom of Speech" and "First Amendement Rights" seem like tired cliches coming out of (lie mouths of tired Hell, my ears will bleed if Madonna, after her latest act of public prostitu tion, whines that it is her Constitutionally-protected right to spread her legs for a camera. But even Madonna's First Amendment tirades should not be received with a grunt of indiffer ence. Everything that isdistinctly "Ameri can" is that way because of our freedom to mouth off. Rock'n'roll and this very paper putting newsprint all over your hands right now are children of the First Amendment. If you truly love America, you should support freedom of speech with the same vigor that the NRA defends, with an incestuous pas sion, the Second Amendment. The greatest irony of the First Amendment is that it is so liberal to serve a very conservative function. By letting citizens speak freely, the gov ernment hopes to prevent the need for violent overthrows. Conservatives, therefore, who honk and bleat like constipated geese about "those damn kids," should cool their heated rush for abridgments of the First Amendment. If those damn kids weren't able to cut up in a loud, vocal manner because of penalty of law, they'd rise up in a loud, violent manner. Being the first country to guarantee its citizens the right to run at the mouth insures our stability. When one can complain freely, it helps prevent an accumula tion of pent up rages that'll one day I .1 i. i '. . f'K P' M M r If Hrli wm nSfi! twit m celebrities. make you wake up and say, "I'm gonna go waste the President." Freedom of speech serves the status quo. The freedom of the oppressed make their plights known causes most to lose that urge to take their com plaints directly to the rich in a double barreled, pump-action way. Only seg ments of the population who feel com pletely ignored begin to riot. (Good Morning, South Central!) The First Amendment, in some ways, is an American myth the same way people say, "Anyone can grow up to be President of the United States." (I mean, come on! When was the last time we had an actual grown-up as President of the United States?) The First Amendment makes us believe in social action because it can be advo cated, it can be accomplished. The First Amendment shows how we can keep a country as large as ours from falling apart. It provides the com munication between completely dif ferent groups of people who, for some reason, all call themselves "Ameri cans." More than anything else, people like to talk about themselves. (Think of all those excruciatingly long con versations with Aunt Betty about her hemorrhoids flaring up and other ail ments, for example.) Because Americans like to explain their wants, needs, prejudices, etc. in exhaustive detail, we learn about each other. From thiscomes a discourse that A . I r ' -'A rraa IVra I was ctiaHenged in 1981 by Owen (N.C.) High JX WSl School because it was deemed "demoralizing inas- Jj yjl mucn as lt ppes tnat nxan is little more than - fir fJLT jMI say majority of us support the repeal of Jl f'K'1 a;menk Omni thinks they can't ffl J 5r :-1 br - yi t! i Arising smoke of the boob kJIN, ' they Lkuu! - ,:iJn honor of Banned makes for a semblance of participatory democracy in a heterogeneous society. If there were no First Amendment pro vision and if the country were run by some Jesse Helms fascist so that we were not only silenced but forced into some government-defined role of a "True American", the United States would be having a going-out-of-busi-ness sale by the end of the week. In America today, the Supreme Court'sChief Justice Rehnquist doesn't seem to grasp the fact that flag-burning, dirty rock lyrics and war protests aren't stoppable nor should they be muzzled. And that's too bad because if Rehnquist were only getting a better grade of the crack he seems to take before he writes some of his more ex treme opinions, he'd see that the First Amendment is his and the country's best friend. According to administrators in Mayfield, Ky., William Faulkner's 'As I Lay Dying9 contained "offensive and obscene passages referring to abortion and used Qod's name in vain." The book was challenged in 1981. ' i i t .r -v" V v v- ' --. We're- Gonna day it'Now : ,- iiiriii ZJ X. Books Week: here's whv r2 J I mmm III ' 'A - i s f LmJ LnJ )" . i - f . if ? r i the . r 5 v: ' Sidewalk Jbnds poems and drawings of Shel Silverstein Omni talks f?rT7'lhe dream ticket two f I good-looking baby boomers and their attrac tive, independent career wives. Liberal, but not too liberal; traditional, but nnt iiiHompnfat . j -t,. - c V. A, fet hk-ir'c wViat- the Democratic convention would've had you believe. For some college vot ers, however, Tipper (a.k.a. Ms. Gore that's Mrs. to you, buster) is the fly in the ointment. While MTV's trying to Rock the Vote for the answer to the long-hungry Democrats' prayers, everyone is con scientiously avoiding the subject of the Parents Music Resource Center. PMRC was created when Tipper Gore, Sue Baker and other Washing- (111 W IVO 1MII1CU LU i-C113Ul LUC dlUUlll V7; - : 1 1 II industry. The lobbying group insisted that they didn't want to censor, only to label albums, modeling the warnings Al Gore's wife, Tipper, hasn't been in I I I ON. ,. Books and And some people say the First Amendment is absolute. It's a darn good thing we can supersede that pesky law. Why, in a public school in Wisconsin, offi cials discovered a book in the school library that not only contained passages about canni balism, but the author tolerated and even approved of it. Here's a passage please, don't read it if you have a weak stomach: Someone ate the baby. What a frightful thing to eat! Someone at the baby Though she wasn't very sweet. It was a heartless thing to do. The policemen haven't got a clue. I simply can't imagine who Would go and (burp) eat the baby. Children have access to this filth! How disgusting! How vile! How ridiculous. That excerpt is from the poem "Dreadful," from the book of children's poetry, Where The Sidewalk Ends, by Shel Silverstein. The Mukouwata, Wis., school system challenged the book in 1986 on the grounds that it politics twice after the ratings that replaced the old Hays censoring system. WXYC Music Director Stacy Philpott said censor or protector, the rose still smelled as rotten. "If record companies see it as a liability, then they will try to influence what people put on their albums and this is happening already." Ice-T's heavy metal song "Cop Killer" demonstrates the pressure that can be brought to bear on record com panies. Warner released the album with no trouble. But after the L. A. riots, the president said the song was "despi cable" and incited murders. After boy cotts and even death threats against Warner execs, Ice-T withdrew the single from his album. Steven Smith, a sophomore from Goldsboro, said he thought the "issue" was blown out of proportion. "It's like the news lately Is she mellowing? St the Big Bad Censors r. J glorified Satan, suicide and cannibal ism. The book had already been chal lenged once before, in Xenia, Ohio, on the grounds that was anti-Christian and emphasiied the use of drugs and sexual activity. Books have been the political right's (i.e., the Moral Majority and cohorts) specific target for years. Judith Krug, head of American Library Association, said that her office used to hear of about 100 incidents a year in the early 1970s. By the late 1970s, there were 300 a year; by 1 98 1 , the figure reached 1,000. Much of this challenging and banning takes place in the schools. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Nobel Prize-winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez was purged from the book list at Wasco (Calif.) Union High School in 1986. Censors said the book was "garbage being passed off at litera ture." Zen Buddhism: Selected Writings by D.T. Suzuki, was challenged in Plymouth-Canton, Mass., because it de tailed the religion of Buddhism in such a way "that the reader would could be in one issue: scary, scary it's just a song, and 1 don't think people should take it out of context, because it was not written to tell people to go out and kill cops. It's written from one person's perspective and how he's feel ing at the moment. "I really don't know why they picked it out. First of all, the album had been out for a while. There have been vari ous other songs that talk about killing people." Journalism Professor Chuck Stone, who teaches a censorship class, said he knew why the rapper was targeted. "I think it's because he's black," he said. "That's the reason. White boy done it, there'd be no problem." Melinda Morrison, a junior from Aberdeen, said she thought the riots were the rationale for targeting Ice-T. While she thinks that scapegoating is wrong, she added she had mixed feel ings about album labels. "1 think album labeling is good in a way, so that the real young people won't be able to be exposed to lyrics. I kinda also feel like it's an infringement on rights." Philpott has no such caveat. "This is probably horrible," he said, holding up an album with a warning sticker. "But they have a right to make horrible records. There're so many other things to worry about. It's just so tired. I don't have enough time to worry about Tip per Gore. Y'know, who cares?" Stone agreed: "What do you need it for? You don't label books. We don't label newspapers. We don't even label television shows. We label movies that makes it more attractive." Tipper's conservatism lends strength to the Democratic ticket, Morrison said, "It will add a new dimension to the ClintonGore side." Stone said although Clinton didn't think about Tipper at all in balancing the ticket, he did need the Reagan very likely to embrace its teachings and chose it as his religion." Are You There Cod? It's Me, Mar garet was challenged in Xenia, Ohio (is it the water there or what?), because it was "sexually offensive and amoral," and built around two themes: sex and anti-Christian behavior. It was also challenged in Alabama, Minnesota and Missouri. Some say we're at war a culture war with the battles being fought in our libraries, on our stages, in our mu seums. Case in point are the works of Robert Mapplethorpe: An Ohio mu seum curator was even taken to court on obscenity charges for displaying -Mapplethorpe's homo-erotic photog raphy exhibit. "We can't support free expression by saying it won't do any harm," wrote John Berry III, editor-in-chief of The Nation. It is the impossibility of predicting the harm of a particular expression that makes censorship wrong. "Freedom is expensive, dangerous, unpredictable, and sometimes ugly and offensive," he continued. "At such a high price, no wonder it is so sweet." Democrats to come home. "They're two good ol boys," he said, who have to target white males. "Bubba is ubiquitous. Bubba isn't just in the South. Bubba lives in the Detroit suburbs. Bubba lives in the New York suburbs." Philpott agreed that Ms. Gore won't hurt Clinton's chances, but for a differ ent reason. "I mean, I'm not going to vote for George Bush or Perot, I mean, I'm going to vote, therefore, logically, it's Clinton. "The people who would be offended by Tipper, there's no way they would vote for Bush or Perot," he said. "I think he could write off acquiescing to those people who would be offended by Tipper Gore. "I don't think Tipper Gore is going to keep someone from voting for Bill Clinton," Philpot said. Stone said Ms. Gore would have no impact before the election or even after a victory. Vice presidents' wives are "the quintessence of powerlessness," he said. "She'll have less power as the wife of the vice president. As a senator's wife, she could rally other senators' wives. If she doesn't know that yet, she's in for a rude shock." Although Philpott pooh-poohed Ms. Gore's influence, he couldn't resist one more slam: "Tipper Gore is going to lead us all down the family values path to hell."
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Oct. 1, 1992, edition 1
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