Fuck You Censorship

RIP George Carlin, 1937-2008

This post is dedicated to a personal hero of mine, George Carlin. Not only was Mr. Carlin a cultural icon and one of the funniest men to walk this earth, but he was a champion of free speech. George Carlin passed away yesterday of heart failure. He was 71 years old. His "Seven Dirty Words" sketch is as funny today as it was in 1972 and was part of a Supreme Court case to rule on indecency and obscenity. Shit, George Carlin was a fucking funny cocksucker. That motherfucker could make any stuck up cunt in a suit piss himself with laughter. Thank you Mr. Carlin for everything.

One of my least favorite things in the world is censorship. When you hear a bad word, an idea that is counter to mainstream beliefs, or anything else that causes people to think "oh my that is not good" you basically have three choices. First, you can get mad about it and do nothing. Secondly, you can use the incident to create positive discourse about what is being said and ultimately try to achieve some sort of positive outcome from the experience. Thirdly, you can say "this is unacceptable, people cannot handle this. We should ban this." This is censorship and it sucks.

When a government or a religion or parents censor something they are basically telling their citizens, followers, or children that they are unable to handle these words or situations or ideas. In the case of parents censoring material for their own children, I understand completely. Maybe they are too young to understand the situation. Also, as a parent you are responsible for the positive upbringing of that child. At some point, however, you must stop shielding your child and allow them to take in the good and bad of the world and be there for them to learn what is and is not acceptable. Eventually, they will decide on their own. That in inevitable, shielding them only works so long and is only so successful. I have taught kids in camps and school, so I understand this type of censorship. I am not ranting about that.

However, when a government or religion censors materials for its citizens or followers, I have a major problem. By making certain words taboo to say or hear, you empower those words more so than their evil meanings or connotations suggest. You also are telling adults what they can and cannot hear, like they are children being raised by a parent (see above paragraph). Certain people get offended by certain words or phrases... fine, that is their right. So if a TV show in uncensored and has fuck spoken a million times, guess who will not watch that show ... those people. And if those people are a large enough part of the demographic, then advertisers will not pay, the show will get canceled, and those words will be removed from the air. That is not censorship .. it is capitalism. And America is a bunch of consumer whores, so it would work a lot better than censoring the shows.

What makes me the most mad is when a movie, book, or idea gets censored or banned. Really? We, as a race of humans, are not able to watch/read/or hear said movie/book/or idea without chaos ensuing? Let individuals experience this if they so choose. Let them decide if they like it or not. If they do not like it, it will die away and your banning it was moot. A high school religion teacher told me a quote by a famous religious figure that went along the lines of: "if an idea is true, you will not be able to ban it anyway, so why do it? If the idea is false, then it will fade away on its own, so why ban it?" All banning something does it create more publicity for it and make people interested in whatever you were trying to keep the people away from.

My quest for anyone is to decide for themselves what they do and do not like. Do not let your government or religion or whatever tell you what you can and cannot see or hear or do. Be an individual. Read banned books. Watch banned movies. If you end up hating them, at least you know WHY they were banned and can have your own opinion on their evils.

Fuck censorship. If the word "fuck" was not considered obscene, I would have had to be more creative to come up with a better term to express my hatred of censorship. So thank you censorship for allowing me to be crude and lazy on this uncensored blog. (The only good thing censorship has done is made funny people be very creative when they wanted to be crude ... thereby creating situations or saying that are actually more crude than what was being censored)