You’ve got a point. I was attacking the smartness and the reason instead of the actual act. ::bows head in shame::
Manda JO said:
Maybe it’s not the exact definition of censorship, but the news media not posting an article that could be beneficial to consumers and the general public is a form of it. Maybe a better example would be if the advertisers had a committee that saw stories before they were printed and had the ultimate say in whether or not they should be put in the newspaper.
An example that is not really censorship but changes the truth and misleads the public was during the Gulf War. In San Francisco 100,000 people showed up for an anti-war rally. That hardly got any coverage at all on the local news, and a group of around a dozen people waving flags that were pro-war got more coverage.
I’m taking the things about the Gulf War from Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins) and Jello Biafra (Eric Boucher), who both have spoken about it.
Lemur good points, however, SHE WASN"T SINGING ABOUT WAL-MART.
As I already pointed out, she was singing about K-Mart, and K-Mart DOES sell guns. And they didn’t appreciate the negative image, so they refused to sell it, which was well within their rights.
Well, I don’t know what planet you are living on, but there are other places to buy albums then the ones who refuse to sell them. What stores refuse to sell them? I’ve seen stickered CDs at Target, Walmart, and Kmart. And you know what’s the beautiful thing about living in a capitalistic society? If one store doesn’t have what you want, another one will. And if all else fails, you can order it off CDnow for the same amount of money you could get it for at one of the retail stores.
Ummm, I don’t know if you noticed or not, but minors in school do NOT have the same “rights” as citizens. Therefore, minors do NOT have the right to exercise Freedom of Speech. If a school felt the young man’s shirt was inappropriate, they had every right to suspend him. It’s no different than if he showed up in a shirt that said “Suck my cock”. He would probably get suspended for that too. You cannot point to school as an example of censorship, because minors are not considered citizens until they are 18. Schools can do whatever they want, from searching a bookbag w/o a warrant, to suspending a student for wearing an inappropriate shirt.
A single school banning a book does not equal censorship. If the government banned the book from being published, that would be censorship. So the students can’t check it out of their school library, they can still go to Barnes & Noble and buy their own copy.
Threats against anybody’s person IS illegal. Free speech is all well and good, but my freedom ends where YOURS begins. The school had every right to punish him for making physical threats against the school, that’s equal to battery, IIRC. He’s actually lucky that the local police force didn’t get invovled, especially in this day and age when the schools are more paranoid.
Your examples of censorship are NOT examples at all, especially since they deal with minors, non-citizens, and at least in one case the young man was breaking a law.
I was watching this Canadian music video channel [muchmusic] and there was a song by Papa Roach on it. The themes of the song was trying to find a way to get through even though the person felt their last resort was terminating life. They censored out a lot of the lines that connected the idea of suicide to the solution. It makes me wonder how afraid they are of people doing this IRL. I mean, if they keep the lyrics that say what they do to find the solution, but delete the lyrics that say it’s a soution, doesn’t that just kill the point they were trying to make by editing it in the first place? If the network really feels that strongly about keeping people from following the influence of a bad idea that isn’t exactly said blatantly as the thing to do, why do they still play the songs that state these thoughts about them? Sure, it would lead to lower ratings due to less popular music being played on their station, but they seem to want to protect the public from themselves. Are the censorship laws more strict up in Canada? I just think that if you teach a child at a young age the difference between what is real and what is fantasy, and not to follow what people say in music, etc., you shouldn’t worry about censoring them with the exception of things [like kiddie porn] until you feel they are ready for it. I’m 17, I grew up with older brothers, and due to that, the first rated R film I saw was when I was around 5. Sure, I may not have understood everything, but it did me no harm because I knew what was real, what wasn’t, and to not follow the example media sets up for us.
This one seems less clear-cut to me, pepperlandgirl, unless you’re referring to a private school (which can be as small-minded as it likes). Otherwise, isn’t a public school at least a quasi-government agency? Isn’t education mandatory prior to a certain age?
My point being, this is not simply an issue of whether or not the school library has a book to loan; it’s an issue as to what is or isn’t acceptable thought to be taught and discussed. Realistically, many, many people have as their only option sending their kids to local public schools, so this is not trivial. Yes, I can buy Huck Finn myself at B&N. But if the principal source of my child’s formal education has decreed that certain books are not acceptable–isn’t this some sort of “state-decreed” censorship? You can argue it’s appropriate censorship, but it still is what it is, I think.
Perhaps I should have been more clear. The student promoted things like standing up without asking a teacher. That’s not violent, nor is it against the law.
And I take several of your comments personally. Just because I’m under a specific age doesn’t mean I shouldn’t get the same rights. If I’m born in the U.S., is that not automatic citizenship? Why should children have less rights than adults?
From the American Civil Liberties Union website:
On another part of the site:
The student who made a website on his own time at his own home did not disrupt class. He promoted it. Louis Farrakhan (sp?) can promote seceding from the United States, as long as he actually doesn’t do it. The student violated no laws.
On the Pepsi t-shirt: if he had worn a shirt that said “suck my cock” then that would materially and substantially disrupted school. It would violate “harm to minors” laws. But a Pepsi t-shirt? It being “Coke day” doesn’t suddenly cede his right to freedom of expression.
And if I’m wrong about minors not being citizens, the student with the Pepsi t-shirt was 19, and therefore not a minor.
On the book issue…
From the ACLU:
So a school (public, anyway) cannot ban Huckleberry Finn for its supposed racism or Anne Frank for its sexual themes.
Jello, don’t be offended because I implied you don’t have rights as a minor.
Hell, I’m 17.
From my understanding, you are not a full US citizen until you can vote. Voting is what makes you a full citizen. You are legally considered an adult at the age of 18 when you are eligble to cast your first vote. Until that time comes, you are a second-class citizen, and as such, you don’t have all the “rights” in the Constitution. Why do you think women lobbied so hard to have the particular right? Why do you think it was so important for freed slaves to be granted the right to vote so soon after the Civil War? Because until you can legally vote for the government, you are not a full citizen.
So, he had so much time on his hand he created a whole webpage for “Standing up w/o asking a teacher?” :rolleyes: He should have been punished for wasting his time, time he could have been using doing his homework, or hanging out with friends, or otherwise being a productive student.
If the student with the website is the one I heard about, it was a private school, which , not being run by the government can suspend, expel or refuse to accept a student for almost any reason.
The book banning cases were not about a single school not having a book or even banning a book. They were about a school board banning the book from all of its schools based on its content. The problem doesn’t start because School (or school district} A simply doesn’t have a book. Some of the people who get most upset with book banning by school boards are the school librarians ( who apparently usually choose which books are bought, based on their budget and appropriateness for the age group) and teachers ( who often want to use the banned books) If you look at what gets banned, it’s Huckleberry Finn, The Diary of Ann Frank, The Wizard of Oz,and Judy Blume books etc. Always books that there’s at least a great difference of opinion about. While some school boards ban them, in other schools they’re required reading. You never hear of a school board banning Playboy or The Joy of Sex,presumably because there’s a consensus among those who purchase books that they are not appropriate for a school library.
There’s really no such thing as a “second-class citizen”, it’s just an expression. Not having the right to vote means you don’t have all the rights of a citizen above 18. Those under 18 have all of the other rights, except, to a certain extent, in the special situation of being a student in a public school ,just as adults give up certain rights, to an extent,in other special situations such as being in the military or being a government employees.They do not lose them in other situations.Although a school can search a students locker, the police can’t search that same student’s bag on the street without meeting the very same standard they would have to meet to search an adults bag.
Goddammit, would you quit yelling at everyone? You’re wrong, on both counts.
I’m holding the CD in my hand right now. I am looking at the lyric sheet, at the lyrics for the song Love is a Good Thing, which read in part, " . . . watch our children while they kill each other With a gun they bought at Walmart discount stores . . ." Walmart discount stores. OK? Jesus, shut up and admit you’re incorrect.
Second, Walmart refused to sell the CD for several reasons, among them the first single If It Makes You Happy containing the lyric, “Well OK, I still get stoned.” They had objections to several lyrics, and Crow and her label (A&M) refused to sell an edited version.
No. You better grab a copy of the Constitution, which clearly states that everyone who is born on U.S. soil is a citizen from birth.
No.
Wrong. The Constitution also clearly states that no citizen shall be deprived of their rights without due process of law. How that is interpreted is, of course, a matter for the courts.
That will come as a surprise to the courts, who have in fact held that they do. Students during the Vietnam War fought for the right to wear clothing with anti-war slogans and to wear black armbands, and they won. Schools do have latitude to ban clothing which they feel is disruptive, and of course obscneity is not protected speech at all.
You are entitled to your opinions, PLG, but if you’re going to speak on matters of law and of fact, you better figure out first if you’re on solid ground. So far, in this thread, you are not.
Wow, I can’t believe that kid was actually suspended for wearing the Pepsi T-Shirt. As if he would have even got a second glance if he wore it on any other day of the year.
PepperLandGirl you said:
“If a school felt the young man’s shirt was inappropriate, they had every right to suspend him.”
I don’t see what is inappropriate about wearing a Pepsi shirt. If anything the kid should be applauded for taking a stand against the corporate insanity that is “Coca-Cola day”.
Anyway, going back to banning music, I know it is within a stores right not to sell an album but when they are only doing so to protect their own American apple pie family store image then it seems to be a bit of a hypocritical gesture to me. i do not believe for an instant that the people who do the banning honestly appreciate the artistic merits of an album before banning it.
As far a banning books is concerned, on a related matter does anyone know whether or not Catcher in the Rye is still banned in public schools? I know it was at one time but I’m not sure if it still is.
Oh and BTW, pldennison,
" Walmart discount stores. OK? Jesus, shut up and admit you’re incorrect. "
Yeah, Gomez, it probably was, but people should know whether they have the facts before they browbeat others, in ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, for not having them.
The Supreme Court has ruled, in essence, that elected authority does have a right to censor. There have been some positive forms of censorship, such as the ban on tobacco advertising and Clinton’s demand in 1994 to put a halt to those ‘Heroin chic’ ads. What I’m concerned about is censorship attempted by unelected people who assert ‘authority’ to censor by some moral standard that I do not follow, and governments granting them receptive audience.
The “selling guns to children” lyric was indeed the one they objected most strongly to. They also had other lyrical objections. Crow and A&M were asked to supply a version for sale in Wal-Mart stores which deleted the “guns” lyric; they refused to do so. A brave move, since Wal-Mart accounts for close to 10% of nationwide record sales.
As I suspected, though, PLG was wrong about another fact in this case (shock!). Wal-Mart does sell guns. As written in a Sept. 15, 1996 article in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:
"Wal-Mart spokesman Dale Ingram said Crow’s line about selling guns to children and allowing them to ‘kill each other’ is ‘an unfair, untrue and totally irresponsible comment’ and that the company ‘complies with all state and federal laws regarding the sale and purchase of firearms.’
Although rifles are readily available at Wal-Mart, the company no longer sells handguns over the counter, just through its mail-order catalog.
. . .
A&M Records Chairman Al Cafaro characterized Wal-Mart’s moves as 'de-facto censorship,'adding that ‘there was never any question that Sheryl Crow or A&M Records would bow to this. . . . Every day in America, children are dying by guns bought illegally. . . . Wal-Mart chose to pre-empt the dialogue by banning music which may provoke a discussion. I believe that Wal-Mart’s decision is wrong, very wrong.’"
Kudos to A&M for standing up on this, BTW. Alas, even the heavy hand of Wal-Mart could not stop Crow from winning the 1996 Grammy awards for Best Rock Album (for the album in question) and Best Female Rock Vocal Performance (for If It Makes You Happy).
“There have been some positive forms of censorship, such as
the ban on tobacco advertising”
I agree, it was a good decision to ban tobacco ads. It puzzles me why people spend so much time campaigning against violent music and violent books whilst ignoring issues like that.