dagblog - Comments for "Is the US Heading for Anti-Hate Speech Laws?"

.@PENamerican's report here

artappraiser — Tue, 02 Apr 2019 17:43:58 +0000

In reply to Is the US Heading for Anti-Hate Speech Laws?

.@PENamerican's report here gives a much more complex and nuanced view of campus free speech issues than I have generally seen in the media over the past few years. In particular, they do a good job pointing out that threats to free speech come from the right and the left...
— Elizabeth Niehaus (@eniehaus) April 2, 2019

Except that's just the way

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 22:24:01 +0000

In reply to Because at a certain point,

Except that's just the way you're used to it. Over here, censorship was the norm. Yeah, publish it yourself if you've that much patience. Clockwork Orange had its last chapter cut by the publisher - I personally think it a good request - the restored chapter seemed banal - but I'm sure Burgess was pissed. Half of these writers sat in writing classes getting feedback from a class. Maybe it's useful later, rather than having another crappy Magical Negro character or another "humorous" adolescent sexist novel, etc... I mean, sure, I like just writing myself, no one to tell me what to do. But maybe understanding our modern audience and getting feedback is useful, even if we're not used to it. Columnists used to not have very many reader comments, authors used to be isolated from their fans in whatever cathedral. Maybe those days are dying - maybe good, maybe bad.

Because at a certain point,

Michael Maiello — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 20:04:11 +0000

In reply to At the same time, what were

Because at a certain point, somebody published it and let the reading public decide. This is like Sylvia Beach announces she's going to publish James Joyce despite the bans and a bunch of socially conscious ninnies gang up on Joyce to the point where he's all, "Forget it, Sylvia. Let's just apologize to everybody instead."

And that, my friends, was my ridiculous new play "James Joyce on Twitter."

At the same time, what were

PeraclesPlease — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 19:27:48 +0000

In reply to I think this related, Michael

At the same time, what were the community values working against DH Lawrence, William Burroughs, Henry Miller?
Wasn't this the censorship you got sending off to a publisher who'd send you a rejection slip without really telling you why? Just because these critics go public with their PC reasons doesn't mean it's any rarer or more unhinged.
[as 1 way of looking at this]

I think this related, Michael

artappraiser — Fri, 22 Mar 2019 18:44:11 +0000

In reply to Is the US Heading for Anti-Hate Speech Laws?

I think this related, Michael:

"When it comes to Y.A., what, precisely, is the difference between the marketplace of ideas and a Twitter mob?"@xwaldie on sensitivity readers, self-censorship, and scandals in the Y.A. community. https://t.co/cXnsipWJCK
— PEN America (@PENamerican) March 22, 2019

Corporate censorship is less a problem than mob censorship these days.

This is why I belong to PEN: they are on the right side of understanding why the U.S. First Amendment system works better than all the other options out there. And they are constantly watching where borderlines are being breached.

If all a society has is lowest common denominator mob censorship, there will never be any progress. Protecting radical thought and speech is not the same as institutionalizing it. In a capitalist system, the profit involved will make sure lowest common denominator gets a big audience. But no one requires anyone to buy a book or look at a painting or listen to a song and no publisher is required to take on something that they don't like representing...we are just currently at a point in time where politically-correct mob censorship is the major issue...