This is so funny! My old man is singing to this song. Ha Ha! Well anyway, I
read Blackbox's article about
censorship a few weeks ago. I thought about
this for a while, and then I looked up censorship on google. Here's something I
found at infoplease.com:
"Censorship, official prohibition or restriction of any type of expression
believed to threaten the political, social, or moral order. It may be
imposed by governmental authority, local or national, by a religious body,
or occasionally by a powerful private group. It may be applied to the mails,
speech, the press, the theater, dance, art, literature, photography, the
cinema, radio, television, or computer networks. Censorship may be either
preventive or punitive, according to whether it is exercised before or after
the expression has been made public. In use since antiquity, the practice
has been particularly thoroughgoing under autocratic and heavily centralized
governments, from the Roman Empire to the totalitarian states of the 20th
cent."
Think about it this way. Are you allowed to swear in real life? My mom
doesn't like it, but I get the habit form my dad, mind you my parent's are
fairly easy going, seeing as they let me, their thirteen year old daughter
get my belly button pierced. Most of my friends say (sarcastically) "My
parents would shoot me if they heard me swearing." So do they think they
would let you swear on a computer? And it's not little eight year olds that
are my friends. These are people that are young teenagers. It is that age
group that makes up Whyville, so if you think of that way, do we have the
right to get rid of censorship? Not yet.
Most of the population of Whyville is made up of minors, as that is who it
was created for. (I can think of at least one exception, however.) What
political power do minors have in the world today? You are told what to do
by your parents, because you aren't thought to be able to make all the right
decisions for yourself, and you have no say in the government until you are
old enough (legal age varies in every country). If we were to rid our
society of these laws, and these censorships, what would it be like?
Blackbox has also stated in his article that we have a dictatorship society.
Well, how many people take the time to read and sign petitions. Those give
us a chance to express our opinions, and to effect a change. There is a
slight problem with the changes we'd like to see happen, and how we go about
it. How often do we whine if we don't like something? That won't get us very
far.
And, on the government issue, Blackbox stated that our government is mostly a
dictatorship, but it is also in a communist state. I have one question, and
call me ignorant, but I'd like to know what other possibilities we have for
a government in this situation? I don't see anyone fighting to be the next
City Hall -- who here wants to do all her work, struggle with money and all our
demands? -- and I don't see anyone who is running to be elected either.
"If we don't believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don't believe in it at all."
--Noam Chomsky
Okay, I'd just like to tie that to another article that some people have had
problems with. You don't think that stuff like that should be seen, but yet
we want to rid ourselves of censorship. How does that work? Not very well,
the last time I checked.
One of the last things that I would like to point out is that it isn't only
swears that we censor on Whyville. This kid in my class said something that
was highly inappropriate the other day. There weren't any swears in it, so
it wasn't censored, but it was rude and almost sexist, I wouldn't want to
hear anyone say, it ever! He got taped for six days. We need censorship to
keep things like this eliminated.
My last point that I would like to highlight is that a lot of things that
young teens say these days are fairly wrong, but we take it so casually
that we don't think of it that way. Maybe if you thought about some of the
expressions, you might realize what I'm saying.
So, this may just be a very naive or ignorant Giggler01 signing out, but if
we eliminate censorship, then it gives me freedom of speech, so tough beans!
Have a good one!
Times Writer LilBeaut submitted a very different opinion on
this topic... where do you stand?
