"But I do have an opinion about pornography. I'm for it."

[elfs]

So said Tom Lehrer. But Robert Bork is not. In fact, he's so against pornography that he seems ready to overturn the First Amendment completely and adopt some kind of European speech code:

Liberty in America can be enhanced by reinstating, legislatively, restraints upon the direction of our culture and morality. Censorship as an enhancement of liberty may seem paradoxical. Yet it should be obvious, to all but dogmatic First Amendment absolutists, that people forced to live in an increasingly brutalized culture are, in a very real sense, not wholly free... Relations between the sexes are debased by pornography, large parts of television are unwatchable, motion pictures rely upon sex, gore, and pyrotechnics for the edification of the target audience of 14-year-olds, and popular music hardly deserves the name of music.

It creeps me out that superrighty Bork and superlefty Catherine MacKinnon should be so... close... on such an issue. Ew!

Comments

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Actually, Lehrer was for obscenity, not pornography.

The dictionary would probably say they're the same, but my sense of the usage is that pornography is more visually oriented, while obscenity is more word-related.

[jenkitty.livejournal.com]

Given the content of the song, he really didn't care if there were words or pictures or a combination, just so long as it was naughty.

SMUT!

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

The words to Smut show him to be in favor of pornography, obscenity, indecency, ribaldry, dirt and filth.

Re: SMUT!

[shunra.livejournal.com]

In the intro to the song, Lehrer says: "I do have a cause though. It is obscenity. I'm for it."

That's what I meant. Elf got the quote *almost* right. An almost-right quote is like fingernails across a chalkboard for the pedants among us, which I guess I've just outed myself as.

Re: SMUT!

[woggie.livejournal.com]

Don't forget slime. :)

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

That the extreme right and extreme left can have common ground like this surprises me not at all; they both have the righteous attitude of "I know what's best for you."

A pox on both their houses.

You want me to behave a certain way? Convince me!

Show me that it's in my best interest. Demonstrate it. Persuade me.

Don't fucking legislate it! After all, I might just make use of my second amendment right to violently overthrow the government that did such an evil thing.

[auroramama]

Does Bork really think the omnipresent sleaze in our culture comes from wacky "creative" types in need of legislative restraint? It comes from the sacred profit motive. Now that mainstream media are wholly owned and operated by giant corporations, they won't just sell sleaze, they'll sell *safe* sleaze, the same sleaze everyone else is selling, without any of that risky creativity stuff.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

To paraphrase a line from the Vietnam War, "We had to destroy your freedom in order to save it."

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

The young whippersnappers are oppressin' us! With their MTV and their dancing, you call that dancing? It's just noise, not music! Turn it down, you'll go deaf!

That's what I'm hearing here.

[ambrose-m.livejournal.com]

You got it right here. Bow to the great God Profit!

There is no left and right in this country and this is =not= a two party system - that's a sham. There is one party - the BIG BUSINESS party is in charge. Political power, Justice, freedom, health, ecology, beauty, sex, love, faith, all things must all be subservient to profit - AKA greed.

Now, about those second amendment rights...


A.M.

[amythis.livejournal.com]

Not pyrotechnics!!!