Current mood:

confused

Censorship
Censorship

Fucking horseshit motherfuckers.

I'll add this on a side note.  The campus newspaper here at SCAD-Atlanta received a general kick in the face over the past week.  We publish comics on a regular basis, drawn by students from the school, and in our last issue we printed a comic which depicted a couple of KKK members burning a cross in a character's front yard, proclaiming that the person (a white-skinned character, mind you) should be hung, stoned, burned, and the like.  The character then replies, upon seeing this sight in his own yard, something to the effect of  "Wow, I didn't think my comic was that bad."

Now, I understand people get offended (unlike me).  And I understand too that its not always proper to make light of the fact that the KKK in reality did stone and hang people.  I will never contest that.  For those reasons alone we should have rethought whether or not to print this comic. 

However, the true irony of this here is the comic was very subtly making an important comment about censorship in general, comparing the proponents of censorship to racists who try to impose their views upon other people's lives.  And what happens?  People tried to censor us, and in a way they did.  At some point over the week some of the offended students and/or faculty took all the remaining copies of our paper from the stands scattered across campus, leaving the stands empty.  We screwed up, sure.  But I can't help but somewhat laugh at how the comic in and of itself proved a point.  Even further, when Art Spiegelman came to talk to our campus back in February, this was precisely the kind of thing he talked about: how comics are so often a source of controversy and can be a catalyst towards discussion, offensive material, and just general mayhem and social unrest. 

Salman Rushdie, a man who has plenty of notable experience regarding censorship (and was even at risk of being killed for his art), said: "If you can't defend what is unpalatable to you personally, then you don't actually believe in free speech.  You only believe in the free speech of those who agree with you."  I will forever live and die by that statement.  People need to get this concept into their heads. 

People need to evolve.

I loathe censorship above all other things on this globe.