After reading some comments I decided to make a change. Daily Kos has been quite aflutter over the NSA spying. Nothing wrong with that. It's a damned serious issue.
But guess what? At least so far, no one has been arrested because of that spying. This is not so in the case of Chris Wilson, a Florida website owner who found himself in jail only a few months after "outraged" liberal bloggers went crazy about the content on his site.
To me, his case worries me as much as anything. It is one of those scary times where sound collides with color and the political continuum turns into a Moebus strip. You glance over in the dark, and suddenly you see a liberal and a wingnut standing together, one hand washing the other. That's when we all ought to look in the mirror and ask ourselves what, apart from our labels, we actually believe in.
Remember the website nowthatsfuckedup.com? Back in September, they made big news on the liberal blogosphere for having "traded
gore for porn." John Aravosis, who runs Americablog.com, found out that NTFU was posting really nasty, ugly war pics submitted by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. He went absolutely batshit about it, and within days the "gore for porn scandal" was the talk of the liberal blogs.
Now here's what really happened: NTFU started its life as a cheesy amateur porn site. One of, oh, maybe half a million? A million? Ten million? They call this stuff "amateur" for a reason. Who'd ever actually pay for it? I guess people do, but hey, there's no accounting for taste.
Apparently some military personnel heard about it and e-mailed the site asking for free access. The site owner, Chris Wilson, said sure, just send me a picture that proves you're in the military. People sent pics. Mostly benign, but also some gory ones. Wilson put it all on his site; there was no "gore for porn." It was "you show me yours and I'll show you mine."
Not that the truth should ever get in the way of a good screaming fit. Aravosis was off and running, and so was Raw Story and then Buzzflash, and on and on. For all I know, Daily Kos got its knickers in a twist, too.
Why? Was it the porn? Nope, that's no problem in the liberal blogosphere -- and thank the Deity for that, by the way. Was it the gore? Nope, the liberal blogosphere is all in favor of the ACLU forcing the Pentagon to release not only the pictures of sexual torture but also the gory photos of dead Iraqis abused by American troops.
So what was the problem? Here's what: Chris Wilson wasn't an anguished, outraged liberal. He wasn't part of the club. He just posted the pics! Didn't he know he was supposed to apologize for it? Didn't the dummy know he was supposed to denounce American brutality and the horrors of war? In essence, John Aravosis and the other outraged liberals demanded that NTFU prove the socially redeeming value of its content. I'm old enough to remember sitting through soundtracks of poetry readings just to see people fucking. I know what this game is about.
These days, liberals will say that you can show porn anytime you want as long as no one's actually being raped, no one dies and there are no animals or children in the picture. But show violence and you'd better damned well be socially (read: politically) redeeming or at least have a big Hollywood budget, or we'll make a big deal about your porn with people who care about porn. Poor Chris Wilson. He didn't get the code!
But life's unfair, so Aravosis and Raw Story and Buzzflash and the rest kept up the yammering. The story started making it into the press. The Pentagon had to respond. On the surface, they tsk-tsked and said there was nothing they could do. Behind the scenes, someone called someone in Florida and the law came down hard on Chris Wilson.
Even though his website is hosted in Europe, he was jailed on "obscenity" charges because he controls it from his home in Polk County, Florida. Eventually, he pulled the amateur porn, thinking that would satisfy the authorities. But no. The authorities might have charged Wilson with obscenity, but it was those nasty war pictures they're after.
Late last week, Wilson's bail was revoked and he was jailed. Check the story from the local newspaper. Quite the little kangaroo court they've got going down there.
http://w3t.org/...
Why is Chris Wilson in jail? For obscenity? Come on, his amateur porn website was no different than a zillion others. For gory war photos? Sorry, but those are a dime a dozen. So why is the guy in jail? Because when he didn't genuflect to the gods of the liberal blogosphere, they called out the dogs without batting an eyelash about it. Over in the corner, one hand was washing the other.
Folks, this is an accusatory diary. Probably very incorrect of me to post. But you know what? There's a long history of freedom being won by the incorrect. The Supreme Court's two most famous free-speech cases protected a vicious antisemite in the 1930s and, in the 1970s, a man who wore a jacket with a slogan reading, Fuck the Draft.
In 1944, the Supreme Court ruled that a Jehovah's Witness couldn't be arrested for leaving copies of The Watchtower on people's porches. Remember Roe of Roe v. Wade? Not exactly anyone's paragon of anything. Ernesto Miranda of Miranda rights fame was a rapist. The Supreme Court ruled that Larry Flynt could publish a story saying that Jerry Falwell had been conceived in a drunken, incestuous union. Parody is absolute, the court said.
If those people could win their freedom, then just why in the hell is Chris Wilson in jail? Why in hell should Americablog, Raw Story and all the rest of them be allowed to railroad some poor schmuck for the terrible crime of not bowing deeply enough in front of their political gods? Now THAT's fucked up!
http://www.freechris.org/
One last thing: Where is the ACLU? Cat got their tongue?