Out in Charlottesville, a monument to free speech is being built. How ironic, when we contrast this with a few recent developments in Virginia politics.Picture this.
You walk into a library and log onto a computer, hoping to look over your email or do research or bounce around the Information Superhighway. You see a link.
Do you decide to click on it? Who do you ask? Yourself?
Did anyone say, perchance, Sean Connaughton?
Sean Connaughton feels that, yes, the government should decide where you go in a library!
Filtering is an ineffective band-aid that blocks useful sites and lets others slip through. Anyone who wants to surf the internet behind their own protective filter should do so on their own time, in their own homes.
Since when does the responsibility for deciding which sites are "right" fall to the computer? Or to Sean Connaughton?
Mind you, this bill was proposed in the last session of the General Assembly and earned Virginia a Jefferson Muzzle Award for stifling free speech. Not a pretty picture. One of the co-sponsors? Dick Black. Thankfully, it was killed in the Senate.
But wait! There's more! While Republicans are running around foisting down our throats their idea of internet decency, they're attacking the drama scene!
Please censor your plays.
When Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn presented "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" this month, the hit Broadway musical was not performed exactly as written.Where the original script called for a secretary to sing that a dress was "tres sexy," the actress called it "tres lovely" instead. The boss's nephew, instead of stepping out for a smoke, stepped out for a soda. And in a song titled "A Secretary Is Not a Toy," several lines were changed to soften cheeky references to sexual tension in the workplace.
The irony.
Tres disgusting. The conservative zealots in Virginia are imposing their imperial will on free speech in Virginia and are sending thespians askitter.
Since when is the purpose of theater to cater to the sensibilities of a minority of easily shocked prudes? Leave it to the audience to decide. Don't shove your arrogant self-righteousness down my throat.
Alas, the Republicans feel that they, much more righteous than the hoi polloi, can shove down on us their ideas on all kinds of personal issues. Since when did you give the Republicans permission to decide what you can read in a library? What plays you can perform? Who you can fall in love with?
Republicans may be the party of "small goverment" (my hypocrisy meter skyrockets), but Democrats are the party of a government that protects the people's freedoms.
What jurisdictions can do is to implement the policy that has been working well for everyone in Loudoun County for five years - give library patrons the choice of filtered or non-filtered access to the internet for themselves and their own children. If a patron wants to choose filtered content in spite of the risk of missing legitimate content, that's fine, but others should not have that inability to access information imposed on them. This sensible and fair policy was implemented as the result of a lawsuit in which the kind of viewpoint censorship being pushed by the right wing was found unconstitutional.
Screens should be used for privacy anyway. BTW, the only time of which I am aware that obscene content has been a problem in a Loudoun public library was when Dick Black pulled up some nasty porn site and walked away, exposing other patrons and librarians to his filthy obsession. Not very family friendly.
Sometime ago, I was using a computer that had some kind of filter on it and my searches regarding female anatomy were filtered.
Which made it diffcult, considering the project involved breast cancer.
If libaries are interested in protecting by-standers or people walking by from viewing someone else's screen, they could put up dividers or some less restrictive means.
Thanks for the great advice. If you feel so strongly about this site, feel free to not visit anymore. I promise, it will not hurt our feelings.
Raising Kaine is a non-productive, childish website, devoted to absurd commentary (mine excluded as I'm neither a fan nor regular contributor to this trash heap).
But I am publicizing it as best as I can, as I feel that it can only HURT 'Tiny Tim' Kaine and help Virginia's next Governor Jerry 'W. is for winner' Kilgore!
My advise to the aiders & abetters of 'Raising Kaine' would be to grow up, get a job, get a life, go to church and strive to become the responsible, productive citizens that at present you clearly are not!
Bobby May
PS: Tim Kaine has nothing against farmers, hunters, or sportsmen.