Quote Of The Day: Uncensored Edition

"It's not about whether you like what you heard or not. I find censorship to be far more offensive than anything that was said."
-- Debbie Wolf, president of People Against Censorship

I can't say that I agree all the time with Ms. Wolf, whose organization, I suspect, is secretly funded by the satellite radio industry, perhaps with a contribution or two from the pornographers as well. It's a little hard to tell who's behind the group, since this is the full text of the "About" section of its Web site:

About

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There's more stuff out there that deserve censorship than ever before, and I'm a fan of censorship when it's obviously right. But the reactionary hand of the media -- drawing back with a loud OW! after the Imus affair -- is getting laughable.

Imus was a nasty man who got a long-deserved comeuppance. I won't waste an electron defending him.

Then came two even scuzzier than Imus, Opie and Anthony, who allowed a guest to muse about raping Secretary of State Rice, First Lady Laura Bush and Queen Elizabeth. The Rev. Sharpton appears to be standing up for Condi this time -- or is he defending those two white chicks? -- because he's calling for their dismissal, and CBS is considering it.

Now along comes two other CBS losers, Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay of "The Dog House with JV and Elvis" who just got shown the door after an on-air prank call three weeks ago ordered "slimp flied lice" from a Chinese restaurant. (source)


Slimp flied lice. That's pretty darn tame, don't you think? Hardly the f-word that ends in "aggot." But an NYC councilman named Liu took offense, making a sound point in saying that allowing JV and Elvis to stay on the air while forcing Imus out shows discrimination against Asians.

But it's an odd kind of discrimination, isn't it? Must we now have equal opportunity censorship? And it's a remarkably easy and unforgiving kind of censorship. Can anyone be fired for one slip-up, one off-hand Macaca-like slip? Is there some unspoken standard of a history of verbal stupidity that makes the shock-jocks vulnerable? If so, let's state it before I worry that Hugh might get canned for mentioning the orthodontic challenges faced by Brits, or Rush canned for foolishly referring to himself someday as a fat, balding white guy -- a phrase that offends many.

Censoring pornography makes sense, as does, in the proper situation, censoring speech that could lead to violence against others ... you know, the sort of speech one might hear in a mosque on any given Friday.

But censoring "slimp flied lice?" We're reaching the point of zero tolerance, the realm of people with zero brains.