Tag: censorship

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The Trapped Chilean Miners Get Nannied

According to “60 Minutes”, the Chilean miners nearly mutinied against their erstwhile rescuers when they discovered that their messages to and from their loved ones were being censored by therapists who were determined to maintain an upbeat, positive atmosphere in the mine.

In an age in which psychobabble repeatedly seeks to assert itself as a new religious orthodoxy (and in which heretics are as roundly punished as medieval free-thinkers), I found this particularly disturbing. Who decided to claim this authority? Who took control? Why did anyone think that that person had the authority to do this? What kind of psychologist would cooperate with this kind of emotional putsch?

Some answers: The plan, according to the rescue effort’s lead psychiatrist, Alberto Iturra Benavides, is to leave them with “no possible alternative but to survive” until drillers finish rescue holes, which the government estimates will be done by early November.

“Surviving means discipline, and keeping to a routine,” Iturra said.

So when the miners do get moments to relax, they can watch television — 13 hours a day, mostly news programs and action movies or comedies, whatever is available that the support team decides won’t be depressing. They’ve seen “Troy” and “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” with Brad Pitt and Jim Carrey’s “The Mask.” But no intense dramas — “that would be mental cruelty,” said Iturra.

I cannot imagine mental cruelty more brutal than watching “The Mask” or “Troy”. However…

The news the miners see — which in Chile includes frequent reports about the miners themselves — also is reviewed first by the team above, said Luis Felipe Mujica, the general manager of Micomo, the telecommunications subsidiary of Chile’s state-owned mining company.

“Of course to do that you need to watch the news first and effectively limit access to certain types of information, or to put it vulgarly, censor it,” said Mujica. “This is a rescue operation, not a reality show.”

Though some miners have requested them, sending down personal music players with headphones and handheld video games have been ruled out, because those tend to isolate people from one another.  “With earphones, if they’re listening to music and someone calls them, asking for help or to warn them about something, they’re not available,” Iturra said. “What they need is to be together.”

So it was the mining company that made these decisions. But didn’t the worker’s rights take priority over this dictatorial impulse? What was the rationale? That the mining company owned the mine, and that the workers were their employees? Let’s just pass over that little detail about the negligence of the mining company causing the imprisonment in the first place…

I saw a website that questioned the strategy of the company psychiatrist, but not the essential point: who appointed this asshole to tell the miners what they would or would not be allowed to think or do while waiting to be rescued?

It is a stunning achievement: a discipline that has the success rate of witch doctors and palm readers has succeeded in appointing itself as an authority over mental/emotional issues. They have succeeded in convincing timid, gutless managers everywhere that they have some kind of magical authority that entitles them to decide what adult men and women may or may not see and hear.

Authoritarianism lurks all around us, just below the skin, even in so-called free societies. Even Hollywood movies adore it, giving us, time and time again, some asshole who “takes charge” and is supposed to be our hero because he tells people what to do, breaks the rules,  and because, in the fantastically rigged outcomes of Hollywood blockbusters, he’s the hero, the only one who can save us.

Mujica says “to put it vulgarly” as if it is only vulgar if you have to describe what it actually is, and as if his mind is not at least as vulgar as anything the miners could hear or see if someone was not trying to nanny them.

 

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George Carlin’s Wheezy Tribute

Okay, there is one thing– Stewart’s disingenuousness about the bleep. There is another, and this one really makes my blood boil.

Who the hell does the government think it is, telling me that I am not allowed to hear certain words?

The government hides behind a fig leaf or two: it will claim it never “censors”. No, it doesn’t. It merely fines violators after the fact. It asks you to simultaneous believe that the government is effective at enforcing the law, because of the fine, and that the government is ineffective at controlling free speech (because the fine is levied after the offense, it has no deterrent effect.) That’s obviously a load of hogwash and they know it.

So the networks self-censor. So a tribute to George Carlin, who became famous because he had the moral courage– yes, it was– the audacity, and the intelligence, to tell us what the seven words were, that you couldn’t say on television– so this tribute proceeds with a nod to his most famous joke, and they bleep out the words.

What was the joke? The joke, unintentionally, was on the mediocre minds who conceived of the idea of celebrating a man– now safely dead– who had nothing but contempt for their kind of minds when he was alive. The kind of minds who go, well, that’s very funny, but of course, we can’t actually say those words aloud. Then what’s funny about it? What’s funny about it is that mediocre, constricted, terminally repressed minds like yours can’t envisage a world in which people have the courage to believe anything in the first place (that isn’t first homogenized and castrated and presented to them on a platter), and, secondly, in which some kind of “authority” isn’t going around telling you what you are or are not allowed to hear.

Michelle Shocked — I just found out she is now an enthusiastic member of a Pentecostal church.

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“Smothered” on PBS

PBS recently showed a documentary (“Smothered”) on the struggle between Tommy Smothers and CBS brass over content of the “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” shown on CBS from  1967 to 1969.

You might have expected a fairly ideological blast at the network heavies for crassly suppressing the free-spirited higher consciousness of the rebellious 60’s but the film is actually fairly nuanced and even-handed. For example, it shows us that CBS actually permitted Pete Seeger– who had been blacklisted during the McCarthy era– to appear on the show. And then it excised “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” for it’s allusion to Johnson in Viet Nam: “and the old fool said ‘to push on'”. And then, after the Smothers Brothers protested to the print media, allowed them to show it after all. Clearly, CBS brass was concerned about getting flack from someone– the White House, most likely– about a song that slyly and cleverly attacked the Viet Nam War and Lyndon Johnson himself. Yet, in the end, they let it go on.

The contract Tommy Smothers signed with CBS gave him “creative control” over the show, so CBS was clearly not within the spirit of the agreement to continue, through the life of the show, demanding cuts and excisions based on it’s own programming and practices code. On balance, however, the documentary is not shy about pointing out Tommy Smothers’ own ornery contrariness over the issue. Certainly, he wanted cutting edge writers and comedians, and he wanted the show to be daring and relevant. But he also seemed to actively court controversy and at times he was clearly arrogant about his own perceived power– “The Smothers Brothers” shockingly ousted long-time champion “Bonanza” from the No.1 spot in the television ratings.

You come away with the impression that CBS wasn’t all that bad. They allowed Joan Baez to appear, but cut out her comments about her draft-dodger husband. They nitpicked a lot. Maybe they expected Smothers to eventually just give in and self-censor: “oh, they’ll never let us do that anyway, so let’s take it out”, which is what most television people did. Tommy Smothers astutely observed at one point that America liked to have some dissidents on TV to show that they were a broad-minded, tolerant country… but not in prime-time.

“The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” never used canned laughter or applause, and treated their guests with respect. Tommy Smothers recruited some the best young comedic talent in the business, including Rob Reiner, Mason Williams, and Steve Martin, and clearly influenced the development of Saturday Night Live a few years later.

And it was one of those young talents– David Steinberg– that finally drove CBS over the edge, with a “sermon” on Jonah and the Whale. Knowing that CBS would never allow the sketch (after a torrent of angry letters about an earlier, similar sketch about Moses), Tommy Smothers refused to turn in the tape of the show early enough to allow CBS censors and the affiliates to preview it. CBS used the technicality to cancel the show. The Smothers Brothers sued CBS for breach of contract and eventually won.

By the way, the documentary left out the funniest line of the Moses sketch. Moses stands before the burning bush and God asks him to remove his sandals. But the ground was hot and burned Moses’ feet. And for the first time in the Bible the words “Jesus Christ” were uttered.

How about that– more than 30 years later, I still remember that line.

Don’t forget– Bill Maher’s show “Politically Incorrect” was cancelled when he said something that really was politically incorrect (that the hi-jackers of the planes on 9/11 were, whatever else you say about them, courageous). And in spite of the fact that conservatives would love you to believe that it is the liberals, the feminists, and so on, who promote political correctness, it is almost always, in fact, the conservatives who ban and censor and harass those who disagree with them. (After all, one of the liberal values that conservatives dislike is the attitude of tolerance of diversity.)

Do you think James Dobson would ever have Naomi Klein on his show? Would Liberty University ever invite Hillary Clinton to speak?  Would John Hagee offer a spokesman for the Palestinians to discuss his views on Israel?

Anne Coulter might like you to believe that the liberals in control at some universities won’t invite her to speak because she is so, so… controversial. No, it’s because you’re a feather.

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Ward Churchill

Ward L. Churchill is a professor of ethnic studies at the University of Colorado. In the U.S. The nation that represents a shining beacon of hope to the world because of it’s democratic values and it’s devout belief in freedom of conscience and religion and a free press and free speech.

Do you take that all seriously?

Really, how significant is it when a university professor makes public comments indicating that he just doesn’t quite want to jump on the all-patriotic American bandwagon after 9/11 and actually dares to question the complicity of U.S. corporate interests in the attacks on the Twin Trade Towers?

Well, the Board of Regents– purely by coincidence, you know– not as if there was ever even the slightest question of abridging Professor Churchill’s freedom of speech, of course– decided to investigate Professor Churchill’s academic history, as, I’m sure, they did for all the professors at the University of Colorado, and with equal diligence and objectivity.

Lo and behold! Professor Churchill may have actually made a statement or two that might have been somewhat historically inaccurate! Fire the tenured sonofabitch! Done. The constitution is safe.

Now get this, so there is no confusion: he was fired because he had “falsified history” and “fabricated history”. He was also found to be “disrespectful of oral Indian traditions”.

These deliberations took place behind metal detectors and police guards because, the solemn regents reported, they had received death threats in the past month. Well, several death threats. A death threat. By e-mail.

Oh ye Regents of Colorado! Oh you proud and circumspect men, of towering integrity and courageous principle! You have saved your students from the misapprehension that the purpose of our freedoms is to be free! George Bush owes you a great, big, monstrous FAT one.

The truth is, Ward Churchill sounds like he may well be a liar and a scoundrel who doesn’t really deserve the support of anyone. That doesn’t change the fact that the regents targeted him for review because of his beliefs about 9/11.

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Baseball McCarthyism

Dale Petroskey, a former Reagan Administration official (who hates it when you mention that about him, in this context) has decided that Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins will not be allowed to attend a 15th Anniversary commemoration of the film “Bull Durham” at the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

If read that carefully, the word is “attend”. Sarandon and Robbins were not scheduled to speak. They were simply going to attend. Without polling anybody in baseball, Petroskey decided that because both Robbins and Sarandon had made antiwar statements, they can not be allowed to be seen by baseball fans.

It is entirely predictable that the first words out of Petroskey’s mouth in defense of his action will include phrases like “I am in favor of freedom of speech” and “I am against censorship” and so on and so on. Have you ever talked to a racists? The first words out of their mouths, on the topic of race, is invariably “I am not a racist”. Think about, “it is not about oil”, and “clear skies act”, and “security forces”.

Of course he is against free speech. That is exactly what Petroskey is doing: suppressing free speech. He is punishing people with whom he has a political disagreement, and trying to prevent baseball fans from being exposed to any ideas other than his own.

This is political correctness.  Don’t let conservatives fool you into thinking it’s a left wing issue: the right is far more “politically correct” (wearing your flag lapel pin, are you?  standing for the national anthem?  pledge of allegiance?) than the left ever was.

Petroskey is not entirely stupid. He immediately announced that no “pro-war” speeches would be allowed… either. This, after inviting Ari Fleischer, the White House chief butt-kisser, to speak last year about the noble Bush agenda. But Robbins and Sarandon were not scheduled to speak. To be truly consistent, he would have to announce that nobody in favor of the war will be allowed to appear at any ceremony at the Hall of Fame either. However, since everybody is either in favor of the war or against the war, that would limit attendance, don’t you think?

In a bizarre twist on an already twisted perspective, Petroskey said that the appearance of Sarandon and Robbins could put U.S. troops “in danger”. It would be tempting to make fun of the statement, but it’s hard to even imagine a satirical explanation for that comment. Does he seriously think Saddam Hussein has some of his spies monitoring Cooperstown for signs of irresolution on the part of the U.S. Marines?

It’s a dark moment for our times. Yes, it’s funny and stupid and bizarre, but it’s also a dark moment. This is McCarthyism plain and simple. We don’t actually lock up dissidents (not yet, at least) but we deprive them of podium, profession, or credibility.

You may recall that Michael Moore’s book “Stupid White Men” was suppressed by his publisher, Harper Collins, in the aftermath of the World Trade Centre attacks. I’ll bet that among the first words out of the publisher’s mouth were the phrases “against censorship” and “believe in freedom of speech” and then he went and did the opposite.

You might have been able to argue that Michael Moore’s book might not have been welcomed by an America still reeling from a terrorist attack.  What difference does that make?  Let the market speak.  However, when the librarians of America finally insisted that the book be published (I’m not kidding), it shot to the top of the best-seller lists and stayed there for 9 months.

That’s the real danger, isn’t it, Mr. Petroskey? When Americans do get a chance to be exposed to decency and common sense, they might just reject assholes like you. Crawl back into your hole where you belong.

 

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“Recovered” Memories

Feldman-Summers, S., & Pope, K. S. (1994). The experience of “forgetting” childhood abuse: A national survey of psychologists. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 62, 636-639.

Abstract: “A national sample of psychologists were asked whether they had been abused as children and, if so, whether they had ever forgotten some or all of the abuse. Almost a quarter of the sample (23.9%) reported childhood abuse, and of those, approximately 40% reported a period of forgetting some or all of the abuse. The major findings were that (a) both sexual and nonsexual abuse were subject to periods of forgetting; (b) the most frequently reported factor related to recall was being in therapy; (c) approximately one half of those who reported forgetting also reported corroboration of the abuse; and (d) reported forgetting was not related to gender or age of the respondent but was related to severity of the abuse.”

This passes for scientific research? It is taken from http://www.jimhopper.com/memory/#bc, a website dedicated to “proving” that memories of traumatic childhood experiences can be recovered.

If you believe that there is scientific evidence in support of “recovered” memories, you ought to read this paragraph very carefully. This is what is passed off as “scientific” proof. A poll of psychologists asking them if they had been abused as children and then if they had repressed the memories of it and then if they felt it was corroborated.

In other words, can you “remember” being abused as a child, and did you lose the memory of it. In other words:

Do you have faith in God above?
If the bible tells you so.

Now, the writers of this hoax are dimly aware of the issue here, so they ask how many of these psychologists who remember that they didn’t remember they were sexually abused “recovered” their memories in therapy? And how many now claim that they can corroborate the abuse? This article doesn’t detail the nature of “corroboration”, but we can imagine. Well, we can, but we shouldn’t, I suppose. By “corroboration”, they could mean… well, what could they mean? Other than some kind of confirmation from a non-witness– since the abuse is almost never witnessed– or by someone else who was also abused by the same person, which is not corroboration by any definition of the word. (In fact, in how many cases did they hear the alleged corroboration first, and perhaps were moved to “remember” that they too were victims?)

There is no record of anyone producing any kind of physical evidence in support of the recovered memories. There is a lot of evidence of “recovered” memories that were demonstrably false. There is a lot of evidence that the human mind is exceptionally creative when it comes to memory, combining them or altering them in amazing ways.  There is lots of evidence that human memory is subject to suggestion and manipulation.

Partisans would argue that it’s because of the nature of the crime– there never is physical evidence. There are just these long-suppressed memories.

The fact that 56% of these people “recovered” their memories in therapy, of course, is highly suspect. First of all, we’re dealing with psychologists here. These are people who already have faith, presumably, in psychology, and the various beliefs, structures, and assumptions common to the practice of psychology. A keystone of Freud’s theories is “repression”: memories of traumatic events are buried somewhere in our psyche but can be “recovered” through psychoanalysis.  Memories are like a tape recording: once found, they are an accurate record of what happened.  More recent research shows that this is patently false.

In other words, that there is such a thing as an unconscious, and a location for things that are repressed, and such a thing as repression. Maybe they all read “Sybil”, which, for a time, was the bible of hack psychology.

It’s like asking people if they believe in angels. You have to choose only people who also believe in the bible. If they say yes, you proceed to ask them if they have ever met one. I’ll bet 25% of that group have, in one form or another. An angel, for example, saved me from a serious car accident by waking me up when I was falling asleep on the freeway. That may sound strange to you, but a lot of people out there believe that such things really happen.

So a lot of psychologists, in therapy– with a psychologist, presumably– are led to “recover” memories of abuse which, apparently, they had repressed. So how do they know these memories are valid?

The study looks at corroboration, which consists of:

  • people who knew about the abuse confirmed it
  • someone else reported abuse by the same perpetrator (if you know someone who was robbed, does that mean that the robber probably robbed you as well?)
  • The abusers acknowledged some or all of the abuse. (I’d like to hear that conversation.)

None of this is really scientific by any stretch of the imagination. You just have to have a lot of questions about a person who “knew” about the abuse confirming it. How did they know? What did they really know? What kind of conversation led to this disclosure?

On to another facet:

Just as technology evolves, social consciousness and hence the definition of academic freedom is evolving. And this is coming about as people, particularly members of less powerful groups, speak. Dr. Jill Vickers, a Professor at Carlton, for example, recently “urged CAUT to come to grips with and to understand how the principles of academic freedom and institutional authority, ideas that legitimize the university, can also be used to perpetuate the status quo and sustain those who are more powerful and privileged – in most cases white males” (Riseborough, 1993). Along similar lines, UNESCO is currently reviewing an international proposal regarding academic freedom (International Conference of University Teachers’ Organizations, 1993). The text of this proposal makes it clear that there can be no academic freedom without social responsibility.

by Connie M. Kristiansen, Carleton University, Newsletter of the Section on Women and Psychology, Vol 20, No 2, page 7-16.

Read that chilling line again: “There can be no academic freedom without social responsibility”. Sound like an old communist plot? It’s a feminist plot, however, aimed at those would deny that memories can be repressed and then “recovered”.  Who believe that there is such a thing as a false allegation.

It’s idiotic, to be blunt. Free inquiry should be suppressed in the name of a greater social good, which is, to be able to expose the institutionalized oppression of women that is so pervasive and encompassing that women are justified in suppressing freedom of speech in order to fight it.

If I have to explain why that’s a bad idea, I’d have to admit that our society is hopelessly ignorant about the fundamental basis of freedom, democracy, and human rights. It probably is.

And if radical feminists are so stupid as to believe that this very weapon, the suppression of free and open discussion and deliberation, is not sure to be turned and used against them in the future, as it has been in the past, then they are greater fools than even I imagined.

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Pabulaolum

Have you seen those new AOL ads, the ones about “Chelsea Buns”? This smug but concerned-looking mother talks about how her daughter was looking for a recipe for “Chelsea Buns” when, it is implied, she accidentally hit a porn site. The mom goes, thank god for AOL! She mentions that she also has a son who is deeply into… “X-Men”.

AOL controls your access to the internet. AOL decides which sites are safe for you to see and which ones are not. To add insult to injury, AOL won’t tell you what it’s criteria is, because it believes that it’s criteria is a trade secret. Like the recipe for Captain Crunch, or Barbie’s measurements.

Sometimes an ad tells you a lot more than it thinks it does. And what this ad tells you is that AOL is really not an online information service at all. It is a television network. Television is about corporate control over what you think and do. Entertainment is merely a vehicle for merchandising. The viewer is a passive recipient of logos, celebrity endorsements, lifestyle ads. Yes, even if you are stupid, you can have a fulfilling life if you have a credit card.

And I’ll bet this woman, so concerned about “Chelsea Buns” lets her kids watch gazillions of ads, three hours of television a day, without the slightest concern. Well, for heaven’s sake, her son is fan of the “X-men”. Violence and mayhem are okay. Sex is not.

These ads practically shout, “I want to be told what to think! I want my information to be controlled and doled out like Pabulum by giant soul-less corporations! Please—it hurts to be free!”