oddly enough, USA

Of course, No One Will Have To Burn Books…

when suppoedly indecent material cannot even be sold at first place. Today, the NYTimes reports that Wal-Mart is banning 3 men’s magazines (Maxim, FHM, and Stuff, of which I have never heard) because of the allegedly offensive nature of their cover designs.

According to the NYTimes

“[t]he decision to stop selling the so-called lads’ magazines is the latest in a series of moves by the company to limit distribution of entertainment products it judges too racy for its shoppers.The company has refused to sell CD’s that carry warning labels about explicit lyrics; instead, Wal-Mart Stores sell sanitized versions of albums.”

So this is what “lad’s magazines” might look on Wal*Mart shelves in the future should they too decide to honor Wal*Mart’s decision and market power with a special edition –

FHM cover, 'Wal*Mart edition'

Of course, Wal*Mart Stores, Inc., is a private entity and therefore, technically, no legal constitutional issues are at stake in instances like these. But that does not make things easier at all, as Nadine Strossen, a professor of constitutional law at New York Law School and the president of the American Civil Liberties Union explaines to the NYTimes –

“[w]hen you have a store that in many parts of the country has a dominant position, so that if you can’t buy a magazine at Wal-Mart, you can’t buy it at all … [i]t has literally the same practical effect in many communities as outright government censorship.”

If that were indeed the case, then the sheer market power of retail gatekeepers like Wal*Mart may make it necessary to rebalance their – and their shareholders’ – discretion with respect to other people’s ability to exercise their rights –

“[t]he Timothy Plan, a mutual funds management firm that invests in companies based in part on whether the companies share its values, has been pressing Wal-Mart to pull women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour from checkout lanes and put them back into the magazine rack. Arthur Ally, president of the Timothy Plan, said that he saw magazines like Maxim and FHM as ‘a level worse. It is soft-core pornography,’ he said. ‘It’s very addictive and leads to harder stuff.'”

Speech can only be free if it can be heard. And “censorship”, legal and/or de-facto always starts by prohibiting something not too many people won’t object to. The shifting of acceptance boundaries is what makes this process so dangerous.

But Wal-Mart’s decision may not prove to become a cultural disaster. Maybe, their decision will even foster digital literacy in those regions where the retailler does indeed possess the power to prevent people from buying the magazine of their choice.

For in the internet, there will always be a free shelf.

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almost a diary, Political Theory, self-referential

Homeowner.

I am sure, that you, my gentle readers, will be thrilled to hear that this little page from now on has a second home. One with its very own diskspace and domain. Ladies & gentlemen, “tschwarz.blogspot.com” is now also “www.almostadiary.de“.

You don’t have to update your links yet as I will continue using blogspot for the time being. But I thought I let you know that it feels good to be a homeowner – who, as Denise DiPasquale and Edward L. Glaeser found out some time ago, might well be the better citizens ;-).

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quicklink, USA

Different Standards.

At the end of February, when a Frankfurt court sentenced Mounir Motassadeq to 15 years of imprisonment for aiding the 911 terrorists, the Washington post was a tad bit cynical about the fact that “European countries have different visions of just sentencing than those that prevail in [ths US]” entitling their commentary “1.8 Days Per Murder”. Today, Salon.com’s coverage of unjust executions in the US would allow to reciprocate the cynicism – if it weren’t so sad.

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German Politics, oddly enough, quicklink

I’m frightened.

Fair enough, all this is probably even more speculative than the much debated question how long the US will stay in Iraq. Now that a lot of people believe that Joschka Fischer will go to Brussels next year to become the first ‘European Foreign Minister’ once the Constitution will be ratified, the establishment of his party is already vulturing for his current job.

According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, even the current Minister for environmental affairs, Juergen Trittin, is interested in the top-job in the German foreign ministery. Even though his most notable foray into foreign affairs was rather successful (he managed to get the Kyoto treaty through against W’s opposition), I cannot possibly imagine “Juergen-can-deposit-Trittin” as Germany’s top ambassador. No way. Never.

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compulsory reading, USA

A Big Place…

America is indeed. The country formerly known as the “Land Of The Free” may no longer be regarded as such by the majority of the world’s thinking inhabitants, but there is anecdotal evidence that Mars and Venus may have not yet actually decided to put the Atlantic between them as they still seem to believe the Rocky Mountains provide a sufficiently high geological divide.

In the South, AP reports,

“[t]he Alabama House voted against a bill [last] Tuesday that would have removed a ban on sexual devices, such as vibrators, from the state’s obscenity law. The ban on sexual devices was added at the last minute when the obscenity law passed the Legislature in 1998.”

Even though

“[a] federal district judge in Birmingham has twice ruled that the ban is unconstitutional…”

and therefore unenforceable. So maybe I am entirely misreading the poll. Maybe, what the lawmakers actually wanted was to leave in place an unenforceable obscenity law because they like obscenity. That, of course, would falsify the entire theory about the continental divide, as a Reuters story from the North, Northern California to be precise, can hardly be misinterpreted:

“More than 100 men and women have gathered in famously liberal San Francisco [last] weekend for what organisers said was the city’s second annual public “Masturbate-a-Thon”. Organisers said they have taken the event “from the sheets to the streets”, offering volunteers — 18 years or older — the opportunity to overcome their inhibitions in “a safe environment” and raise money for charity.”

What I like even better than the $25,000 these events have raised for charity in the course of the last five years is the pseudo-academic interpretation of the event –

“‘[t]his is an effort to counter centuries of censure, to make masturbation more fun and to make it more accessible,'” said Thomas W. Laqueur, a professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the recent “Solitary Sex: A Cultural History of Masturbation…”

I honestly wonder if Mr Laqueur participated or once again proved the old quip right that those who do don’t teach, and those who teach, well… don’t do.

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German Politics, Iraq, US Politics

I’m not sure Henry Kissenger

I’m not sure Henry Kissenger is right here. According to SPIEGEL ONLINE, he criticised the German foreign policy for allegedly not understanding “the American psyche” and not trusting “the American motives”.

So good ol’ Henry tells Gerhard and Joschka to flagellate themselves for not being able to see the truth. Just wondering – if the US have a specific agenda and would like the rest of the world to support it, wouldn’t it be their obligation to convince said rest? In my book, it would.

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oddly enough, US Politics

Who likes Iceman?

This time Maureen Dowd got it wrong. W’s campaign video shooting on the American aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln just off the Californian cost may be provoking comparisons to ‘Maverick’, the protagonist of Don Simpson’s and Jerry Bruckheimer’s 1985 hit-film TopGun – but it’s dead wrong.

‘Maverick’ is a good cowboy, not a bad one. He’s the bearer of the good America of my youth. He’s the mustang that roams and runs wild in Marlboro country. He’s disregarding the rules until he learns that, sometimes, they do make sense. He loses a friend, then faith, he lives at the edge of despair, but he grows and returns as a wiser man. And, hey, he gets the girl.

We may be not be flying F-14s on a daily basis, but I am pretty sure most of us aspire to be some kind of ‘Maverick’, ‘the best of the best’, in whatever we do.

The screenplay for TopGun II, ‘the Washinton connection’, that Maureen Dowd is proposing today, would not survive any producer’s scrutiny for more than five minutes. No one would want to see a film in which the dull and rational Iceman would become the bearer of truth. Of course, W’s PR people know that, and that’s why they made him play ‘Maverick’.

But he’s not. Or, let’s say – should W indeed be Maverick, we would be only 20 minutes into the film. And I am pretty sure that Ms Dowd is not favoring another seventy minutes of a W presidency, including the question which horrible incident would make W lose faith and self confidence.

Let’s just hope we’ll never know who would have to play ‘Goose’ in the sequel…

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