Tuesday, August 28, 2007

On Censorship...

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

--The First Amendment
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Post Foetry has not been censored; perhaps a cloak of silence has surrounded us, and, perhaps, we have even been pretty much ignored by the literary establishment, but we still enjoy the right to establish a presence on the internet.

At the moment, I have little reason to cry "censorship!"; Post Foetry (and certainly Foetry before us) has a voice on the internet.

Conversely, readers have the right to ignore us; we can't force people to read this site, nor would we want to.

After I launched the Foet Laureate web page, no government wonk called me up in the middle of the night and demanded that I take down the page; there have been no FBI threats, nor have I spent time in jail because of my web page.

I can call George W. Bush a total moron and not be arrested; even in these difficult Republican times U.S. citizens are still afforded certain basic freedoms (well, most of the time).

That's the way freedom of expression should and, for the most part, does work.

However, if an organization, even a non-profit, refuses to publish some one's creative work and/or opinions, that is not censorship. To publish or not to publish is at the discretion of an editor or an editorial board, a decision that is often based on board sensibilities and, yes, taste.

Whether we like it or not, even non-profit publishers have the right to decide editorial policy, even if they accept tax money.

Foetry went after private and university publishers when Foet Presses decided to take money from contest entrants for the purpose of awarding prizes to their friends (and not even reading manuscripts of entrants not in the inner circle), not because the publications reject writers' work, a fact of life in this field, or even though it has long been an open secret that poets and writers often set up cloaked vanity presses for the purpose of publishing each others' work. We may not like this, but it's not illegal to set up vanity presses: an important distinction well worth keeping in mind.

When organizations, even non-profits, take money on false pretenses, then that meets the criminality test, but simply rejecting some one's work is not a criminal offense, nor is it censorship.

Almost any entity can be become a non-profit, although not all non-profits are awarded government funding, another fact of life.

Being a dissident of any kind tends to place one in the margins, so we have to work harder at being heard, and, sometimes, we suffer consequences for speaking out against the majority--for example, a wall of silence.

Working harder does not necessarily mean ranting and raging, but quietly creating an enduring presence and agitating when it's truly warranted. A loud voice is simply a loud voice, which simply becomes ineffective after a time. Teddy Roosevelt said it best, and Martin Luther King lived it: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick."

Recently, I was cyberslapped on a domaining board for "self-promoting." I didn't think I had, but that was beside the point. It wasn't my board, so I swallowed my anger and moved on, understanding that I had been a guest in someone else's house, and I had misbehaved, at least in the eyes of the owner.

But it wasn't censorship.

  • Censorship would be having my blog erased, against my will, by the government.
  • Censorship would entail my being arrested because I called our president a moron.
  • Censorship would involve my being jailed for protesting the war in a public place.
(On private property, it's called "trespassing.")

However, if Blogger/Google (owner of blogspot) decided to remove my blog, I would hate them forever, but their act probably wouldn't meet the censorship test, although it might be considered discriminatory, especially if a similar blog were allowed to remain.

My point: I will not take a non-governmental organization, such as The American Academy of Poets, to task, just because it rejects some one's creative work and/or opinions. Life's too short, and I'd rather save my energies for the battles worth waging.

Now if Congress or any other governmental agency decided that Post Foetry, The American Dissident, or even the most hated of all white supremacist groups (which I will not name here) could not establish a cyber and public presence, then that would be a battle worth fighting because that would be a clear case of censorship, which would violate the First Amendment, and, ultimately, such egregious censorship affects all of us.

Best,

Jennifer Semple Siegel

Added August 30, 2007: This post is a response to G. Tod Slone, who believes that The Academy of American Poets engages in public-funded censorship by silencing unpopular viewpoints. The American Dissident is edited and published by Mr. Slone.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Honestly, you just don't know enough to lie down. This issue is dead. You lost. Get over yourself and move on. Calling for Simic to resign? Do you have any fucking idea how cosmically stupid you are? Take some medication. Learn your lesson from Alan who got his ass handed to him and besides it didn't help his wife get published did it. Boo-fucking-hoo. I bet you though people were going to flock to this asshat idea in droves. (Shaking head). What a waste of human space.

Alan Cordle said...

Hey Bugz,

Let me take this opportunity to plug my wife's new book . . . ok?

http://kathleenhalme.com/books.html

Hi Anon, I bet you're in my book.

Bugzita said...

Plug away, Alan

;=)

Anonymous said...

Cordle's "Bluehole" sobriquet is quite fitting. Bravo to him for that moment of honesty. But his plugging of his minor-poet wife is grotesque. Jennifer, you are a base hypocrite for writing an essay on Censorship without even mentioning that it was I who instigated you to write it. You are a hypocrite for advertising the Academy of American Poets on your blog, the very organization that censored me. And indeed you were well informed. What makes you tick? I'm done with your blog. It's run by immature people, yourself included.
Sincerely,
G. Tod Slone, Ed.
The American Dissident
www.theamericandissident.org

Bugzita said...

Dear Mr. Slone,

So if I don't agree with you, and I choose not to be YOUR puppet on MY blog, then I'm a censoring hypocrite.

I see how that works!

Thanks for educating me!

You're so amusing.

Bugzy

Anonymous said...

First, one should always be leery of blogs, for there is no telling what comments are censored, obliterated at the will of the blogger. In any case, I'm willing to bend. For the record, Jennifer was willing to put a remark that her censorship essay resulted from my telling her about my having been censored and calling her a hypocrite for that omission et al. I rescind the comment. She appears to be making an effort to be fair and included this comment:
"Added August 30, 2007: This post is a response to G. Tod Slone, who believes that The Academy of American Poets engages in public-funded censorship by silencing unpopular viewpoints. The American Dissident is edited and published by Mr. Slone."

Unfortunately, that comment is not accurate, so I wrote the following:

Hi Jennifer,
Well, the language you use is not accurate, nor is your statement. What I know is not a belief, nor is it what you state. It is a fact that the Academy of A m e r i c a n P o e t s censored all of my entries from the forum it held on Poet of the Month Simon Perchik, as if they’d never been posted. Then it censored an entire subsequent forum it created and labeled The American Dissident vs. Simon Perchik and “banned” (the word is theirs) me from participating in their forums. These are facts, not beliefs… and can be proven with documented evidence. The AAP is ind eed publicly funded. That is also a fact, not a belief. Also, you did not include the link you said you’d include, and you might wis h to refer to me as Dr. Slone, rather than Mr. Slone… or simply as G. Tod Slone in that note. I have no respect at all for the “Dr.” title, but use that title when dealing with those who seem to hold it in high regard. I do hold a doctorate, so have a right to use the title. Again, that is a fact, not a belief, and can be verified with documented evidence. For someone who appears to be anti-censorship and pro-First Amendment, you don’t seem to be moved by my having been censored, certainly not sufficiently moved to write the AAP or even to remove its advertisement from your website. BTW, I have not yet finished with this concern and will be contacting roughly 75 literary journals regarding the matter. My hypothesis is that the herd of literary editors don’t really give a damn about censorship, as long as it doesn’t concern them. Hopefully, they’ll prove that hypothesis wrong… though doubtfully.
Best,
G. Tod

Ian Thal said...

Dr. Slone has a tendency to throw the term "censorship" around willy-nilly. It appears that "censorship" means "activities by other literary personalities that involve not publishing the works of G. Tod Slone."

He once even accused me of attempting to "censor" him even though a.) all I had done was criticize a cartoon of his; and b.) I was in no position of power whereby which I could place any obstacle between him and his audience.