Never underestimate a loony
When you start turning over stones, some scary things start scuttling about. My comments about this article on Media Watch Watch elicited the following incendiary response:
Great!” Let’s put a diet of snuff movies & footage from Neverland on the TV schedules. Objection is futile when all you need to do is press the off-switch.
The stupidity of the knee-jerk comment leaves me a little shell-shocked. To me, this sort of “thin end of the wedge” argument, suggesting that the slightest relaxing of regulation will turn the masses into slavering perverts overnight, speaks more about the champions of censorship than those they seek to “protect”. Perhaps because their grip on their own demons is so tenuous, they feel the need to guard us from the temptations they believe we all must share with them (since they, of course, consider themselves “normal” human beings). These are the same people who think that greater tolerance of homosexuality will result in us all being bummed to death in our sleep by raging queens.
The suggestion is clearly that, because I do not object to content that features consenting sex between adults (which, last time I checked, is neither illegal or amoral), I therefore condone content that is illegal and amoral. This argument is ignorant, vapid and, quite simply, wrong; born from self loathing and fear of anything outside their own narrow definition of “normality”. The idea that “if you don’t agree with me, you must be evil” belongs in the 18th century, or the school yard. It is not product of an open mind. You can’t see the world as it really is when you look at it though such a narrow window.
It was suggested to me recently that I avoid engaging in argument with the likes of Dr Shell, as you cannot reason with the unreasonable. I’m beginning to see the value of this advice.