[censorship] do community standards exist

Does anyone remember the 1971 Schoolkids Oz pornography trial in the UK? Does anyone remember Judge Alex Kozinski in 2008?

Not only does there seem rampant hypocrisy in the matter of what constitutes community standards and the actions of its supposed defenders but these days, I wager no one really knows what community standards are.

Let's face it, the games kids are playing on the net and using the new technology, the sex, drugs and the instantly clickable gross porn kids can access any time they want on the net has changed the ground rules completely. Parents are either naive, turning a blind eye or throwing up their hands in despair.

What are community standards now?

Censorship classifications are a case in point. Take three films I've seen in the past months - Saw [18], In Bruges [18] and From Russia with Love [12].

Now Saw deserves its classification for gratuitous violence [people hung up with meathooks, limbs being twisted asunder and so on]. So if that constitutes an 18 rating, then what of In Bruges?

It has tame sex [Clemence Poesy even keeps her clothes on], has swearing and one drug scene. There's a point where someone throws himself off a tower and you don't see the splat, you see a closeup of his face, still alive, with some ketchup spread about. Poesy, in an outtake, uses the F-word to describe the F-act.

That's it. So where's the 18 and for what? For swearing?

On the other hand, the re-released Lowry Bond FRWL is tame in itself but the menu and links feature unclad females who are quite clearly unclad and therefore the silhouettes don't work. Let alone the womanizing theme of Bond in the early episodes.

This is rated 12?

So I ask again, what are the community standards which lead the censors to decide on classifications, on what do they base it, who enforces it and is there any need for it at all?

My own view is that what adults watch is their affair but that kids need some form of protection. However, I'm well aware of the obvious flaw in that - where is the line drawn.

[keyes] beautiful

Hat tip Lord T, from here.

Changing the topic, this on privacy and the lack of choice in the UK now:

Just look at what BT does with your phone service now. You don’t even want a BT phone but you need one to get a broadband connection with any ISP so you pay BT £11+ a month even if you don’t need, want or use the phone. OFCOM should fix this but is clearly toothless. It’s effectively a cash cow for BT and an additional cost for subscribers that looks very much like a license fee on broadband. BT marketing did well here. What consent is required for this? If you want broadband by anyone other than Virgin then you need to pay it and sign up to their user agreement. No options.

[pirates] a time for everything

Humorous line of the day:

Is anyone else getting tired of reading about pirates in this day and age?

[closure] and when to call and end to it

Round table discussion yesterday:

A: You remember that woman whose child was killed by Brady fifty odd years ago and she spent the rest of her life seeking justice?

B: Meanwhile, the rest of her kids lost her while she was fixated with the murder.

C: How do you know she didn’t spend part of each evening writing and phoning but the rest of the day she took care of day to day things?

A: But she still had it in the back of her mind the whole time, day in, day out.

D [me]: Mothers do that.

When there hasn’t been any more than the usual trauma of old age, when there was a closure of sorts, then it’s usually only once a year when it becomes difficult. But like Hamlet, when there has been no closure, then perhaps a person can be forgiven for becoming distracted.

However, if the living suffer because of this, then when is enough enough?

[extreme wii] phase two

It's possible this won't work so try the url.

[statement] with comment moderation turned on

Regular readers, the ones who remain, will have noticed the ratcheting up of provocatively opinionated and wildly generalizing posts recently, the last one, on Bond, published yesterday. Put it down to the now-passed fad of a pontificating, middle-aged man-on-a-bicycle who wanted to see how it looked.

So to this post.

Higham is currently miffed.

Bloghounds was set up with a concept in mind and leaving myself aside, the original committee represented this concept, namely that they blogged ethically. To make that statement is to leave that ‘group’ wide open to one simple challenge – their ethical blogging.

Just what is ethical blogging?

None of us are saints and we all have skeletons in our personal and private cupboards, some more than others, admittedly. Many of us also, by the nature of our political blogging, are into fiskings, exposés, debunkings and the tearing down of hypocrisy; my statements in the ‘middle-aged post’ obviously, in some people’s minds, crossed the line into hypocrisy.

There is a line though which should never be crossed. One should never bring anything into the blogosphere about another person’s private life, especially personal details we know of a fellow blogger, we shouldn’t even intimate it and here’s the criterion:

… if that person has never set out to personally harm us and has shared bread with us, either metaphorically or for real.

Please look at the name of my blog.

Many bloggers wish for simple privacy and privacy is an endangered concept in today’s big brother society. In the open sphere, there are sharks circling for blood and the very nature of our political blogging makes enemies.

So yes, expose hypocrisy, yes, call someone out for being an unmitigated liar, yes, quote from his or her words but no, never publish, or email to a third party, his/her real name, address, workplace, sexual proclivities [if you didn’t know mine before and if they’re still of the remotest interest, read the soon to be posted book - it’s all explicite in there], yes, expose the fact that he is one of that detested subset, that pariah of the highways and byways – a closet bicycle rider, do any of that.

But no, don’t publish or bring into question the personal details of someone you’ve shared bread with and who wishes you no harm. Especially don’t touch on past misdemeanours, unless he or she is specifically denying, in a public forum, that they occurred, in order to harm someone else or you or to hide his/her little game.

This last is the key criterion – that he, for his own reasons, goes public and denies what he/she did, for the purpose of attacking another. Even then, the blogger might like to desist, if it doesn’t personally harm him/her.

I am angry because I believe someone I admire had that happen yesterday, quite out of the blue [no, not me - another person, on another blog]. That’s beyond the pale, in my eyes.

There are various commenters I hugely enjoy and some I know the personal details of, even down to photos sent either by them or by someone else; they’re lost somewhere in the library which is this computer.

Two ladies reading this, [other than Uber], will be smiling at me coming over all moral, given what we did some time back and ‘je regrette rien’. I’d do it all over again, for sure, if I were partnerless, which I currently am. One of those women is one of the nicest people I’ve ever known but unfortunately, we fell out over the f---ing CSA [and no, I’m not an alimony jumper – certain partners and I came to arrangements before the nazis took over and rewrote the rules]; we also fell out over a certain English blogger [my gripe] and over a young Melbourne-based blogger whom I never had anything with at any time, truly, despite what you saw – that girl would laugh in my face to think so [that lady’s gripe].

I’ve missed that lady ever since, even though she thinks I’m a smarta—e, which is true. The other I actually proposed marriage to and when she took it to be more than the ravings of a maniac and we got down to details, that involved more complex emotions and a total paradigm shift on both parts, which had my closest people freaking and shouting at me to get back to the real world.

By the way, to the one whom I suggested the idea [or maybe you suggested it and I embellished it, I can’t remember], I’m still planning to take you to that beach for the night, the cool sand, don’t think I’ve forgotten and I hope I’m still up to it and it’s not all talk.

Any of these ladies could sink me in the sphere if she wished and that just shows that some people have principles and are true to themselves, despite how they see me acting. The man trying to ‘out’ me last year was amusing – he was barking up the wrong tree completely. Does he think I’m a bunny rabbit? St’ruth, the real thing was otherwise.

And another thing, be careful of women. All the time you were [allegedly] manipulating women, one clever Australian [surely no oxymoron] was [allegedly] manipulating you to help get at other women. It’s not only the men, you know.

To another young thing in my age range, quite unhappy with me at this moment, who’ll read this today, I’d like to say now – don’t ever think I’ll forget your arms. You can think what you like but it’s the arms and lips which remain in the memory although you think I made light of them but at least we had that, rather than just cyber words, which is more than many of us can say. That and the salt of course ☺.

I’m relatively silent on Uber but I’m saying here and now that she is one of the kindest people I know, to those who don’t f—k her about; she’s straight down the line and my feelings are consequently warm and have not diminished in any way. Trouble is, she’s someone else’s, so I’ve stayed at a distance.

All the good ones are taken. Sigh. Listen to the third verse, last line, of Turn, Turn, Turn [immediately before the instrumental break].

Anyway, back to the topic, what sort of an animal would I be if I did an ‘outing’ of any of my friends or the few people I’ve been really close to, male or female?

This is the thing.

Even after you’re well aware someone’s been undermining you through emails to others, with snide, disloyal little daming with faint praise [don’t forget that these people email to tell me, dearest, despite protestations to the contrary], even after you know that that person wants to hit back at you, you still must never release personal details.

After all else has gone, all we have left is personal principles of a sort … plus loyalty.

They’re more sacrosanct than the confessional.

None of us are saints.

That’s all.

Here endeth the sermon.

Note 1 – clearly, I can’t leave comments open on this topic, for fear someone will bring even more attention to some other poor blogger in the sphere. However, moderation seems the way to go on this post, allowing statements by you and allowing me the right to scrutinize them late tomorrow morning when I get to the internet again. That will prevent slanging matches either way.

Note 2 - This post has also been a way to send covert messages openly, without emailing or phoning and I have personal reasons for remaining incommunicado in the citadel for now. Anyway, I hate phones and hardly ever email. Doesn’t mean I’m not thinking of you, please don’t see it that way.

Note 3 – Apparently this area near the sea here has no cable, it being stopped by a roughly parallel railway gorge, some distance away. What makes it worse is that I’m near the end of a track, right by the water.

Therefore, the only alternative is satellite, which is being installed in the next month, so I’m led to believe. When that happens, I’ll have cheap[ish] internet and will be able to research properly, visit properly, do bloghounds properly and blog properly.

Regular readers, be patient please.