From Sacred to Profane.
Catching up with the spinning world after one has been "out of it" for a few days is always interesting. I've been out of town since Thursday morning, and didn't so much as read a newspaper or hear the radio in that time. When I came back, I didn't expect things to be much different, but it's always discouraging to watch them getting worse.
Take for example a story on the Yahoo! homepage this afternoon. The headline reads "Microsoft Joins Hands With Yahoo!, Google To Censor China's Web." The story goes on to detail that words like 'Democracy,' 'Human Rights' and 'Freedom' will be blocked in China "in an apparent move by the US software giant to appease Beijing." The story continues: "Bloggers who enter such words or other politically charged or pornographic content are prompted with a message that reads: 'This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity. Please enter a different word for this item'." To quote Joseph Welch, the American Hero who bitchslapped Senator Joe McCarthy in front of a national audience on June 9th, 1954, "At long last, have you no decency?" Words like 'Freedom' and 'Human Rights' are now profanity? And I thought I had a trucker's mouth before I read this article.
So it seems that America, so committed to "freedom" in certain parts of the world, is perfectly happy deleting the very term from the vocabulary in other parts if it means a slight bump in quarterly stock margins. I'm sure Bill Gates will take some of the money he earns from the Chinese market and make some grand charitable donation complete with flashing cameras down the line, but somehow it seems a bit perverse given the circumstances. Of course, Microsoft representatives were "unavailable for comment," and suddenly Google's much lofted policy of "Don't Be Evil" seems as empty as most of the company's critics have been saying all along. What, after all, could be more evil than preventing somebody from looking up the definition of the word "freedom?" Kicking puppies, or suckerpunching an elderly woman, I suppose, but not much else.
Take for example a story on the Yahoo! homepage this afternoon. The headline reads "Microsoft Joins Hands With Yahoo!, Google To Censor China's Web." The story goes on to detail that words like 'Democracy,' 'Human Rights' and 'Freedom' will be blocked in China "in an apparent move by the US software giant to appease Beijing." The story continues: "Bloggers who enter such words or other politically charged or pornographic content are prompted with a message that reads: 'This item should not contain forbidden speech such as profanity. Please enter a different word for this item'." To quote Joseph Welch, the American Hero who bitchslapped Senator Joe McCarthy in front of a national audience on June 9th, 1954, "At long last, have you no decency?" Words like 'Freedom' and 'Human Rights' are now profanity? And I thought I had a trucker's mouth before I read this article.
So it seems that America, so committed to "freedom" in certain parts of the world, is perfectly happy deleting the very term from the vocabulary in other parts if it means a slight bump in quarterly stock margins. I'm sure Bill Gates will take some of the money he earns from the Chinese market and make some grand charitable donation complete with flashing cameras down the line, but somehow it seems a bit perverse given the circumstances. Of course, Microsoft representatives were "unavailable for comment," and suddenly Google's much lofted policy of "Don't Be Evil" seems as empty as most of the company's critics have been saying all along. What, after all, could be more evil than preventing somebody from looking up the definition of the word "freedom?" Kicking puppies, or suckerpunching an elderly woman, I suppose, but not much else.
posted by MK | 12:25 PM
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