A Forum for Vigorous Debate, Cornerstone of Democracy

***********************************************************************************************************************************
A FORUM FOR FREEDOM OF SPEECH AND VIGOROUS DEBATE, CORNERSTONES OF DEMOCRACY
[For the journal--guidelines, focus, etc.--go to www.theamericandissident.org. If you have questions, please contact me at todslone@hotmail.com. Comments are NOT moderated (i.e., CENSORED)!]
Encouraged censorship and self-censorship seem to have become popular in America today. Those who censor others, not just self, tend to favor the term "moderate," as opposed to "censor" and "moderation" to "censorship." But that doesn't change what they do. They still act as Little Caesars or Big Brother protectors of the thin-skinned. Democracy, however, demands a tough populace, not so easily offended. On this blog, and to buck the trend of censorship, banning, and ostracizing, comments are NEVER "moderated." Rarely (almost NEVER) do the targets of these blog entries respond in an effort to defend themselves with cogent counter-argumentation. This blog is testimony to how little academics, poets, critics, newspaper editors, cartoonists, political hacks, cultural council apparatchiks, librarians et al appreciate VIGOROUS DEBATE, cornerstone of democracy. Clearly, far too many of them could likely prosper just fine in places like communist China and Cuba or Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Russia, not to mention Sweden, England, and Austria.
ISSUE #47 PUBLISHED MAY 2024. NOW SEEKING SUBMISSIONS FOR ISSUE #48.

More P. Maudit cartoons (and essays) at Global Free Press: http://www.globalfreepress.org

Friday, May 29, 2020

Poetry Daily

Poetry Daily chose NOT to respond to the email and poem I sent in 2013.  See below.  Today, I wrote Poetry Daily again and with a different poem.  Will it respond?
.........................................................

From: todslone@hotmail.com
To: staff@poems.com Subject: Poem for Word Coppers Don Selby and Diane Boller Date: Mon, 30 Dec 2013 10:04:07 -0500

Hi Don Selby and Diane Boller, Poetry Daily,
Are you both part of the Word Police, as I suspect?  If so, the following was written for you and with this email (and your response or non-response) will be published in the next issue of The American Dissident!  Vive la Liberte de parole!!!
 
Sincerely,
G. Tod Slone, Editor,
The American Dissident, a 501c3 Nonprofit Journal of Literature, Democracy, and Dissidence



Free Speech in Peril: Notes on Stage One Censorship 
Conformist journalists, academics, poets, professors, 
political hacks, librarian marms, and others 
have been replacing FUCK with the F-bomb, 
as if somehow the word were highly dangerous,
yet FUCK is as common as it gets,  as in
FUCK you, FUCK me, and FUCK it all.  

Now, was that really so FUCKING painful?   

Say FUCK in front of the wrong cop, however, like I did
and end up in jail for a whole FUCKING day, then
a month later standing before some FUCKING judge,
who, against the FUCKING prosecutor’s wishes,
of course dismisses the whole FUCKING case.

We need to rise above the easily offended
and hammer their censor protectors

by using, now and then, prohibited words
like FUCK, NIGGER, CUNT, DYKE, WETBACK,
QUEER, FAGGOT and MUTHAFUCKA, though
we ought not use them to insult the weak, 
but rather to shine a light on freedom of speech
and make the self-evident point that sticks and
FUCKING stones will break my FUCKING bones,
but FUCKING names will never FUCKING harm me.

The word FUCK is on the endangered vocabulary list,
thus I’ll say it whenever I FUCKING can to help preserve it.  
The word FUCK represents freedom,
my FUCKING freedom,  
so please, please don’t FUCK with it!


 

No comments: