Yet Another Pitiful Statement of Censorship

Collegiality and an ethic of civility encourage conformity and the suppression of dissent. Group solidarity encourages tribalism. Dedication to mission encourages obedience to people charged with mission control. Loyalty to the group easily subsumes loyalty to the ideals for which the group supposedly stands.
—Wendy Kaminer, Worst Instincts (On internal corruption at the ACLU)

It is very evident what mean and sneaking lives many of you live… lying, flattering, contracting yourselves into a nutshell of civility
—Henry David Thoreau

Censors are dead men/set up to judge between life and death./For no live, sunny man would be a censor,/he'd just laugh./But censors, being dead men,/have a stern eye on life.
—D H Lawrence, "Censors"

Editor Tim Green of Rattle: Poetry for the 21st Century (sounds like an Orwellian nightmare!) just posted a statement of censorship on the journal’s blog site to further justify his role as yet another lackey of the established order bent on killing vigorous debate, cornerstone of a THRIVING democracy.

Censor Green is paid a salary by the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation to censor voices of which he disapproves and earned awards from Phi Beta Kappa, the Golden Key National Honors Society, and the Academy of American Poets. The latter, fearful of meaningful dissent regarding the general bourgeois nature of its heralded poets, censored and banned me from participating in its forums (see www.theamericandissident.org/AcademyAmericanPoets.htm).

How, a thinking citizen must wonder, do so many students manage to obtain college educations without learning much at all about democracy? Clearly, their professors favor CIVILITY and conformity over dissidence and vigorous debate. The whole civility initiative works against democracy and reminds of the left’s recent “whining”—to use Censor Green’s word of predilection to dismiss anything with which he disagrees—, regarding the recent town hall meetings, where vigorous debate actually took place. Censor Green reminds of Bubba Clinton who stated: “This cynicism is my enemy.” “Cynicism” was, according to Bob Woodward, however, in part, a code word for media criticism. Interestingly, Censor Green dismisses critics with the very same term used by the British government to dismiss American revolutionary patriots: “riffraff.”

Clearly, Censor Green, like all censors, has a deep-seated feeling of inferiority, which explains why he is so FEARFUL of opinions that might prove more cogent than his and why he defines himself as the sum total of awards obtained from the bourgeois established order.

By the way, Censor Green’s blog seems to be attracting a number of democracy-indifferent schoolgirls. How sad. In any case, Censor Green’s statement of censorship follows and is a shameful affront to democracy. You decide.

Comment Guidelines
random riff-raff / 1 Comment
Wed 9.9.09
The trolls are ruining this place, and I’m sick of cleaning piss out of a carpet that I don’t even care about. There’s no reason to waste time thinking about comments on this blog, unless it’s to participate in a discussion relevant to the post above them. I’ve spent way too much time this summer trying to decide how to respond to what amounts to ignorant, masturbatory graffiti. I feel like a kindergarten teacher. Well, I’m taking away the scissors.
Comments on this blog are now all moderated. Hopefully very few comments will actually be screened out, but there will be a delay, while I check to make sure they follow these simple rules:
1) Be civil.
2) Be relevant.
That’s all you have to do: Be civil and relevant. Even trolls who keep their whiny rants civil and relevant can voice their opinions. But if you can’t, your comment will sit forever in a queue gathering cyberdust.
Let this be a notice to everyone who’s been warned before: Don’t waste your time. I suggest making your own blog and bitching there.
And to everyone who no longer reads the comments because they raise your blood pressure: You can come back now, the riffraff is gone.