Thursday Morning Thoughts

SOPA AND PIPA protest yesterday. It was great to see so many websites participate.

It strikes me as ironic that while many were participating in a protest to protect freedom of speech and expression there was some focus placed on further dampening the free expression of thoughts and ideas. In particular, McKay Hatch of the No Cussing Club (Are you fucking kidding me with this shit?) was upset that a young character, on the ABC sitcom, Modern Family, would be allowed to swear. Lilly appears to say FUCK about 6 times in total during the show. You never see her say the word since it is pixelated. You never hear the word since it is bleeped. She never even says FUCK because the script had her say FUDGE.

McKay Hatch freely voiced his opinion about what was really a nonissue. There is a simple solution if you are upset by such trivial matters and that is don't tune into ABC at 9pm on Wednesday night and watch the show. Easy as that. I for one don't watch MSNBC or FOX or a host of other channels because, well I don't like what they say and represent, so I don't bother to take the energy and time to turn on my television, lift the remote and enter the number for those channels.

Now what strikes me as really odd about all this is that this "protest" took place on the same date that a move was underway to stop the US Congress and Senate from passing bills that would further hamper freedom of expression and speech via the internet. Here we have a huge issue, US Government intervention in expression, being slightly overshadowed by some nonissue, brought to light by a young man, a self appointed anti-cussing crusader and splashed on the front page of one of the sites not participating in the STOP SOPA AND PIPA strike, Yahoo, which itself has participated in censorship (cooperating with the Chinese government to censor search engine results - as by the way, have other companies).

One of the greatest things about the internet is the ability to pull up vast stores of information. It is like having an electronic library on your desk. You do have to sort fiction from fact in your findings however. So, I decided to look up Mr. McKay Hatch and see who he is.

This includes not attempting to censor Fox, MSNBC,
The KKK, Westboro Baptist Church or anyone else with
whom you disagree.

The Facebook page for McKay Hatch was easy enough to find. He seems like a nice young man. He is just is a little misguided, but I will defend to the fucking death his right to be a little shithead meddler.