There is drama on the internet once again. The varied reactions to a recent “controversy” at Boing Boing surprised me. Several accused Boing Boing of censorship, but the thread was also replete with references to 1984, FISA, and numerous other things the commenters found unsavory. The issue at hand has been completely blown out of proportion. The facts are as follows:
A step-by-step look at Boing Boing’s actions
- Following some incident, certain posts that involved input from one “Violet Blue”, including one about — how funny is this? — Google’s “censorship” that resulted in several adult-oriented blogs dropping in rankings were “unpublished.” (Note: Her posts were not deleted. They still exist, essentially, but the posts cannot be accessed from Boing Boing itself.)
- Some sites catch a whiff of the drama about to be let loose. Remarks are made about Boing Boing’s integrity, including (many) references to Communism and revisionism.
- Teresa, one of the site’s moderators, posts an explanatory post, claiming that:
It’s our blog and so we made an editorial decision, like we do every single day. We didn’t attempt to silence Violet. We unpublished our own work. There’s a big difference between that and censorship.
Teresa Nielsen Hayden: “That Violet Blue thing”
At this point, there’s little more to be said that hasn’t been said already. Here’s my take on the controversy: I believe that Boing Boing is perfectly within its right to delete and remove posts from public view. Because Boing Boing is not actively preventing people from reading the posts (they even mentioned that the posts in question are still available in the WayBack Machine), this does not even come close to the suppression of the 1st Amendment, or whatever else enraged commenters were spouting on about.
However, removing the posts does not create a good journalistic standard. The posts in questions were written over a year ago (some of them nearing two years old), and for a site of Boing Boing’s size and volume, that equates to eons ago. Those who addressed the controversy were not really concerned that the posts themselves were missing. I doubt their absence would have been noticed by many if it had not been for Boing Boing’s popularity — and thus inherent magnetism towards drama — and more importantly, its intense advocacy of free speech, free press, and free action. An accusation of censorship for Boing Boing weighs more heavily than, perhaps, on an online news site or magazine where such standards are considered commonplace.
Instead of unpublishing the post, Boing Boing could have just as easily posted a redaction of their support of Violet Blue, and have people judge for themselves whether the posts were even worth the concern. It would have saved Boing Boing’s face and a whole lot of fuss and anger. Boing Boing may have acted under the pretense of quietly resolving an incident, but it could have chosen words as a medium, not their absence.
There are a couple things that are pretty constant about all of the Christmases I’ve ever had (forty-two in all; count ‘em, I dare you!):
- The food is just-released-from-an-awesome-asylum/insanely good
- Board games. Thousands of them. No one stops playing until someone goes into cardiac arrest.
- The dog gets a present or someone gives their present to the dog.
- Everyone else gets their presents in after-Christmas shopping sprees.
The best part about all of this? This sort of fun is accessible to anyone and everyone, regardless of faith. So when people tell me that you can’t celebrate Christmas without mentioning Jesus, I get a little nervous — hyperventilation nervous. Like, what will I do without my 50%-off socks? Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale. Fall.
The fact of the matter is that there are many different faiths and even though the Pilgrims were Protestant and the settlers at Jamestown were Anglican or whatever they were, many of the first thirteen colonies started out as areas for religious refuge for people of other faiths — Catholicism, Judaism, etc. Our world is dominated by commercial and secular interests — don’t think that this means that religion is on its way out — and not every holiday is purely religious in nature. A lot of faiths don’t have the benefit of having a widely popular holiday that’s not exclusive to their own followers. Believe me, if Rasta had some sort of mass gift-giving extravaganza, I wouldn’t be writing this post. I would be sitting back and relaxing, mon, and getting my reggae on.
But believe me, Christmas thrives on its commercial aspect. People love buying gifts for one another. It’s an excuse to spend time with your family, to think about them for a change. Religion never really leaves you; I feel that true spirituality is internal and doesn’t need any sort of prodding or poking for it to emerge. Some holidays are inherently religious, but Christmas doesn’t really have to be. It’s about warmth, family, caroling, not-having-to-clean-up-after-your-dog-who-likes-to-poop-on-carpets, eggnog, figgy pudding (whatever that is), and, well, presents!
Merry Christmas everybody! I hope you guys got more presents than your counterparts in some parallel universe!
Toni Morrison’s writing is like an addiction, like magic — when I first read Beloved, one of her later novels, I was captivated by the depth of the sadness in the book; the power of the memories. The prose ebbed and flowed around me, creating a poignant, evocative world — creating something deceptively familiar, yet intrinsically exotic. Song of Solomon was nothing less — at its very least, it is a humbling tale of family and fortune. Believe me. Some books are just worth a $10 library fine.
On a winter’s day in 1931, Macon “Milkman” Dead is born, a bridge between two almost isolated ends of his family, bathed by velvet rose petals and shaded by two blue silk wings that fell to the ground under the weight of the body they carried. His mother, Ruth Foster, never escaped the cocoon that her father had created around her by sheltering her with wealth and an almost scandalous closeness — Ruth, the doctor’s daughter, the doting child and mother all the same.
And I also prayed for you. Every single night and every single day. On my knees. Now you tell me. What harm did I do you on my knees?
His father, also Macon Dead — as was his father before him — is a proud, self-made man, quick to assume, quick to anger, and quick to hate — he suspects everyone around him of trying to upset the success that he created for himself and his family — up to and including his own family. From within their home on Not Doctor Street, his older sisters, Magdalene called Lena, and First Corinthians, make rose petals from expensive velvet — struggling to live their lives without the constant specter of their family’s culture and sophistication.
On autumn nights, in some parts of the city, the wind from the lake brings a sweetish smell to shore. An odor like crystallized ginger, or sweet iced tea with a dark clove floating in it … this heavy spice-sweet smell that made you think of the East and striped tents and the sha-sha-sha of leg bracelets … the ginger smell was sharp, sharp enough to distort dreams and make the sleeper believe the things he hungered for were right at hand. To the Southside residents who were awake on such nights, it gave all their thoughts and activity a quality of being both intimate and far away … but they didn’t think of ginger. Each thought it was the way freedom smelled, or justice, or luxury, or vengeance.
Eager to be free of his immediate family, although he never will be, Milkman seeks the company of his aunt, Pilate Dead, who lives in a shack far from the luxury and prestige of Not Doctor Street, making illegal wine and singing cryptic songs, old and young in the same body, and wearing a single earring — a brass snuffbox in which her father’s only written word, her name, Pilate, meticulously copied onto a scrap of paper, is buried for all time. Pilate teaches him about simplicity and loyalty; her daughter Reba teaches him about luck; her granddaughter, Hagar, teaches him about love, fear, and lunacy. Desperate for Milkman’s love, Hagar tries first to recapture his attention, and second, to kill him — neither efforts succeed, leaving her broken:
Pretty woman, he thought. Pretty little black-skinned woman. Who wanted to kill for love, die for love. The pride, the conceit of these doormat women amazed him … they loved their love so much they would kill anybody who got in its way.
Milkman, eager to escape from Hagar and pursue his own glory, teams up with his “friend” Guitar, a young man, and a member of the secretive “Days”, a quasi-terrorist group intent on setting the racial score straight; for every black man killed by a white man, he kills one white man. For every black church bombed, he bombs a white church. For every betrayal, every twist of fate, he determines a price to be paid — and too often, that price is someone’s life. When he and Milkman plan to steal Pilate’s gold, a quest that eventually leads Milkman to uncover the secret of his family’s identity, Guitar knows that he will be watching Milkman at every turn — anything to keep the dream of gold alive, even for only one of them.
Perhaps that’s what all human relationships boiled down to: Would you save my life? or would you take it? … Guitar was exceptional. To both questions he could answer yes.
And so Milkman ventures alone, looking at first for gold, and later for ancestry — for truth. He travels in and out of small towns that are jealous of cars, jealous of three piece suits, but never, as Milkman is, of family. Stalked endlessly by Guitar, Milkman strives to uncover the past as it happened, brimming with bones, with names, with songs, with tears, but never with gold. He learns the story of his great-grandfather, Solomon, who flew with the intent of saving his dearest son, Jake, the last of twenty-one children — and of Jake, who was shot by jealous landowners, who flew off of his fence post and was, in life, his children’s anchor, but in death a broken beam between them. But most of all, he learns his own story — outside of Hagar’s arms, his mother’s arms, Guitar’s arms. He learns to soar.
Solomon done fly, Solomon done gone
Solomon cut across the sky, Solomon gone home.
