A few folks have asked me about my most recent post regarding the year that was 2004. Apparently, there is a tinge of curiosity as to why I decided to lambaste this particular, damnable 365-day session of hell.

Well I’m happy to report that less than two weeks into the New Year, I have the perfect example. It’s almost as if someone was just waiting to provide one for me, and apparently that someone is the entire back-asswards state of Mississippi. Click this link here, read the story, then return.

That is the type of stuff I’m talking about. That is the sort of thing that is, to me, downright infuriating. I would like to think that in this day and age, we have gotten past censoring books and various forms of print. It’s aggravating enough that the FCC is so anxious to can the first overzealous DJ to say the word “boobies” on the air, but now even political satire is being ousted in the ever-retarded “Red States.”

And here, only a few paragraphs into my trademark diatribe, I’ve been reduced to using a sociopolitical “buzzword” that will be filed under “so 2004” by late February/early March. Christ. I think I’d feel less unclean if I were to forcibly club a baby seal to death and then make a crude set of bolas out of his eyelids for other hunters to use on rare and endangered species.

Ya gotta have ethics… ‘scuse me. I have to return some videotapes.

Y’see, that’s just it. It’s this idiotic regression into the intellectual dark ages that irks me, and pardon me, my Republican friends, if I seem to finger your crimson-hued territories as being the cardinal offenders, but I’m just stating the facts.

See, this ain’t a Republican or Democrat thing. It’s a well-known fact that the Southern sector of these United States is, on the whole… just a little slow in terms of gray matter. It’s also no secret that these laidback folk are uptight and very rigid when it comes to certain modern ideologies. Religious tolerance, racial equality, gun control, immigration, free speech, women’s right to choose, or civil union, just to name a few.

Yeah, I’m being very broad, but fuck disclaimers. The South has done enough damage to it’s already not-so-sterling reputation that it permeates and reinforces it’s own horribly clichéd stereotypes, and this instance is no different.

Getting back to the crime at hand… why are we banning a book? Because of a faux nude image that no one has mentioned beforehand? Well if you’re gonna boot the Daily Show book, you might as well boot The Catcher In The Rye for it’s language, Lolita for it’s indecent subject matter, American Psycho for it’s brutal imagery, Breakfast Of Champions for it’s frequent documentation of the male characters’ penis lengths, Of Mice And Men for it’s unintentional animal cruelty, or better yet, let’s go back even further and banish Huckleberry Finn for it’s use of the n-word, despite the fact it was a commonly accepted phrase in it’s day.

See, this is what I was primarily scared of with Bush being re-elected. It’s that hardcore backing of the religious right, who, time has proven, are extremely uptight and highly prevalent in the Southern United States. And to me, that type of thinking is backwards and counterproductive. We’ve come far as a nation and have made great progress. For a library to ban a book, offensive or not, is downright unconstitutional, and I think even the most hardcore conservative would be inclined to agree with me.

See, I’ve never been a fan of censorship, which is why I’ve been such a huge advocate of Howard Stern over the course of the past year. If you wanna know where this all stems from, I’ll give you a brief synopsis. I was a DJ for my college radio station. What started as an intense and obsessive love for guitar and music in general soon transformed into an outlet to vent frustrations, share the music and art I love with a listening audience, and, most importantly, to have a good time. And truthfully, some of my fondest memories from college stem from that dumpy little studio in the basement of Tower.

And many of those memories came from a special Shangri-La called “safe harbor hours.” A realm that exists between 10:00 PM and 6:00 AM Eastern Standard Time where the FCC eases up on the restrictions.

You wanna know how much we loved safe harbor hours? A friend and I would religiously play “Unclefucka” from South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut on our shows.

So yeah, I had a lotta fun with radio, which is why I can sympathize with Howard Stern’s move to Sirius. If I was in his position, getting fined more than someone who hijacks a plane (it’s true), I would move to an uncensored, untouchable venue, too. Radio has gone far beyond that banal land of Top 40 hits, and can actually be used for *gasp!* speaking the truth! Spreading ideas! Encouraging people to vote! It's not just a form of entertainment, it has become an artform in and of itself (largely in thanks to Mr. Stern himself). And any true artform, regardless of the medium, is a form of free expression.

And to me, as a writer, there is no greater form of free expression than within the written word. So for anyone to ban a book is, to me, sacrilegious and unforgivable.

First off, no one person or body of persons should reserve the right to withhold a book from being purchased or lent from a bookstore or library. It’s feeble-minded and weak, period. This is one of the reasons I rarely traverse into the local Wal-Mart. They’re just as bad as the FCC, carrying censored album variants and also pulling whatever they see fit from the shelves. Their most recent crime: removing George Carlin’s latest literary opus, When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops? from their shelves.

Of course, this is a major double standard since Wal-Mart stocks up to the nines on the Harry Potter series. And while Carlin's book has not received one formal complaint (or at least not one of note), there have been frickin' marches against Harry Potter saying it promotes witchery, paganism, even Satanism. Of course, that argument is complete bunk, but, Wal-Mart has not given into the plight of these fundamentalist fanatics. Reason? Harry Potter always pushes units, and George Carlin is likely to appeal to a much smaller sample of the American populous.

But we're not here to discuss hypocrisy in the business world. Time to shift gears and get back on track

Not for nothing, but I really wish that this Mississippi library and Wal-Mart would just let the people decide what they want to read. A select group of unauthorized people making such a decision for a larger group of people is not only asinine, but counterproductive as well. And the reasoning behind it is about as solid as your "number two" following an all-night binge at South Of The Border. I mean, when was the last time a book made someone pick up a shotgun and start picking off midgets? Never!

And that’s the other thing that pisses me off. These holier-than-thou businesses somehow think that the written word will influence people to do horrible things. Well if a book, song, movie, or TV show “drives” anyone to commit violent, textbook sociopath behavior, did you ever stop to think that the seed was already in that person’s head? Did you ever put on the brakes and realize that maybe, just maybe that person was a tad bit unstable to begin with? Folks, I realize some psychos out there may need to be taught how to load, aim, and shoot a gun. But they have to want to acquire that gun in the first place. A piece of art is not going to actually speak directly to that person. That only happens in the confines of an unhinged mind, and any psychologist or attorney will tell you the same.

Folks, I gotta close friend who is an avid reader of social theory and philosophy. While he and I share very similar political views, he has a much grimmer outlook on life, and yeah, quite a bit of it stems from what he's come across. Despite our differences, I respect the hell out of the kid for going out of his way to ask questions and seek answers. I respect him for keeping an open mind to another way of thinking, another form of logic and belief. Most of all, I respect him for using his fuckin' brain and absorbing all of these ideas in order to shape his current belief system. He's done more reading on life and society than most of us will do in our lives, and he's only 20 years old. And while I may not always agree with him, I gotta admire how open he is to new perspectives.

See, to me, it’s all about setting the precedent. Sometimes all it takes is one person or one small series of events to set the ball into motion, and that can be both good and bad. In this case, we’re swinging a sharp right at bad, because ideas, be they satirical, revolutionary, or simply thought provoking, should never, I repeat, never be hindered in any way. And if they are, then we might as well throw in the towel, because we’ll officially be halfway to the world depicted in Fahrenheit 451.

And I know damn well that is not what Ray Bradbury wanted when he penned that masterpiece.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.