Slashdot Mirror
Roasting Sacred Cows
Hans Gilde writes: "Pedophilia has been a big topic in the UK lately, there have been riots, beatings and vandalism resulting from [pedophile witchhunts]. In an attempt "to ask hard questions about the way society and the media deal with its most difficult problems" and point out "that famous people have a habit of denouncing things without knowing much about them", a comedian in the UK produced a TV show, described in an article in the NY Times, in which he actually got a member of Parliament to say the following, on the air, in all seriousness: "Using an area of the Internet the size of Ireland, pedophiles can make your keyboard release toxic vapors that can make you more suggestible."" This show is frankly hilarious, and the reaction to it is even better. You probably want to see the show, eh? It's available in .avi or Real and DivX.
> We're giving too much attention to a TV show with the intelligence of a prank phone call.
Hardly. If there's a single, take-home message from the series, it's that charities, parliamentarians, government, the press and mass media collude to make rational public debate impossible: "major news topics" derive their sole significance from the extent to which they afford lobbyists, parliamentarians and the news media a pretext for creating mutually self-serving moral panics.
So, in a programme that dealt with the social and media hypocrisy surrounding child sex abuse, the point was made that anyone dissenting from the current hysteria (and suggesting, say, that paedophiles require treatment rather than demonization) would be either ignored or vilified.
Funnily enough, within a day of transmission Morris was vilified in the tabloid press and the programme condemned -- sight unseen -- by three government ministers.
Compared with the rest of a brilliant series, the programme was arguably below par. But to conclude from the fact it was under-written that Morris is somehow a "hack" is frankly stupid.
This comment says it well, from the end of the article:
`"How Mr. Morris must be laughing," Harry Owen of Horley, Surrey, wrote in a letter to The Daily Telegraph. "Perhaps Channel 4, instead of apologizing, should have simply said, `We rest our case.' "'
It's funny how satire becomes reality in that way. It's kind of like the South Park movie; the whole thing parodied, prior to the fact, the reaction of everyone to the movie after it was released.
Such satire is the most brilliant kind -- when a satire makes fun of the very reaction people have tot he satire. It's when you know that the satire's creators have hit their target right in the center of the bullseye.
Please prove you exist without resorting to a priori premises.
My opposition to pedophilia rests on one a priori assumption, which is fairly fundamental to my values: that imposing your will on others carries a high potential for evil. Another relevant assumption I make is that children, in general have underdeveloped choice-making capacity. This is not an a priori assumption, though proving that rhetorically is tedious and demanding. I would beg your indulgance on the point. (In fact, I will ignore you if you challenge me on it, as I have real work to do today. 8)
In the case of pedophilia, the potential evil attendant upon forcing one's will upon a person with limited capacity for choice is the disruption of normal human development caused by the untimly exposure to a powerful human drive that even adults have a hard time coping with psychologically. The potential for damage increases the younger the victim, and the closer the relation of the perpetrator.
In philosophical terms, the above argument has lots of holes. In common-sense terms, I believe it is nearly bullet-proof.
"Even if you are on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there" - Will Rogers
- It is very much a taboo. Even a show about it raises moral objections from the masses. A murderer gets complimented in jail; a pedophile gets murdered. My simple reply (in which btw I said I though pedophilia was distasteful!) elicited a "you sick fuck child rapist" response. Need I say more?
- There is a LOT to discuss. Is it indeed harmful? To whom? Can we minimise its incidenmce? Can we minimise its harm? Why are some people pedophiles? HOw can we minimise any harm caused? How should released pedophiles return to society? What therapies work best? Is the Internet bad for allwoing free communication? Should the Internet be banned becuase it contains child sex pictures? Is the harm partly or wholly culturally caused? I could go on for a while - and all these questions are taboo, as they generally just receive reactions like that one response to my post I saw that just saud "you sick fuck child rapist". That was a typical reponse not to a pedophile but to someone merely responding to a post ABOUT the subject! And that is what we should fix, and that is what the show no doubt hopes to achieve.
Michael---
BDOS ERR ON A:>
Humour Is Subjective (i.e., do not tell other people what constitutes a funny subject)
Take an example: If I were to make a joke regarding Rome annihilating Gaul, would you respond in disgust and anger? Probably not. If I were to make a joke about the Holocaust, would you, then? Probably, yes, indeed. Why? Because you feel more of a close personal attachment to the event of the Holocaust than to the even of the conquering of Gaul. They're both tragic genocides on a similar scale. One is not greater than the other, but we have more personal, emotional interest in tip-toeing around the issue of the Holocaust. That doesn't make it rational in any way shape or form, however.
neither does the ignorance of elected officials when it comes to technology, or any other topic, for that matter. Sure, we all get a chuckle from hearing how dumb people can be, but these elected officials are there to make laws, and if they're clueless about certain facts, we end up with stuff like the DMCA.
So because legislation is a "serious issue", it should not be joked about? Are you saying that any joke that involves circumstances that are less than beneficial should not be made? Making fun of our misfortunes is nothing if not the basis for comedy itself. Generally, I find that people who refuse to view the world with any sense of humour become extremely cynical.
No, _you're_ wrong. The internet isn't some sort of evil robot that grabs children and puts them in porno films. Its just a place to view information that has already been acquired. When you solve a problem you don't attack it at the widest point. you attack it at a bottle-neck. The internet is the widest point where a large number of people view a relatively small number of things. If you want to get rid of child pornography, stop the _small_ number of people that create it not the _large_ number of people that host and view it.
-tfga
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Want to see some good kiddie porn? Check out the makeup/lighting/clothing/hairstyles of young girls in television commercials. How about Britanny Spears?
If people woke up to the fact that there are sexual images of children, all around them, maybe I would take this whole 'save the children' thing a little more seriously.
It is ok for the RIAA to parade a 'pre-teen-appearing' Britanny Spears in the media to sell product? It is okay for them to do it to sell clothing or shampoo?
Marketing and Advertising uses not so-subtle techniques like these with abandon, just because it is not seedy and badly-lite dosnt mean it is acceptable.... or does it?????