Bah. I am offended by that article. It presupposes the public are a bunch of retards, that we can't be critical to sort the truth from the fiction, and the news from the non-news, and we _need_ editors and "journalists" to do that for us. If I were an average citizen I'd be annoyed, but being a geek, it's doubly insulting. Besides of which, all the "jounalism" I ever see on TV or newspapers, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, looks exactly like Entertainment Tonight, and they call that "news".
This topic has been preying on my mind for two years now, and the situation in Littleton has only served to exacerbate it. I sat watching the coverage of the massacre at Columbine horrified, wondering why children would do something such a thing. But when I heard the reason, as much as my heart went out to the families and children, I sympathized with the shooters because I was in their situation nine years ago, and I am facing it now. I was one of few minorities in my wealthy, suburbanite city. I was a nerdy geek more interested in quantum mechanics than football; I never had a date, was outspoken, dressed all in black, was the shortest person in my entire school, and spent several years in middle school and highschool eating lunch alone. In short, I was an outcast, picked on, harassed, and physically assaulted every day of my public school education simply because I did not and would not and could not conform.
We are a society of hypocrites. We glorify individuality yet socially punish those who do not conform with ostracism at best, assault at worst; we put people like Einstein on pedestals as paragons of free thinking yet laugh and mock those who do not hold the typical white-bread, middle class American ideology. Anyone who does not conform to this standard is reviled like some malignant growth, best to be wholesale purged. In middle school and highschool, this paradigm is worsened by ten fold. If you looked different, listened to different music, you were an outcast. Children who were brighter than the rest are labeled as nerds and beaten with impunity. If you were poor, you didn't deserve any respect.
People always say that highschool are the best years of your life, enjoy them. How can a child enjoy life when they are teased everyday, beaten, tormented and tortured? I had a girlfriend who was beaten up once a week because her family lived below the poverty line and she had to make her own clothes. A boy a grade ahead of me was thrown into lockers and left there all day about once a month because he was especially smart, quiet, and studious -- in essence a nerd. Another boy had feces and used tampons thrown in his locker in middle school because he was a band geek. I faced no less torment, compounded on the fact that I am a minority, and for those that know me, I have a big mouth. There wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't reminded that I was a freak, a bitch, a gook, ugly, poor, a chink, and a loser. Everyday I was thrown against lockers, had my hair pulled, and kicked with the occasional punch for good measure. One time when I was in first grade, I had a huge chunk of hair in the back of my head ripped out on the school bus and the school administration did nothing. My highschool had a tradition called "taping" where geek losers were stripped of most of their clothes, their entire bodies covered in duct tape and taped to one of the support columns in the lunch room. Anyone that tried to help the poor person that was being taped would be attacked and face the same. Swirlies were also du jour (for those of you who don't know what a swirly is, it's when you shove someone's head in a toilet, preferably used, and flush the toilet). This little highschool lynching was performed by the jocks, the cheerleaders, the rich kids and none of the administration ever did a thing, again, because afterall, who cares if some loser poor brat gets their ass kicked? They probably deserved it. Besides, the parents of these little paragons of middle-America white virtue ran the administration.
What else is a child supposed to feel when he's taped nearly naked in the middle of lunch so people can throw food at him? How else is a girl supposed to react when she is told she couldn't even be a five dollar whore because she's so ugly? What do you expect a child to do when they are ostracized simply because of the color of their skin, they don't like sports, or are smarter than everyone else? After years of daily torment the only logical conclusion is hatred, do you expect it to come to anything other than hatred? And the logical conclusion of that hatred unchecked is what happened at Columbine.
But instead of looking for the real cause of that hatred, people are scrambling for scapegoats to try to explain why children would act so heinously. They blame the internet, computer games like Doom and Quake, and violence in movies and TV. Schools are going after children who spend time on the internet, who play Doom and Quake, who wear trenchcoats and who exhibit antisocial behavior. Well, I've played Quake, I spend a lot of time on the internet, and I am very antisocial. I have mood swings as high as Everest and as low as Death Valley. I love violent films and TV, and have taken martial arts lessons. What makes me so different than those children who committed those crimes, from ever other nerds, geeks and social outcasts that has ever walked in an American highschool? Absolutely nothing but a matter of degrees. The only thing that kept me from going down that road was that I fought back daily. I cannot count how many fights I have been in, but the number is well over 30. Fighting, and winning, gave me self esteem and self worth that my tormentors, the cheerleaders, the jocks, the rich kids, could not touch or take away. But what happens to the children who cannot fight, or are not strong enough? What becomes of the most vulnerable of children, the brightest, the smallest, the poorest, the most talented, the meekest? The free thinking, non-conforming children who need the most protection?
This pogrom against the internet and computer games, the witch hunt for children who fit the behavior described in the media, will only serve to exacerbate the violence and hatred children feel. It will only further ostracize the children and make them feel more like rejects and outcasts. This negative characterization of the brightest and most vulnerable of children, the nerds, geeks and losers, merely perpetuates the violence and hatred. We should be protecting these children, nurturing them and their unique intelligence, ability and skills, not vilifying them because they do not fit the cookie-cutter mold. But of course, we can't blame ourselves, bad parenting and general lack of compassion to the most vulnerable of society. We can't blame the true perpetrators because all of us, even us geeks and losers, have done the same thing in the past. Who hasn't teased someone because of how they look? Who hasn't told a racist joke? Who hasn't ostracized someone because they did not fit into the clique that you were running with? We fear what we do not understand, and quite frankly, living with a herd mentality is much easier than going at it alone -- there's always someone else you can blame when the shit hits the fan. But in the final analysis, we created those children whom the media are calling monsters. Afterall, children do not raise themselves and hatred is only a natural response to repeated negative stimuli. We are responsible for every one of those deaths, for every one of the injuries, for every tear that has fallen.
Emily M. Lee 2L University of Denver College of Law
obscenity has never been protected. it is not considered "speech" under the auspices of the 1st amendment. therefore, it has never been protected. as for what constitutes obscenity, it is defined as one supreme court justice put it, "i know it when i see it." swear words are speech. there are numerous cases where the words fuck, shit, ass, etc. have all been upheld when in the context of a communication of a thought, such as "fuck draft", see cohen v. california. but just saying fuck, shit, etc. without the communication of an idea is not speech under the 1st amendment and is not protected.
so, if you flame, send nasty emails to people such as the editor of a magazine (like, say mixxzine) saying that they are fucking cocksucking morons and that their editing choices are as fucking bright as sticking a broken light bulb up their ass, it would be protected speech under the 1st amendment since you are communicating an idea. end of story.
Slashdot Mirror
Bah. I am offended by that article. It presupposes the public are a bunch of retards, that we can't be critical to sort the truth from the fiction, and the news from the non-news, and we _need_ editors and "journalists" to do that for us. If I were an average citizen I'd be annoyed, but being a geek, it's doubly insulting. Besides of which, all the "jounalism" I ever see on TV or newspapers, with the exception of the Wall Street Journal, looks exactly like Entertainment Tonight, and they call that "news".
Not to mention the TNG flub. Stupidstupidstupid.
This topic has been preying on my mind for two years now, and the situation in Littleton has only served to exacerbate it. I sat watching the coverage of the massacre at Columbine horrified, wondering why children would do something such a thing. But when I heard the reason, as much as my heart went out to the families and children, I sympathized with the shooters because I was in their situation nine years ago, and I am facing it now. I was one of few minorities in my wealthy, suburbanite city. I was a nerdy geek more interested in quantum mechanics than football; I never had a date, was outspoken, dressed all in black, was the shortest person in my entire school, and spent several years in middle school and highschool eating lunch alone. In short, I was an outcast, picked on, harassed, and physically assaulted every day of my public school education simply because I did not and would not and could not conform.
We are a society of hypocrites. We glorify individuality yet socially punish those who do not conform with ostracism at best, assault at worst; we put people like Einstein on pedestals as paragons of free thinking yet laugh and mock those who do not hold the typical white-bread, middle class American ideology. Anyone who does not conform to this standard is reviled like some malignant growth, best to be wholesale purged. In middle school and highschool, this paradigm is worsened by ten fold. If you looked different, listened to different music, you were an outcast. Children who were brighter than the rest are labeled as nerds and beaten with impunity. If you were poor, you didn't deserve any respect.
People always say that highschool are the best years of your life, enjoy them. How can a child enjoy life when they are teased everyday, beaten, tormented and tortured? I had a girlfriend who was beaten up once a week because her family lived below the poverty line and she had to make her own clothes. A boy a grade ahead of me was thrown into lockers and left there all day about once a month because he was especially smart, quiet, and studious -- in essence a nerd. Another boy had feces and used tampons thrown in his locker in middle school because he was a band geek. I faced no less torment, compounded on the fact that I am a minority, and for those that know me, I have a big mouth. There wasn't a day that went by where I wasn't reminded that I was a freak, a bitch, a gook, ugly, poor, a chink, and a loser. Everyday I was thrown against lockers, had my hair pulled, and kicked with the occasional punch for good measure. One time when I was in first grade, I had a huge chunk of hair in the back of my head ripped out on the school bus and the school administration did nothing. My highschool had a tradition called "taping" where geek losers were stripped of most of their clothes, their entire bodies covered in duct tape and taped to one of the support columns in the lunch room. Anyone that tried to help the poor person that was being taped would be attacked and face the same. Swirlies were also du jour (for those of you who don't know what a swirly is, it's when you shove someone's head in a toilet, preferably used, and flush the toilet). This little highschool lynching was performed by the jocks, the cheerleaders, the rich kids and none of the administration ever did a thing, again, because afterall, who cares if some loser poor brat gets their ass kicked? They probably deserved it. Besides, the parents of these little paragons of middle-America white virtue ran the administration.
What else is a child supposed to feel when he's taped nearly naked in the middle of lunch so people can throw food at him? How else is a girl supposed to react when she is told she couldn't even be a five dollar whore because she's so ugly? What do you expect a child to do when they are ostracized simply because of the color of their skin, they don't like sports, or are smarter than everyone else? After years of daily torment the only logical conclusion is hatred, do you expect it to come to anything other than hatred? And the logical conclusion of that hatred unchecked is what happened at Columbine.
But instead of looking for the real cause of that hatred, people are scrambling for scapegoats to try to explain why children would act so heinously. They blame the internet, computer games like Doom and Quake, and violence in movies and TV. Schools are going after children who spend time on the internet, who play Doom and Quake, who wear trenchcoats and who exhibit antisocial behavior. Well, I've played Quake, I spend a lot of time on the internet, and I am very antisocial. I have mood swings as high as Everest and as low as Death Valley. I love violent films and TV, and have taken martial arts lessons. What makes me so different than those children who committed those crimes, from ever other nerds, geeks and social outcasts that has ever walked in an American highschool? Absolutely nothing but a matter of degrees. The only thing that kept me from going down that road was that I fought back daily. I cannot count how many fights I have been in, but the number is well over 30. Fighting, and winning, gave me self esteem and self worth that my tormentors, the cheerleaders, the jocks, the rich kids, could not touch or take away. But what happens to the children who cannot fight, or are not strong enough? What becomes of the most vulnerable of children, the brightest, the smallest, the poorest, the most talented, the meekest? The free thinking, non-conforming children who need the most protection?
This pogrom against the internet and computer games, the witch hunt for children who fit the behavior described in the media, will only serve to exacerbate the violence and hatred children feel. It will only further ostracize the children and make them feel more like rejects and outcasts. This negative characterization of the brightest and most vulnerable of children, the nerds, geeks and losers, merely perpetuates the violence and hatred. We should be protecting these children, nurturing them and their unique intelligence, ability and skills, not vilifying them because they do not fit the cookie-cutter mold. But of course, we can't blame ourselves, bad parenting and general lack of compassion to the most vulnerable of society. We can't blame the true perpetrators because all of us, even us geeks and losers, have done the same thing in the past. Who hasn't teased someone because of how they look? Who hasn't told a racist joke? Who hasn't ostracized someone because they did not fit into the clique that you were running with? We fear what we do not understand, and quite frankly, living with a herd mentality is much easier than going at it alone -- there's always someone else you can blame when the shit hits the fan. But in the final analysis, we created those children whom the media are calling monsters. Afterall, children do not raise themselves and hatred is only a natural response to repeated negative stimuli. We are responsible for every one of those deaths, for every one of the injuries, for every tear that has fallen.
Emily M. Lee
2L University of Denver College of Law
obscenity has never been protected. it is not considered "speech" under the auspices of the 1st amendment. therefore, it has never been protected. as for what constitutes obscenity, it is defined as one supreme court justice put it, "i know it when i see it." swear words are speech. there are numerous cases where the words fuck, shit, ass, etc. have all been upheld when in the context of a communication of a thought, such as "fuck draft", see cohen v. california. but just saying fuck, shit, etc. without the communication of an idea is not speech under the 1st amendment and is not protected.
so, if you flame, send nasty emails to people such as the editor of a magazine (like, say mixxzine) saying that they are fucking cocksucking morons and that their editing choices are as fucking bright as sticking a broken light bulb up their ass, it would be protected speech under the 1st amendment since you are communicating an idea. end of story.