Word count: 1028 | Reading time: 5 min read
Pretzel Logic
Strange bedfellows fight the Communications Decency Act.
I am closing my eyes. I am seeing a vision of Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House of Representatives, sitting at his desk in the Capitol Building. It is late at night. He is all alone. He is having mad, passionate sex.
Not with himself. With someone at a computer terminal, who calls herself OhWickedWanda and is entwined with Newt, thanks to the wonders of cyberspace. The speaker and his paramour are going at it, typing their brains out.
I know this is a scary vision.
But I keep having this vision, over and over and over again. Ever since I learned that Newt Gingrich, darling of the Christian Right, is just about the only person in Congress with enough sense to oppose the latest assault on the U.S. Constitution, the Communications Decency Act.
I can think of few reasons why Gingrich would risk the wrath of the Right by opposing the Decency Act except this one: He must be a cyberslut.
The act, otherwise known as the Exon Amendment, is named for Senator James Exon of Nebraska, who sponsored it. Recently passed overwhelmingly by the Senate, the bill calls for a two-year jail sentence and a $100,000 fine for among other things, using computer networks or telephones to make what is called “obscene communication in any form, including any comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image…”
This misguided piece of legislation is even scarier than the thought of Newt doing the nasty in cyberspace (or anywhere else, for that matter).
While the Supreme Court has ruled that broadcast media cannot carry speech that is considered by some to be obscene — i.e., The Seven Dirty Words — constitutional scholars across the country have argued that the Internet is not a broadcast medium, therefore not subject to the Seven Dirty Words principle.
All of this makes me grateful that, for whatever reason, Newt Gingrich says he will try to kill the bill in the House.
But talk is cheap. How committed is the Speaker? Will he be able to convince the crop of newly elected muttonheads — who owe their souls to the Christian Right — to support an effort that will clearly enrage the Christian Right?
Call me a pessimist (or worse if you like — it won’t be illegal until Fat Boy of the Ozarks scribbles his name on the legislation), but I for one am not banking on the Newtster. So, as a staunch defender of the First Amendment and staunch opponent of the Exon act, I was glad to hear about the plans of Joe Shea and Stephen W. Russell, two of the most interesting people I’ve ever met in the wilds of cyberia.
Joe Shea used to cover the world for the Village Voice.
He began his journalism career the night Martin Luther King was shot. Wanting to see for himself the rage of Harlem that night, and wanting to prove that the place was not instant death for whites, Shea strolled through the neighborhood and witnessed the community’s anguish.
Though he was threatened, he was not harmed. And he was so moved that he called the Voice the next day. An editor gave him about three hours to hand something in. And it was chosen over about 18 other pieces submitted by established members of the New Left media.
Now Shea has another fight on his hands.
As publisher of the American Reporter, a two-month-old daily newspaper available only on the Internet, Shea has vowed to do what he can to fight the so-called Decency Act. Shea says that, on the day Clinton signs the bill into law, he will publish a story that will violate the law and institute a challenge.
Shea has been able to survive only because his landlord in Hollywood is cool about late rent checks. And he has been able to convince the Washington D.C. law firm of Arent, Fox, Kintern, Plotkin & Kahn — the firm that represented George Carlin in the comedian’s fight to get his Seven Dirty Words bit on radio — to represent him in his fight pro bono.
Which brings me to Stephen W. Russell.
A judge and constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio, Russell has agreed to write the article that will break the law authored by the numbskull from Nebraska.
He says he is doing this on behalf of his late friend, author John Henry Faulk, who was blacklisted during the McCarthy era. And because he opposes any threat to the Constitution.
Risking dismissal from the university, where he is not tenured, and removal from the bench, Russell says he has to do this.
Russell says he hasn’t yet figured out what he will write, but he e-mailed me a copy of “An Extremely Immodest Proposal,” a satiric send-up of what people may be forced to do if the Decency Act becomes law.
The post replaces a long list of what under this law would be obscene names for body parts and sexual acts with the names of the 86 Senators who voted for the Decency Act. And it then gives an example of how those substitutions might be used in a letter to avoid prosecution under the Decency Act.
Exon, for instance, is substituted for the verb describing copulation. Gorton is used instead of the noun “vagina” and Gramm is used in the place of the noun “orgasm.”
“‘Exon me!’” she cried, as I licked her hot, wet Gorton. She writhed under my teasing tongue as a Gramm washed over her…
What’s funny about Russell writing the letter is this: Russell is a Cherokee. In his native tongue, sex acts and body parts aren’t considered obscene.
“If you want to insult somebody in my language, you say that ‘This man does not take care of his relatives.’ Or ‘This man has more property than he can use,’ which is indirectly calling him a crook.”
Mmm. That gives me an idea.
Senator Exon, you’re no asshole.
You’re simply a man who does not take care of his relatives who clearly has more property than he can use.
