Dirty Dishes	Dirty Dishes Archive

Joan E. Bertin, executive director of the New York City-based National Coalition Against Censorship, shows, like so many liberals, a tenuous grasp of the First Amendment.

Writing in New York Newsday, Joan rightly berates Oklahoma yahoos for their Gestapo-like campaign to censor, seize, and destroy video copies of the Academy Award-winning Tin Drum. (Yahoos and their symbionts are outraged/titillated that a young character in the film is depicted-- "tastefully"-- eating out the pussy of a teenage girl.)

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Joan, explicitly citing the film's "redeeming social value," claims the film is not "obscene" nor should it be considered "child pornography."

But, Joan, sweetheart, obscenity, pornography, and redeeming social value are nowhere mentioned in the First Amendment. No book, film, play, statue, or newspaper column should need to justify itself to censors for any reason. Your implicit suggestion that Gestapo tactics would be appropriate should The Tin Drum meet the Supreme Court's Orwellian definition of that which can be censored (that is, things "obscene" lacking in "redeeming social value" or involving children's pee-pees) reveals your feeble understanding of what the fight for freedom of expression is all about.