Freedom of speech vs moral protection - google in paedo censorship debacle

Stark · 02-03-2003 11:47AM #1

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29531.html

mike65 · 02-03-2003 12:04PM

er that should be -

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29531.html.

Its a bit of a non-story - the sort of thing the register likes to highlight for its "s******" value.

edit why is the word s-n-i-g-g-e-r
banned! or its it n-i-g-g-e-r the software can't cope with?
-
Mike.

DiscoStu · 02-03-2003 12:22PM

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/29531.html

third time lucky

mike65 · 02-03-2003 12:29PM

Doh! (bloody full stop!)

Mike.

Clintons Cat · 02-03-2003 08:37PM

Never underestimate the power of wounded Civic Pride.

If there is one thing you can be certain of is that no matter how small the percieved slight,some minor civic Councillor will be able to spectacularilly over react and bring an otherwise unremarkable story to (inter)national attention.

Chester the molester,Thanks for that one,wounded pride of Chester i would never have made the association.Its now indelibly burned into my mind.

It all reminds me of our Inbred Councillor for Gaywood,Kings Lynn who took offence at Alan Partridge calling Norfolk a Backwater and called a press conference to criticise the program.The Story got picked up by the BBC which just confirmed the Stereotype for the rest of the nation.The Ba$tid$
Anyone who's seen Ricky Gervaisis spirited defence of slough against the percieved slight of the Poetry of John Benjemin in the office will know exactly what i'm on about here.

Shinji · 02-03-2003 10:17PM

There's a small village somewhere in Cavan (I think) which was the subject of a rather unflattering book called "The Valley of the Squinting Windows" about the insular, unpleasant, gossipy lives of the people there. The book was very careful not to name the village; in fact, it could have referred to any rural town in Ireland. However, the people of the town recognised themselves in it, and decided to protest by burning a stack of the books in the main street.

Of course, until they did that, nobody knew it was their village that was being referred to at all. Once it was done, the town and the book were unseperably linked in the minds of a very large number of people...

Victor · 04-03-2003 06:42PM

Of course now everyone will be on the look out for Chester the molester's website (I presume it's the band) and will no doubt find some real molester websites. And of course Chester city no longer has top spot on google.

Originally posted by Shinji
Of course, until they did that, nobody knew it was their village that was being referred to at all. Once it was done, the town and the book were unseperably linked in the minds of a very large number of people...

And they also got tainted with book burning :rolleyes:

article6 · 04-03-2003 08:50PM

It was my grandfather's village, and it was a deeply insulting book to the people at the time, according to him. He spoke about it to me once... something along the lines of "It was more of a "Keane Edge" attempt than a serious novel", or whatever they had instead of the Keane Edge back when he told me.

The author was upper-class, we were lower-class; at this time, that meant his contempt. Looking back, I can't blame them for burning it - free speech includes the flames...

They did a lot against it before burning it, but maybe the cash-strapped RTÉ production didn't have time.

But all credit to removing paedophilic references.

Shinji · 06-03-2003 09:09AM

It was my grandfather's village, and it was a deeply insulting book to the people at the time, according to him.

The point remains. The author had the decency not to put real names to a damn thing in the book. The people of the village were monumentally stupid.

Plus, it's actually a pretty good book. I grew up in a small Irish town not a long way from that village, and when I read the book I recognised an enormous number of things which are no doubt common to every small Irish town.

Besides, it'd be very hard to write a book about an Irish rural town that WASN'T offensive to the people living there. Anyone bright enough to write a book is probably not going to be very taken with tiny, closed-minded, gossipy and backbiting local towns in the bog-end of Ireland, and quite rightly so... "Class" has very little to do with it.

ykt0di9url7bc3 · 16-03-2003 08:57AM

Peyton place?

sceptre · 16-03-2003 12:44PM

Originally posted by article6
It was my grandfather's village, and it was a deeply insulting book to the people at the time, according to him.

Have you read it?

Go read it. It's no more "Keane Edge" than Truman Capote's "In Cold Blood". Probably even less so TBH. And the locals hated that book too - they still won't talk about it and the bookstores in Holcomb won't stock it. Same as Angela's Ashes - oooh, don't write about us, we won't like it. I'm sorry if I come across as a bit sarcastic but all the locals were objecting to (in all the above cases) was seeing elements of themselves in the mirror. Boo hoo for them.

Freedom of speech vs moral protection - google in paedo censorship debacle

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