Alright everybody, the language does get a little thick ...but the article
makes a point. 

>       ***********************************************************
>       THE X-ON CONGRESS:  INDECENT COMMENT ON AN INDECENT SUBJECT
>       ***********************************************************
>
>                            by  Steve Russell
>                     American Reporter Correspondent
>
> SAN ANTONIO, Texas -- You motherfuckers in Congress have dropped over the
> edge of the earth this time.  I understand that very few of the swarm of
> high dollar lobbyists around the Telecommunications Bill had any interest
> in content regulation -- they were just trying to get their clients an
> opportunity to dip their buckets in the money stream that cyberspace may
> become -- but the public interest sometimes needs a little attention.
> Keeping your eyes on what big money wants, you have sold out the First
> Amendment.
>
> First, some basics.  If your children walked by a public park and heard
> some angry sumbitches referring to Congress as "the sorriest bunch of
> cocksuckers ever to sell out the First Amendment" or suggesting that
> "the only reason to run for Congress these days is to suck the lobbyists'
> dicks and fuck the people who sent you there," no law would be violated
> (assuming no violation of noise ordinances or incitement to breach the
> peace).  If your children did not wish to hear that language, they could
> only walk away.  Thanks to your heads-up-your-ass dereliction of duty,
> if they read the same words in cyberspace, they could call the FBI!
>
> Cyberspace is the village green for the whole world. It is the same as the
> village green our Founders knew as the place to rouse the rabble who became
> Americans, but it is also different.  Your blind acceptance of the dubious -
> - make that dogass dumb --idea that children are harmed by hearing so-called
> dirty words has created some pretty stupid regulations without shutting down
> public debate, but those stupid regulations will not import to cyberspace
> without consequences that even the public relations whores in Congress
> should find unacceptable.
>
> In cyberspace, there is no time.  A posted message stays posted until it is
> wiped.  Therefore, there is no way to indulge the fiction that children do
> not stay up late or cannot program a VCR.  In cyberspace, there is no place.
> The "community standards" are those of the whole world.  An upload from
> Amsterdam can become a download in Idaho.  By trying to regulate obscenity
> and indecency on the Internet, you have reduced the level of expression
> allowed consenting adults to that of the most anal retentive blueballed
> fuckhead U.S. attorney in the country. The Internet is everywhere you can
> plug in a modem.  Call Senator Exon an "ignorant motherfucker" in Lincoln,
> Nebraska and find yourself prosecuted in Bibleburg, Mississippi.
>
> In cyberspace, you cannot require the convenience store to sell Hustler in
> a white sleeve.  The functional equivalent is gatekeeper software, to which
> no civil libertarian has voiced any objection. Gatekeeper software cannot be
> made foolproof, but can you pandering pissants not see that any kid smart
> enough to hack into a Website is also smart enough to get his hands on a
> hard copy of Hustler if he really wants one?
>
> In cyberspace, there is the illusion of anonymity but no real privacy.
> It is theoretically possible for any Internet server to seine through all
> messages for key words (although it seems likely the resulting slowdown
> would be noticeable).  Perhaps some of you read about America On Line's
> attempt to keep children from reading the word "breast?"  An apparently
> unforeseen consequence was the shutdown of a discussion group of breast
> cancer survivors.  Don't you think more kids are aware of "teat"
> (pronounced "tit") than of "breast?"  Can skirts on piano legs, er, limbs
> be far behind?
>
> But silly shit like this is just a pimple on the ass of the long-term
> consequences for politics, art and education.  You have passed a law that
> will get less respect than the 55 m.p.h. speed limit dead bang in the middle
> of the First Amendment.  Indecency is nothing but a matter of fashion;
> obscenity is the same but on a longer timeline.  This generation freely
> reads James Joyce and Henry Miller and the Republic still stands.
> The home of the late alleged pornographer D. H. Lawrence is now a beautiful
> writers' retreat in the mountains above Taos, managed by the University of
> New Mexico.
>
> Universities all have Internet servers, and every English Department has at
> least one scholar who can read Chaucer's English -- but not on the Internet
> anymore.  Comparative literature classes might read Boccaccio --but not on
> the Internet anymore.  What if some U. S. Attorney  hears about Othello and
> Desdemona "making the beast with two backs" -- is interracial sex no longer
> indecent anywhere in the country, or is Shakespeare off the Internet?
>
> Did you know you can download video and sound from the Internet?
> Yes, that means you can watch other people having sex if that is interesting
> to you, live or on tape.  Technology can make such things hard to retrieve,
> but probably not impossible.  And since you have swept right past obscenity
> and into indecency, the baby boomers had better keep their old rock 'n roll
> tapes off the Internet.
>
> When the Jefferson Airplane sang "her heels rise for me," they were not
> referring to a dance step.  And if some Brit explains the line about
> "finger pie" in Penny Lane, the Beatles will be gone.  All of those school
> boards that used to ban "The Catcher in the Rye" over cussing and spreading
> the foul lie that kids masturbate can now go to federal court and get that
> nasty book kept out of cyberspace.
>
> But enough about the past.  What about rap music?  No, I do not care much
> for it either -- any more than I care for the language you shitheads have
> forced me to use in this essay -- but can you not see the immediate
> differential impact of this law by class and race?  What is your defense -
> -that there are no African-Americans on the Internet, since they are too
> busy pimping and dealing crack?  If our educational establishment has any
> sense at all, they will be trying to see more teens of all colors on the
> Internet, because there is a lot to be learned in cyberspace that has
> nothing to do with sex.
>
> There are plenty of young people in this country who have legitimate
> political complaints.  When you dickheads get done with Social Security,
> they will be lucky if the retirement age is still in double digits.
> But thanks to the wonderful job the public schools have done keeping sex
> and violence out, we have a lot of intelligent kids who cannot express
> themselves without indecent language. I have watched lawyers in open court
> digging their young clients in the ribs every time the word "fuck" slipped
> out.
>
> Let's talk about this fucking indecent language bullshit.  Joe Shea, my
> editor, does not want it in his newspaper, and I respect that position.
> He might even be almost as upset about publishing this as I am about
> writing it. I do use salty language in my writing, but sparingly, only
> as a big hammer.  Use the fucking shit too fucking much and it loses its
> fucking impact --see what I mean?  Fiction follows different rules, and if
> you confine your fiction writing to how the swell people want to see
> themselves using language, you not only preclude literary depiction of
> most people but you are probably false to the people you purport to depict.
>
> Do you remember how real language used by real people got on the air and in
> the newspapers?  Richard Nixon, while he was president, speaking in the
> White House about official matters.  A law professor and a nominee for
> Supreme Court Justice arguing about pubic hairs and porno movies during
> Senate hearings. Are these matters now too indecent for the Internet?
> How much cleansing will be required of the online news services?
> Answer: Enough cleansing to meet the standard of what is appropriate
> for a child in the most restrictive federal judicial district.
>
> This is bullshit -- unconstitutional bullshit and also bad policy bullshit.
> To violate your ban on indecency, I have been forced to use and overuse
> so-called indecent language.  But if I called you a bunch of goddam
> motherfucking cocksucking cunt-eating blue-balled bastards with the morals
> of muggers and the intelligence of pond scum, that would be nothing compared
> to this indictment, to wit: you have sold the First Amendment,
> your birthright and that of your children.  The Founders turn in their
> graves.  You have spit on the grave of every warrior who fought under the
> Stars and Stripes.
>
> And what mess of pottage have you acquired in exchange for the rights of a
> free people?  Have you cleansed the Internet of even the rawest pornography?
> No, because it is a worldwide system.  You have, however, handed the
> government a powerful new tool to harass its critics: a prosecution for
> indecent commentary in any district in the country.
>
> Have you protected one child from reading dirty words?  Probably not, if you
> understand what the economists call "substitution" -- but you have leveled
> the standards of political debate to a point where a history buff would not
> dare to upload some of the Federalist v. Anti-Federalist election rhetoric
> to a Website.
>
> Since the lobby reporting requirements were not law when the censorship
> discussion was happening, I hope you got some substantial reward for what
> you gave up.  Thirty pieces of silver doesn't go far these days.
>
>                                  # # #
>
>  (Steve Russell, retired after 16 years as a trial judge in Texas, is
>  Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas at
>  San Antonio.)
>
>              This article may be reproduced free forever.