A little back-story: This poem was written by Mason Williams in response to repeated instances of network censorship perpetrated against “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour” back in the late 1960s, which ultimately resulted in the show being cancelled by CBS.
Mason, the composer of Classical Gas, was a frequent writer and musical guest on the Smothers Brothers show. Back then, it was right-wing “establishment” influence over the media that was working to squelch the hip, liberal commentary written into the show.
And since then, to be censored (especially by a media giant) has often been referred to as being “smothered”. An apt analogy.
“The Censor”: The censor sits, somewhere between the scenes to be seen and the television sets, with his scissor purpose poised, watching the human stuff that will sizzle through the magic wires, and light up, like welding shops, the ho-hum rooms of America, and with a kindergarten arts and crafts concept of moral responsibility, snips out the rough talk, the unpopular opinion, or anything with teeth, and renders a pattern of ideas, full of holes… a doily for your mind. ~~ Mason Williams 1969
Sidebar: I remember the Smothers Brothers show well, as I was still in high school and my folks were regular viewers. We all loved the music and comedy (the Smothers Brothers had come up through the nightclub circuit with their unique brand of vocals, acoustic guitar, upright bass, and delicious harmonies, with the songs inevitably derailed by the childish and petty persona of Tommy going off on some funny tangent, and long-suffering brother Dick walking Tommy back in off the plank to finish the tune).
Dad loved the Smothers’ act, but not so much the political commentary that increasingly became a focal point of the show. To his credit, however, my father looked at the political content as an opportunity for “knowing your enemy”. In other words, while a conservative himself who had weathered the Great Depression and WWII (and an avid reader and news-hound), my dad witnessed the liberal uprising taking place throughout the country. He viewed it with no uncertain disdain, but nonetheless strived to understand what was fueling the Boomers’ discontent. He even came to accept certain aspects of the hippies rebellion, particularly with regards the Viet Nam War, which he viewed as an immoral, purposeless, and largely manufactured conflict. Dad’s intellect and near-encyclopedic knowledge of history greatly influenced me, though I begrudgingly admit that my skills at rapier argument have yet to become as sharply focussed as his. I compensate by committing more of my rants to writing… Dad couldn’t type, he was more into prolific real-time bombast. But I digress.
Today, the pendulum has shifted, as pendulums are wont to do, and an updated style of censorship (called shadow-banning, perpetrated by what I call “Big Social”, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, et al) has once again reared its ugly head, squelching perspectives which don’t fit within the confines of the approved narrative. This time it’s the decidedly neo-liberal mind-set dominating the office cubicles of Big Social that is “smothering” conservative, libertarian and Christian voices, as exemplified by the recent coordinated, multi-platform banning of Alex Jones’ InfoWars.
Now, it really doesn’t matter whether or not you like Alex Jones… the nature of either the man or his network isn’t (or shouldn’t be) the point here. The problem we face is more fundamental than the droppings from any particular content creator. The question is, are we still a country that remains hands-off when it comes to the free expression of ideas, no matter what they are… or are we not about that anymore?
The most often-heard excuse for the smothering of the right is that these Big Social conglomerates are private companies, and therefore unconstrained by the First Amendment. While that may be technically true as far as it goes, it’s also true that the foundational technologies upon which these mega-corporations built their platforms came directly from DARPA, SMISC and a host of other government-funded tech programs. In addition, these companies have been beneficiaries of many government favors, subsidies, and other allowances. So do not these massive corporations, in no small part, each owe their very existence to taxpayer-funded research, development, and grant monies? Should they not therefore be reasonably expected to honor the Bill of Rights?
And should not such compliance to 1A, if in fact these
technology companies want to be considered good and fair
stewards of the public’s electronic commons, be voluntary?
That doesn’t interest them, apparently. They enjoy near-monopolistic dominance in their respective arenas. Well, Big Social can hide all it wants behind its precious “private entities” wall, but it’s a wall of glass, easily seen through when viewed from any sort of moral, ethical, or Constitutional perspective. Yes, these corporations may technically be well within their “rights” to censor and shadow-ban content as they see fit, but that doesn’t make it the right thing to do… or even the *smart* thing to do from a PR perspective… especially when they promote themselves as platforms for the free expression of individual perspectives and content. In light of the smothering, this smacks of de facto false advertising, and of a disingenuous bait & switch.
Truly a tricky topic: here’s what I’m studying
- A common remedy offered by many on the right is to recategorize these corporate behemoths as “public utilities”, which would place them under a very different set of rules and regulations when it comes to censorship. As tempting as that sounds in theory, there are dissenting opinions. Myself, I’ve yet to be convinced such a move would be a good thing in the long run. My position, bluntly put: Anything the government presumes to regulate soon enough goes to hell. Regulations written for corporations inevitably get passed on, regulating (ie, limiting) consumer choice. And since utility companies are, almost without exception, virtual monopolies, there is little if any incentive for increased regulations from government, in whatever form, to not result in higher “rent-seeking” costs for consumers for the same level of service.
- An alternative approach is the idea of passing an “Internet Bill Of Rights” to protect all consumers from abuse such as this. First proposed by tech giant ATT, the initial reaction was varied, sometimes muted, and frequently criticized. Natural News (often linked to the Infowars franchise) spoke favorably (here), while TechRepublic took a skeptical view (here).
- As for national security, a subject we should all take seriously (but always with a wary eye on government proclamations), a free internet means that potentially dangerous content from many sources… all sorts of radical, jihadist, supremacist, racist… every conceivable kind of reprehensible violence-inciting source imaginable (and then some)… can be freely published. My position: GOOD! The more we’re free to research the worst of our enemies, the more we can, like my dad, come to know them. And the greater our security agencies’ ability to examine the poison these groups put online, the more they can create antidotes for it.
The unmitigated glory of the Internet has been precisely that *it is* free, uncontrolled, and as far as content goes, unregulated. Up to now, it has been the electronic wild west of the new millennium. And yes, this makes “fake news” from all sides of the political spectrum not only possible, but plentiful. However, it also makes a wide, wonderful web of creative content of *all* stripes available to us, and has opened the door to amazing new opportunities for commerce, creativity, self-education, and personal enlightenment. Unless we want some unaccountable government/corporate entity dictating what is “proper” for us to consume online, we must insist on taking responsibility for filtering our own surf, to think critically about the ideas we discover out there in the wilds, and separate for ourselves wheat from chaff. To do otherwise is to invite Orwellian manipulations of reality by Big Brother and its corporate coconspirators.
If one believes in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights, and specifically the First Amendment right to free expression, one should instinctively rebel against smothering… even if we would secretly enjoy seeing a voice we dislike being silenced.
That so many on the left seemingly have little or no problem with this smothering of the right is troubling. Censorship wasn’t a desirable thing back in the 60s with the Smothers Brothers show and other manifestations of Establishment thought control (and the left vociferously, and correctly, opposed it). It is neither a desirable thing now… but the left is tellingly complacent on the matter, content to let their conservative brothers and sisters take it on the chin… which in my book amounts to complicity to undermine the very Constitution upon which America was founded. The new left might consider that old hemp document outdated and irrelevant. There are many in this country who would vehemently disagree, I among them.
Mason Williams also wrote, “Soon you begin to realize that ‘I don’t want to’ is the world’s greatest reason.” This can be directly applied to the left’s push for “political correctness”, which in practice translates to: Today’s liberals would prefer that there be no platform for any content that doesn’t resonate within their well-guarded echo chamber, parroting their surprisingly restrictive conceptual narrative.
Back in the 60s, it was the left that was being “smothered” by the tech giants of the day. Today, it’s the right. Is the day coming when the pendulum is no longer allowed to swing at all, forced instead (by some strong hand even more powerful than Big Social) into a state of inertia, come to rest at a silent, lifeless center of immobility, imposing an equally stifling State-determined group-think upon us all?
God save us from such a fate.
And now for something entirely different
Put considerably less poetically than Mason Williams back in 1969, here’s the Armed Comic on the topic (WARNING: contains profuse cursing and deliberate liberal triggering — IOW, don’t watch this at work):
Pre-responses to this article
I posted a teaser for this article on my FB page, and was immediately lambasted by several of my liberal friends who apparently can’t believe I have strayed so far from the path I used to trod… the path to perdition they stroll to this very day. I addressed some of their concerns:
One friend said, “I don’t believe people of any of those three stripes are being censored on the social media or elsewhere.”
Unfortunately, your statement is simply erroneous, my friend. YouTube, FB and other Big Social sites are full of blog posts, articles, podcasts and videos by folks exposing the “smothering” of right-wing voices.
And it’s not just the more outrageous, controversial sources like Infowars, either. Prager, SGT Report, USA Watchdog, Lauren Southern, Paul Joseph Watson, Diamond & Silk, David Harris Jr. and many more channels have been and continue to be demonetized, shadow-banned, views suppressed, subscriptions mysteriously dropped, channels simply being taken down with no specifics from the platforms regarding the reasons for the move, etc.
Hell, even an old anarchist friend here on FB has been put in FB jail once or twice for the most spurious of reasons. I’ve been expecting to be jailed myself on FB one of these days for the purposefully non-PC posts I make on a regular basis. It’s clear you’re not taking in anything except your usual leftist content, Michael, otherwise you would have seen the squelching for yourself. I certainly have. (Not suggesting you broaden your horizons, BTW, we all prefer to view material we like as opposed to material we don’t… no judgement here)
To another friend I wrote: I certainly understand your distaste for Infowars. AJ definitely is over the top in his style, and has definitely been on the wrong side of quite a few stories. I have seen him get very pissed on-air, and ranting shit about how this guy or that group will be defeated, “We are the tip of the spear” and all his usual rhetoric. Great theater. But I have yet to hear him express a specific call to violence. And so what if he’s heavily into conspiracy theories? Many folks (including myself) enjoy playing with different ideas that aren’t to be found in MSM. And the funny thing is… sometimes conspiracy theories turn out to be conspiracy truths. It’s happened.
And another: I have to disagree with your supposition. Whether FB or YT are “private companies” and therefore within their rights to smother content isn’t the point here, and amounts to a superficial excuse for throttling content. All social media sites I’ve joined specifically state they are platforms for “everyone to express their points of view”. Sure, there are vague TOS which leave them a loophole to take down certain content. But when rap stars can post videos depicting machine gun murder of dancers, decapitating a sitting president, and even more atrocious content which furthers the leftist narrative, then stage a multi-platform coordinated attack against Infowars because it dares to question and expose the deep state, 9-11, false flag events, etc (perspectives MSM avoids like the plague), then there’s some serious targeting of viewpoint going on.
Look here, guys, I know you all to be good liberals (yes, I know they still exist), and I respect your viewpoints here. But I doubt that a single one of you has spent any significant time viewing conservative content, much less been plugged in enough to make an informed opinion as to whether or not these right-leaning voices have, or even should be, squelched.
The antidote to speech you disagree with is more speech. Censorship, which is demonstrably happening (to the point where Diamond & Silk were called to testify before Congress on the matter) is anathema to what America has always stood for. Even the obnoxious KKK has had confirmed their 1A protection by the courts. Yet you sit there defending the smothering of Infowars because you think Alex Jones is a nut job?
I’ll yell you what — there’s a boatload of leftist content out there that strikes me as utter nonsense, and some of it, like this little socialist Cortez chick, dangerous to the republic… yet the last thing I’d want is for that content to be taken down because some whiny-assed Republican raised a stink over it. No, I want all sides to fully expose their beliefs, warts and all, stupidity on full display, so I can decide for myself how loathsome they are… or are not.
