A Brief Anecdote About the Suppression of Dissent in this Country

This story is ridiculously small but it tells you something. Some time ago, I joined a Myspace group dedicated to the writings of Noam Chomsky. I wrote a post asking what the American people would have had to do to stop the Iraq war before it started. The post contained no profanity, no threats,, no incitement to violence, no ethnic slurs, and no personal attacks on anyone. Within hours, I got an email from Myspace telling me that one of my pictures had been deleted because the site has a strict policy against pornography. I have uploaded only one picture: my profile picture. I have attached the picture to this post. You can judge for yourself if it is pornographic. I will add, however, that I have worn that outfit to work and to church and no one has said anything. By the way, my MOTHER took this picture.

I wrote them back, explaining that I had not uploaded anything even remotely pornographic. I got a form letter in response.  Myspace deleted my post about the Iraq war but left my "pornographic" profile picture on my page.

A few weeks ago, I finally understood why this had happened. Myspace is owned by the same company that owns Fox News.  It figures.

Thus is dissent suppressed--even dissent as mild as asking a question. On a site owned by Rupert Murdoch's corporation, asking the "wrong" political question is considered pornographic.