2008 Woodie Awards
Give porn sites new Web name
Editorial
Issue date: 12/3/04 Section: Opinion
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Right now in Washington, the Justice Department has an extensive operation going in an effort to rid the world of pornography. In their field office, 32 prosecutors, investigators and FBI agents are working earnestly to prosecute people who have offensive material.
Some of the members of this operation spend eight hours a day looking at pornographic videos, searching the Internet for explicit material and watching cable television programming for adults. The Bush administration has said it is waging a war on porn and now is spending millions of dollars trying to prosecute the producers, promoters and purchasers of indecent material. For the first time in 10 years, the government is bringing anti-obscenity cases to courthouses all over the country.
This is absolutely ridiculous. The Bush administration is going after all aspects of pornography but is especially targeting the Internet. First of all, the Internet is a global medium. Even if the government made all porn completely illegal, it cannot regulate the Internet in that way. Other countries still are going to produce porn and put it online, and the United States cannot do anything about that.
And how arrogant it is of them to state that these officials are going to singlehandedly rid the entire world of pornography. America already is looked upon in a bad light for trying to dictate to other countries how to run their governments and their economy, and now we're telling them what morals they should have?
Doesn't the Justice Department have better things to do with its time and all this money? Have they forgotten that there still is a real war going on where people are dying every day? There still is drug trafficking going on, gang and mafia violence still is a problem and terrorists still are running free. And in other countries, there are other wars going on, there is pestilence, famine and instead of people worrying that their children might accidentally be exposed to porn, they're worried that their young daughters will be sold as sex slaves. Surely the government can do something more productive with these millions of dollars.
Some of the members of this operation spend eight hours a day looking at pornographic videos, searching the Internet for explicit material and watching cable television programming for adults. The Bush administration has said it is waging a war on porn and now is spending millions of dollars trying to prosecute the producers, promoters and purchasers of indecent material. For the first time in 10 years, the government is bringing anti-obscenity cases to courthouses all over the country.
This is absolutely ridiculous. The Bush administration is going after all aspects of pornography but is especially targeting the Internet. First of all, the Internet is a global medium. Even if the government made all porn completely illegal, it cannot regulate the Internet in that way. Other countries still are going to produce porn and put it online, and the United States cannot do anything about that.
And how arrogant it is of them to state that these officials are going to singlehandedly rid the entire world of pornography. America already is looked upon in a bad light for trying to dictate to other countries how to run their governments and their economy, and now we're telling them what morals they should have?
Doesn't the Justice Department have better things to do with its time and all this money? Have they forgotten that there still is a real war going on where people are dying every day? There still is drug trafficking going on, gang and mafia violence still is a problem and terrorists still are running free. And in other countries, there are other wars going on, there is pestilence, famine and instead of people worrying that their children might accidentally be exposed to porn, they're worried that their young daughters will be sold as sex slaves. Surely the government can do something more productive with these millions of dollars.