Talkin' Smack: All Rights Reserved

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Opinion: Page (2) of 3 - 02/18/03

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Talkin' Smack: All Rights Reserved The story of a boy and his innocent dream That would be ridiculous. Even if members of the government could be corrupted into instituting such obvious violations of the First Amendment, the American People would never stand for it. Any member of government caught doing this would surely be strung up for treason.

No, no, no. The government wouldn't be the answer.

Maybe the creative industry itself? Again, no. How could a profession predicated on the First Amendment also profit from the erosion of the First Amendment? In order for art--any form of art--to continue to innovate, there are times when it has to break from convention, break away from socially accepted values, sometimes shock people, sometimes appall them. And this means an expansive approach to the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights. But, obviously, for my dream to come true, I wanted to erode the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment in particular, in order to achieve my dream of stifling creativity and innovation. And then, once I had a stranglehold on creative production, I'd want to make sure that people wouldn't even be allowed to discuss theoretical means to break my stranglehold. And this would mean practically throwing out the First Amendment.

And there was simply no way I could rely on my peers in the creative community or my representatives in allied trade groups to support such a position. I mean, groups like the MPAA and RIAA are there to support artists, not to help erode the foundations for the practice of the creative arts. And they've always staunchly resisted governmental pressure to abridge freedom of expression at all costs.

No, if groups like the MPAA and RIAA were to help me out with my dream of creating art while at the same time using my art to stifle the freedoms of others, they'd be called shills for the government and ostracized into oblivion. Artists wouldn't put up with leaders who claimed to represent them and then stabbed them in the back with diabolical--or perhaps merely inane--strategies that would lead to an end to the arts in America at best, an end to all free expression at worst. Surely the representatives of the creative community wouldn't be that stupid, that idiotic, that moronic, that short-sighted, that focused on ruining the people they represent. They would have to be total patsies operating with a mindset so far removed from reality that it would be a miracle their brains could support the automatic functions of their bodies. Obviously, evolution would have weeded out such abominations from the human gene pool long ago.

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