Why restrict child porn but not guns?

©Gabriele Galimberti from The Ameriguns, Dewi Lewis Publishing. Used with permission.

  

     God bless free speech.
     It is what allows columnists — or anybody else — to write whatever we want without fear the government is going to haul us off to jail. In Russia, you can go to prison for calling their war against Ukraine “a war.” In China, you get sent to a camp for adhering to certain religions.
     Free speech is so important in the United States, it is the First Amendment to our Constitution: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech.” Not only am I allowed to air the truth as I see it — Donald Trump is a traitor who should be in prison — but all sorts of salacious material are permitted. Courts decided, grudgingly, that offensive artworks and obscene comedy sketches and extreme pornographic videos are also free speech and cannot be banned.
     There are, of course, exceptions. Free speech doesn’t permit you to shout “Fire!” in a crowded theater. I didn’t just grab that example by accident. During World War I, a pacifist was arrested for distributing a leaflet claiming the draft was unconstitutional. In upholding his conviction in 1919 in Schenck v. The United States, Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote:

The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. ... The question in every case is whether the words ... create a clear and present danger ... that Congress has a right to prevent.

     A half century later, the Supreme Court decided we are a great enough nation that our freedoms extend even to resisting a war we are currently fighting, and Schenck was dialed back. Now to be illegal, speech usually must be libelous, or promote imminent lawless action — you are not free to deliver a speech urging your neighbors to kill someone.
     Nor can you own child pornography, and it’s important to understand why. Child pornography is among the most restricted material in our society. You don’t have to produce it or sell it to commit a crime; it’s a crime simply to possess it.
     Why does child pornography merit such a unique level of suppression? I’ll give you a hint: it’s called “child pornography.” Children cannot consent to sexual acts with adults and are severely damaged by being forced to do so. Child pornography hurts children, so we fight it with all the legal might our nation can bring to bear, even if it infringes on fundamental freedoms.

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Is a bicycle a "device"?

     The wrong word grates.
     Whoever in the Central Park Conservancy decided that bicycles, scooters, skateboards, etc., are "WHEELED DEVICES" should do a face plant. Devices? This has to be a bleed-over from the omni-presence of screens. "Electronic devices." Maybe some kid who's been playing too many games was in charge of the signs.
     I was curious whether these signs, in media savvy Manhattan, had sparked previous complaint. I can't be the first one to notice, can I?
     The signs showed up three years ago, and while they were criticized at the time, it seems to be on aesthetic grounds, for being ugly or useless, and not for using the wrong word.
     The usage "wheeled devices" does not seem localized to the East Coast. Here is the  California State University at San Bernardino's "Wheeled Devices Policy."
     Which makes me wonder. Could I, like so many who point out supposed mistakes, be myself wrong? If I had to define "device" without looking it up, I'd say a mechanism to achieve a purpose, a contraption designed to do something, a goal-oriented machine. A certain complication is implied: a can opener is a device. An axe is not (I would call that "an implement.") Add "electronic" and electronic devices are any small handheld piece of equipment. A cell phone. An iPad.
     Let's check the experts. My Oxford English Dictionary focuses on devices as figurative invention: "1. The action of devising, contriving, or planning; the faculty of devising," taking its time to even allude to physical objects:. "6. Something devised or contrived for bringing about some end or result" but even then, its "an arrangement, plan, scheme, project, contrivance."
     But language is plastic. Perhaps a newer definition would include Central Park's mountain bikes and rickshaws.
     The first half dozen definitions on the online Merriam Webster focuses on schemes and techniques, with only definition f giving us: "a piece of equipment or a mechanism designed to serve a special purpose or perform a special function" giving the example of smartphones and tape recorders.

     So is a bicycle a device? Legally, yes, judging from explanations such as this, from the California state vehicle code: "A bicycle is a device upon which a person may ride, propelled exclusively by human power..."
     And language is plastic: bicycles are devices if people say they are. But other people are allowed to push against certain usages, and calling a skateboard a device is, to me, an affected, out-of-place legalism, like calling a criminal a "perpetrator." "Vehicle" is a fine word, from the Latin vehiculum, which conveys the sense of something being carried, making it better than device because it suggests the presence of a rider being conveyed somewhere.   

    Change happens. Words change. In Shakespeare, where "device" is always a plan, intention or scheme, Hamlet decries that "Our wills and fates do so contrary run/That our devices still are overthrown."

Editor's note — Reader Brian Goldberg added this on Facebook, which seemed a valuable coda:

    Your article inspired me to do a tiny bit of research, admittedly superficial. Consistent with your own caveat that "peanut gallery" critiques are not always right, I figured there had to be a somewhat reasonable explanation, and I think I found it. For years Central Park had signs saying "No Vehicles" on various paths, and everyone understood that this ban primarily included bicycles. But then there was a proliferation of other vehicles, mostly scooters (both human power and motorized), and it appears that a decent number of these vehicles were being used even on the "No Vehicle " paths, or at least there was a seeming concern that they would be, based on people claiming "But I thought vehicles just means bikes and cars/motorcycles." So someone came up with a whole new term, "devices," and specifically wheeled devices. It is an admittedly awkward, arguably "wrong" use of the term, but it worked. Because device is such a clearly different term than vehicle, people "get" that "wheeled devices" means something different — in this case, basically anything with wheels. Or more accurately, people can no longer claim that the "No Vehicle " sign does not apply to them (scooters, etc, and maybe a resurgence of rollerblading?) Even though it obviously did, because it is a "No Wheeled Device" sign. So beleaguered park employees do not have to try to over explain the original signs, and can just point to this one.

Chicago ‘not a hellhole’

     Email is pretty useless, right? A firehose of poorly written press releases, hyperpartisan money grabs and weaponized malice.
     Yet I try to scan the sewage and pluck out the occasional actual reader comment. You never know where they lead. Friday’s column mentioned the Democratic primary race for Illinois secretary of state between former Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias and City Clerk Anna Valencia, drawing this.

Ald. David Moore

     “Thanks for a good laugh first thing,” wrote Chuck Bernardini. “As for Democrat Secretary of State, take a look at the third candidate David Moore. Alderman 17th ward (St Sabina). Earnest young man universally respected, no controversy, no money, no chance, no sleaze like the other two.”
     No sleaze? What fun is that? The name David Moore didn’t ring a bell, which is usually a good sign with City Council members, since they tend to distinguish themselves only by scaling the heights or corruption or folly. No Lori Lightfoot he, Moore deigned to respond to a media inquiry and talk about why he should be elected.
     He already has a safe City Council seat; why push for another job?
     “First and foremost, this is a servant seat,” Moore replied. “Similar to my aldermanic seat, it allows you to serve everybody regardless of party, regardless of race, regardless of gender.”
     Unlike the top two candidates, with their circus calliope of TV commercials, Moore is running a more understated campaign. Secretary of state represents the limits of his ambition.

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Girl's team wins national title

    
     Northwestern University had no humor magazine when I arrived in the fall of 1978. There had been one, The Purple Parrot. But it was a dusty relic occasionally spied in a glass case in the library in displays about student life in the 1940s.
     But it did have Robert Leighton, and the future New Yorker cartoonist and professional game-meister set about creating one, called Rubber Teeth, for "biting satire that doesn't hurt." I was lucky enough to be living down the hall from him in our giant freshman dorm, and so was able to help.
     At least I hope I helped. I was there, doing stuff, for four years. Though if I had my way the thing probably would have been called "Razor Teeth."
     Flash forward 40 years.
     Facebook has devolved into a place where posting today's lunch is too cutting edge and relevant, and oldsters such as myself wallow in the warm mud of nostalgia. A classmate remembered the parody of the Daily Northwestern that we did senior year, and how it included an item that was a comment on the short shrift the student paper gave women's sports. I happened to have the parody issue at hand — thanks, again, to Robert, who went to the trouble and expense of binding up the four years worth of issues we produced into a lovely red keepsake volume, with the newsprint issue tucked inside.
     I'm not a fan of the TV character joke names. A bit much. And the misplaced possessive might be an actual error rather than a comment on the Daily's copy editing skills. But the joke conveyed in the parody story, reprinted below in its entirety, is, alas, still relevant enough to be funny. A study at Purdue University last year found media coverage of women's sports is the same now as it was 30 years ago. 

Wilmette Notes: Dismayed at the idiocracy

     I have a certain genius for tuning out the world, closing my eyes to the horrors and the injustices. Just ignore it. That is a luxury that Caren Jeskey doesn't permit herself, as is clear from today's report. 

By Caren Jeskey

Among The Multitude
Among the men and women the multitude,
I perceive one picking me out by secret and divine signs,
Acknowledging none else, not parent, wife, husband, brother, child, any nearer than I am,
Some are baffled, but that one is not—that one knows me.
Ah lover and perfect equal,
I meant that you should discover me so by my faint indirections,
And I when I meet you mean to discover you by the like in you.
           — Walt Whitman

     The average life span for a man when Walt Whitman died on May 31, 1892 was about 45. He lived to 73. Does having a calm and present demeanor increase life span?
     Stress is a precursor to depression and anxiety. Biden’s White House website noted, “As we mark Mental Health Awareness Month, our country faces an unprecedented mental health crisis among people of all ages. Two in five American adults report symptoms of anxiety and depression, and more than half of parents express concern over their children’s mental well-being. Over forty percent of teenagers state they struggle with persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” 

      Dismayed at the idiocracy all around, I asked some friends who are either from other countries or are now ex-pats how they feel about the U. S. of A.

     An expat now living near Mexico City says “I think of a country that was founded on the genocide of indigenous peoples and the enslavement of African Americans, that was built by the exploited labor of Asian Americans and Latin Americans, that has more military force than any other country and uses it to imperialist ends and for the aggrandizement of US corporations, that has lower quality of living indicators than many peer nations (healthcare, education, etc.) yet still tries to propagate a myth of innocence and superiority.” 

     I got to see the blight of this reality as a social worker. We still stand on the backs of others to get what we want.
     Personally, privilege has created a climate of greed in me. I want want want. Comfort, gourmet food, high quality distractions. The tragic thing is that our country is literally falling apart and we are in a serious, collective mental health crisis. It’s inspired me to simplify even more, to give things away, to reach out to help others in small ways, and try to imbue meaning into my life whenever I can.
      Our image conscious society is broken. We don’t raise people up to be solid and content. Adults are a mess, so how can they (teachers, parents, etc) lead young people to internal safety? They can’t until they find it themselves. Research clearly tells us what to do, but we won’t. Most people point to underfunded social service agencies, churches, and to countless forms of “them” to solve the problems that must be solved by the community itself. They rail and complain but don’t take action to help.
     A local friend originally from Croatia (who’s there visiting now) said the first thing that popped into her mind when she thought of the States was “Simon and Garfunkel, second thought, Arlo Guthrie.”
     Similar to our dear Mr. Whitman, these gentlemen spent time honing their creative sensibilities, observing themselves and the human condition, and getting it down on paper for us. We feel more connected to life through them.

     “Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together. I’ve got some real estate here in my bag. So we bought a pack of cigarettes and Mrs. Wagner's pies and we walked off to look for America.”                      —Simon & Garfunkel, "America"

     Arlo Guthrie writes on his website “I want our country to be the one that helped everybody, no matter their politics, religion, or traditions. That would be a country to be proud of.” In his song City of New Orleans written by Steve Goodman, he sings, “Good morning America how are you? Say, don't you know me? I'm your native son,” imploring his land to help him feel welcomed. “Through the Mississippi darkness, rolling down to the sea, but all the towns and people seem to fade into a bad dream.” Why are we so prone to ride the rails and sing about how lost we feel?
     My Croatian comrade remarked “whether in super subtle ways like Paul Simon, less subtle ways like Steve Goodman, or totally direct ways like Chuck D, I grew up learning from truth tellers. No illusions about the US in my young head. Btw it's now exactly 20 years since I moved to the US.”
     A friend from Skokie notes that we are “a country with a groundbreaking constitution that is no longer serving us. And has been hijacked by minoritarian protofascists and confederates.” I had to look that one up. Thanks wiki: “In minoritarianism (or minorityism) is a neologism for a political structure or process in which a minority segment of a population has a certain degree of primacy in that entity's decision making."
     So what will I do with all of this? As my mind swims with fear and dread, I am more committed than ever to do my best to stay out of ruminating about the past or fearing the future. I’m running my second 5K this month tomorrow. I took a ten mile walk the other day. I’m marveling at the pops of green all around, and spend time in the woods.
     I met someone and we dated, casually, for about 6 weeks. It ended last week, much to my chagrin (even though there were yellow and red flags there since Day 1). But we had fun together! I was heartbroken— maybe more than I should have been after such a short romance.
     As Walt said in the poem above, “some are baffled, but that one is not—that one knows me.” I guess I thought my moment for partnership had finally come. The one who gets me. I’d be like the normal people on TV. House, yard, partner. Then I realized that this was my Disney brain falling for a false knight in shining armor, and Walt probably meant self-love anyway. Or so I'll tell myself.
     I may get shot to death anywhere at any time. I will pull from the many great minds in my life, those who have come and gone and those who are still here. I will learn to continue to tolerate this human experience, and day by day do all I can to soak up every nuance of my fragile precarious life.

My opponent is a fiend who likes Joe Biden

Mayim Bialik is the latest host of “Jeopardy!”

    My routine is fairly fixed. I wake up, write something, walk the dog, eat something, water the flowers, write some more. A little exercise, maybe run an errand and it’s time for dinner. Not what I would call a life of thrill and triumph. Maybe even a rut. Even so, it’s my rut, shuffled by me, and I’m content enough. It not only could be worse, it will be.
     At least there isn’t a lot of television. Sometimes, if my wife is working downtown, I’ll sneak in half an hour of “Peaky Blinders,” a BBC program about a violent crime family in the 1920s. There’s a quality about Irish actor Cillian Murphy, a wide-eyed, expressionless stare that is endlessly satisfying to watch. Another numb, shell-shocked witness to numb, shell-shocked times.
     My mother, however, is in the hospital, and for the past two weeks I try to drive there every day, sit at the foot of her bed, and make small talk. Wednesday I was there at 3:30, and she announced it was time for “Jeopardy!”
     I don’t have to explain what “Jeopardy!” is, right? A popular game show where answers to questions on a range of subjects are given to three contestants, who try to provide the questions that evoke them. “Jeopardy!” debuted on television when I was 3, and I’ve been watching it ever since, when somebody else watches. “Let’s watch ‘Jeopardy,’” is not a thought I’ve ever had.
     Since I’m always with company, I like to blurt out the answers to show off how smart I am. There is something very circle-of-life about watching it with my mother now. We watched it in the mid-1960s, hosted by Art Fleming, on our black-and-white Zenith. And we’re watching it still, on a flat screen TV, almost 60 years later. That’s sweet, right? Or horrible. Or both.
     This being primary season, most commercials were a Punch and Judy Show of Republican candidates having at each other. Their opponents are all liars and scoundrels and, worse, closet Democrats, either on their payroll, or harboring the secret shame of having voted for Joe Biden. Montages of awkward photos narrated with frozen contempt.

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Is that the Second Coming or the First?

     All religions are nonsense given a somber patina by the span of centuries and the endorsement of millions. I get that. All have some useful moral precepts they pretend to endorse — treat people kindly, don't kill folks, etc. — that are perfectly fine unadorned and on their own. But believers feel obligated to dress up their basic morality with the most rococo impossibilities and time-killing ritual imaginable. Angels. Prayer. Heaven. Miracles. That kind of thing.

     And I understand that any hope or suspicion that my own team might be slightly less ridiculous than the norm is mere self-love and chauvinism. Jews believe their own forms of silly, tedious spoodle: the obsessive waste of keeping kosher. The years spent learning an arcane language like Hebrew. Debating the Talmud. 

     But at least those are the familiar, acceptable tranches of gibberish.  There is something extra disturbing when a faith conjures up something new and ridiculous.

      Not that the tendency of Lubavitch-Chabad Hasidic Jews to announce that their late leader, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, is the messiah is anything new. Ever since he died in 1994, and his flock eagerly awaited his resurrection (which, spoiler alert, did not happen, yet) the sense that he has come to usher in a new age is embraced by many — Joseph Newfield claims most — Chabad Hasidim.  

     Non-fanatical Jews are either ignorant of this, or embarrassed and try to pretend it doesn't exist. Even the Lubavitch often downplay the Schneerson-as-savior bit. They generally like to present a benign, earnest face to the world, as joyous cheerleaders of Judaism, hoping to move the world toward salvation with each tiny act of religious obligation, whether pressing weak tea Jews to wear tefillin and pray, an imposition I have written about, or encourage Jewish women to light Sabbath candles, or distributing matzo at Passover.  To be honest, I find them inoffensive and admire their ability to conceal the contempt they must feel for supposed Jews who don't do any of the obligations they consider essential for living a good life. To add to those 613 commandments of Judaism a 614th, to believe that a cleric dead more than a quarter of a century is the second coming of Christ is a step too far, and off-brand for them, so they suppress it.

     Which might be why true believers are now opting for a more in-your-face approach. The world is becoming less restrained, more vigorous about imposing one's private fantasies on others. Why should Jews be any different? I saw these mini-posters slapped on Walk signs on the East Side of Manhattan during my recent visit. As with all expressions of zealotry, you have to wonder what impact the fervid perpetrators hope to have. Do they really expect any Jew not already on their bus to see these little posters and think, "He is? Oh good! About time." Perhaps it's more an expression of power: we're here, we actually believe this enough to march around Manhattan with stepladders and posters and paste. Deal with it. 

      Or not. I truly don't mind that people embrace an enormous spectrum of spiritual hoo-ha. It makes them feel better. Life is a long time, laden with boredom and tragedy, and it helps to have a pretty story to glance at when the world gets ugly. It's a shame they can't believe it quietly, and must try to wangle their ridiculous notions in the faces of those simply trying to get down the street unmolested. But such is the world. Yes, claiming this guy is the savior — if he is, then why aren't we saved, huh? What's the hold-up? — is part of the ugliness, not part of the relief that faith can offer. But then, that's me. And the world isn't all about me. As the years go by, I'm more and more certain of that. It's a shame religions couldn't push that concept more. That's a good word worth spreading around.