"M om, what's a 'rim job'?" "I don't know dear. Let's look it up on the Internet."
Rim Job. Anal Fisting. Dildo. Blow Job. I can say these things because sexually explicit words are protected by the First Amendment. It is my right as an American (an important buzzword lately) to say these things, and it's important to protect these rights.
But Congress wants to "wall off part of the Internet just because many Americans might think it contains material harmful to children," according to CNN.
OK class, repeat after me: Fascism. Do you know what that is? Maybe you should look it up on the Internet.
There are two principles that make this proposed ratification by Congress a bad idea: the concept of parenting and the issue of government control.
It is the parents' job to monitor their children from pornography. The government altering Internet pornography is not going to have much impact on the minds of our innocent and pure angelic children. There will still be Playboys and Hustlers smuggled into grade school bathrooms. There will still be 50-cent smut papers on street corners available to anyone with two quarters and chubby, boasting headlines like, "Two barely legal college chicks get it on in the shower."
There will still be the Spice channel (those squiggly lines over the image do little to block the pornographic experience. (If anything they make it better by hiding the buckteeth, bad perm and fat butt-crack of the gross male "actors.") And there will still be those Mexican soap operas on Telemundo that are only one small step away from pornography.
"Minors today can search the Web as easily as they can change television channels," Justice Department lawyers wrote in court papers, according to CNN. "Thus, in the privacy of their homes or those of friends, unsupervised minors can, with the click of a mouse, visit one pornographic site after another."
Have you ever looked at Internet porn? I don't know what Web sites these people are going to, but it's somewhat difficult to get into a porn site without signing over your soul with your credit card number. (Unless you're a hacker — can I give a shout-out to all my hacker friends? Thank you guys so much; I don't know what my free time would be like without you.)
Besides the difficulty of getting to it, most of it sucks anyway ... figuratively of course.
The burden of protecting the minds of the children rests on the parents, not the government.
If you have children, do you tuck them in at night and instead of "Harry Potter" read them a column by Sabrina Fladness? Probably not, because my columns would undoubtedly warp their fragile little minds (especially the Halloween costume one).
But does that mean that Congress can go through every Friday issue of the State Press and black out my columns so that no children can read them?
If you think so, I hope you are not calling yourself an American. The term "Nazi" might fit you better. (Of course, I use that term stereotypically and not strictly pertaining to the political manifesto of Nazism. And I can run pretty fast, so any Nazis or Neo-Nazis or otherwise angry readers — it's futile to try to chase me down and beat me to a bloody pulp.)
Do you know how so called "freedom" is lost? Governments take away rights in small steps. Each time the citizens say, "Oh yes, we see how this will benefit us." And suddenly they realize they are no longer allowed to read cherished books like "1984" or "Fahrenheit 451." They are no longer allowed to voice their opinion without the fear of being arrested for it. They are no longer allowed to make their own decisions about anything.
"Mom, you would tell me if you were in a German Schister video, right?"
"Ummm, sure hun."
Porn exists. No matter what anyone does, it's not going away. Sex is everywhere. It's how our species survives. Deal with it.
Sabrina Fladness is a journalism senior. Reach her at aliceccentric@hotmail.com.
