From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: NPR & Freedom of the Press: Part II
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
Date: 5 Sep 92 12:20:53

In article <1992Sep5.162429.28860@morrow.stanford.edu> francis@oas.stanford.edu (Francis Muir) writes:

   Also on NPR today was an interesting and classic tale involving
   Liberalism and Freedom of the Press. No; for "and" read "versus".

   The employees of Walden Books in Georgetown have all been fired.
   This is how it went. The manager received for sale and display a
   spiral-bound calendar with about three days/page. For each day there
   was, in his opinion, a truly tasteless joke, and some of which he
   considered sexist. It was one of those "funny" calendars, and i
   guess we have all seen them. He decided that it was too much, and
   refused to put it on display as his management had requested. As he
   said, "suppose a 16 yr old black girl comes in and reads the "joke"
   about jungle bunnies. This will add to her low self-esteem..." or
   words to that effect. After discussion with the management over the 
   phone, he was told a supervisor would arrive to fire him for insubordination
   if he did not comply with instructions. He refused and was fired,
   as, in turn, were all the other assistant managers (everyone at Walden
   is an AM).

   Comments?

							   Fido

Probably a good idea that Walden Books fired them.  Consider Kepler's
Bookstore in Palo Alto.  Its owner is or was pretty far left.
Nevertheless, books of conservative orientation put out by major
publishers, e.g. by P. J. O'Rourke, are available there.  Suppose it
became the norm for bookstore employees to engage in censorship.  Then
Kepler's would come under criticism from the left for continuing to
stock books the left found objectionable.  It wouldn't stop with books
of tasteless jokes, considering the use of the word "obscene" on the
left.  I think Kepler's, given the political orientation of its owners
and probably of its employees, would quickly give in, once censorship
by bookstores and bookstore employees became fashionable.

By the way, what about the following.  Last night I saw a movie called
"Mistresses".  It's a semi-comedy about a director, a producer and a
writer who want to make an old movie script of the director's about an
artist who commits suicide to protest "selling out".  The producer
finds three potential backers, all people of no "integrity", each of
whom is motivated by the desire to get his young mistress into the
movie.  Roles for them have to be created, and the story has to be
changed to make it more up beat.  The three sell out, modifying the
movie to suit the desires of the backers and their girl friends, but
the deal collapses in amusing squabbling in the end.  I forget exactly
how.

Anyway, in the middle of the movie, there is a thirty second
diatribe about the U.S. role in Vietnam.  Doubtless, various people
concerned with the movie, (e.g. the writer, the director and the
producer) satisfied their leftist consciences by putting it in.
Vietnam has absolutely no connection with the story.

$25 to someone who has not seen the movie for the best hypothesis as
to what the diatribe was and how it was made to fit in.  It requires
no more knowledge of the story than I have given to come up with the
actual way it was done.
--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

Newsgroups: rec.arts.animation