Ashcroft now trying to censor profanity in newspaper comic strips

"A cartoonist says that Ashcroft has been leaning on States' Attorney General Offices to lean on weekly papers to clean up the foul language within."

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_03_14_atrios_archive.html#107973907708528242

Here's the post from the cartoonist - he originally erroneously thought this was coming from the FCC. Turns out Ashcroft is pressuing State Attorney Generals to do the censoring.
http://www.tcj.com/messboard/ubb/Forum1/HTML/007059.html
http://www.longstoryshortpier.com/vaults/2004/03/19/we_are_so_fucked_some_more

One suggestion: Notify Howard Stern about this. This is EXACTLY the kind of freedom-of-speech stuff that drives him nuts and makes him start ranting and telling people to vote against Bush.

Send an email to Howard:
http://www.howardstern.com/
sternshow@howardstern.com

This prooves that our opponents are:

Enemy's of Freedom
Tyrants
Fascists

....and all other terms that apply to this band of
thugs!

:puke:

'Museum of the Hard to Believe'
remember that?

JUST amazing....
these people really need to get a life

not allowed terrorism to distract him from the REAL dangers facing this nation, like dirty words and boobs.

UNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGH!

Sorry, I seem to have been channelling Bob Boudelang for a minute there...

The F bomb has got to be the biggest problem facing the US right now.

do you mean :evilgrin:

But for the Attourney General to interviene is totally unbelievable.

What if Eve Ensler (author of "The Vagina Monologues") used the word "cunt" in a performance or comic strip?

I know some words are shocking, and mayb some community pressure (not buying the paper?) could be brought to bear on publications people don't like.

But as you imply, not buying a paper is one thing - criminalizing is another thing.

We need to realize WHY this stuff is happening - nobody wants Bush anymore, so their only hope now is rigging the voting machines and censoring the media.

Either we have a First Amendment, or we don't. This is just a test case to see if the people can be lulled into censoring certain things. Later, they'll expand this to censor lots of things.

Give that man a ceeegar!

that I wouldn't have done it, and it doesn't seem entirely appropriate for something in between peanuts and garfield, much like I would hope sponge bob square pants would never call anyone a cunt. But, I'm not nearly so sensative that I would even consider boycotting the paper or probably even think about it for over 5 seconds, much less try to ban it like our dear archbishop Ashcroft.

I am unconvinced this happened.

Not one assistant Attorney General who supposedly sent such a letter is named.

And there is no law against publishing profane words an assistant Attorney General could cite.

So I doubt this happened.

Right now, Ashcroft is trying to put together a list of ALL DOCTORS who do ANY abortions (not just late ones).

There's no law that allows him to do it. But that's never stopped Ashcroft.

I bet you would be shocked at the lists they have.

I'm sure glad he is policing the comics for language. NOT!

All hail the comic czar!