Yvette's Inner Geek Blog

If you are not already a fan of Neil Gaiman, here is another reason why you should be: his recent blog post Why defend freedom of icky speech?

He gives an intelligent, easy to read, and in-depth response to a reader’s very valid question about why he supports the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund‘s (CBLDF) fight for Iowan comic collector Christopher Handley’s right to collect (what I personally find creepy and icky) lolicon manga.

Gaiman unequivocally supports our first ammendment right to Freedom of Speech, even when the content in question would probably disgust and mortify a large majority of the world’s population.

I grew up with a cursory appreciation of freedom of speech — censorship was something already in the history books for me, with an occasional current news story about another attempt at censorship by the Ridiculous Conservatives. I mean, I remember the 1999 uproar over Chris Ofili‘s artistic rendition of the Virgin Mary on a canvas embellished with elephant dung, but I wasn’t involved enough in politics of any sort to take sides when good ol’ Mayor Guiliani declared “There’s nothing in the First Amendment that supports horrible and disgusting projects!”

Nearly ten years later, after realizing that some of the graphic novels I actually own have been affected by that gray mess of censorship in the past, I am ready to take a stance. I may not personally approve of the very ideas of fetishizing children, oppressing women, abusing drugs, senseless murder, or conservative religion, but I’m not going to prevent someone else from writing or talking about them or creating comics and art and movies about them.

Ideas themselves don’t actively cause harm, and drawing a line or making exceptions to the concept of Freedom of Speech defies its very purpose.

Gaiman sums up this reasoning quite nicely:

Because if you don’t stand up for the stuff you don’t like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you’ve already lost.

Oh, Neil. Today I hate myself even more for not driving to Las Vegas to meet you.

Ben just pointed me in the direction of a politically relevant and super gametastically fantastic little flash game called “Super Obama World.”

If you haven’t played it yet, try it out! I haven’t gotten very far, so I’m not sure how it plays out… but the fact that the worlds are on a map that looks a lot like Alaska leads me to believe that Sarah Palin may be a boss along the way! Ooooo, fun! Let me know if you make it that far.

On a side note, it’s weird to realize that Nintendo’s amazing technology of the 80s can be recreated in a simple flash game played over the internet.