About two decades ago, the deranged Reverend, Jim Jones, manipulated his gullible followers into drinking poison-tainted Kool Aid. The late Jerry Falwell, and others of his mind-set, may not administer poisoned Kool- Aid , but they do spread the malevolent, malignant, and stifling poisons of censorship and intolerance to us all.
Censors tend to be very hypocritical. Whether blocking or bombing abortion clinics (a Constitutionally protected right), illicitly intimidating advertisers or politicians, or attempting to blackmail stores which carry Playboy magazine and other controversial books or merchandise; narrow-minded would-be censors rarely practice the morals that they'd love to impose on the rest of us. Moralists often attempt to blackmail bookstores by threatening to falsely expose those stores as 'peddlers of pronography', among other threats. Various self-appointed morality groups practice all of the above illicit tactics, or variations thereof, and then some. (to be cont'd)
[The original version of this essay first appeared in Eastern Connecticut State University's Campus Lantern student newspaper in the early '90s and later as part of my unpublished manuscript "In Mediocrity We Trust... In Debt We Die" And Other Essays.]
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