Don’t Tell Me What to Read, See or Think

Poor Madonna. She manages to offend nearly everybody. The Christian community, parents, MTV and now the Jewish community. Personally, I’m not compelled to see Madonna’s new video, but if I chanced upon it, I doubt it could offend me.

What does offend me, however, is this ever-increasing wholesale rampage to squelch self-expression. It’s generally assumed that this has been the exclusive domain of the religious right but, in fact, the liberal left and a myriad of minorities and majorities are just as guilty of this suppression of speech and artistic freedom.

In the last year alone we’ve had do-gooders in Cincinnati try to tell us what art is, we’ve had do-gooders in Florida and Texas try to tell us what music is, we’ve had women’s organizations try to tell us what literature and responsible publishing are (re Bret Easton Ellis’ “American Psycho”), and we’ve had advertisers tell TV networks that homosexuals can’t display any real emotion and AIDS victims aren’t worthy of sympathetic portrayal.

Even out here in the laid-back, live-and-let-live West, innocuous Joe Jitsu cartoons have stirred up indignation, parents blame the suicides of their sons on a rock group rather than looking to their own dysfunctional family units and even Red Riding Hood has managed to raise hackles.

And over the years, the litany of outrage has gone interminably on, chanted by all factions regardless of race, creed or political affiliation. Christians demand we not watch “The Last Temptation of Christ.” Jews demand we not watch Vanessa Redgrave or award her an Oscar. And all factions, liberal and conservative, have their banned-book lists.

Even classic literature and entertainment come under fire, condemned by today’s sensibilities, unable to be perceived or judged within any kind of historical context. We can’t read “Huckleberry Finn” or “The Wizard of Oz” or “Tarzan of the Apes.” We must apologize for “Gone With the Wind,” snippets are cut from “Fantasia.” And did the local TV channel feel compelled to edit out Bing Crosby’s “Abraham” number in a Yuletide screening of “Holiday Inn” for fear his insipid black-faced warbling way back in 1942 might start race riots in 1990?

TV, of course, is everybody’s goat. Parents use it as their baby-sitter and their whipping boy. All of society’s ills are blamed on it. We must edit those violent Bugs Bunny cartoons. Look at all that smut on cable. Those Rambo movies made my baby a cold-blooded killer. And God forbid if any foreigner or minority is portrayed as anything other than someone of sterling character--after all, we all know the only villains are male WASPs.

And, of course, no one is content with just restricting artistic choices. Not when there are life choices to smother. Football organizations dictate state holidays. Churches and militant sexual minorities intrude into the privacy of one’s bedroom. History and science must be reinterpreted and watered down in textbooks so that every and any point of view is included, despite its validity. And everybody wants to tell women what they can’t do . . . from having an abortion to posing for Playboy.

The trivial becomes paramount, non-issues become issues, molehills become mountains. And in panicked attempts to neutralize trumped-up controversy, we lose our sense of humor and our guts, tip-toeing warily around delicate, thin-skinned, hypersensitive egos who actively seek insult with paranoid rabidity.

Our artists, media, politicians, public figures and advertisers try so hard to offend no one, they can only produce uncommitted, sanitized, bland pap and safe sound bites guaranteed to bore everyone. We say nothing, fearing anything said might be attacked as malicious intent. Don’t have an opinion, thought or any color lest the self-appointed watchdogs of public taste come snarling at your heels.

I’m tired of intolerance, bigotry, hatred, unreasoning fear and hysterical lack of perspective masquerading as religion or social consciousness or moral necessity. I’m tired of the pompous arrogance of both the strident, smug left and the vehement, narrow-minded right. Neither have all the answers.

I’m an intelligent, college-educated, fairly literate human being who’s perfectly capable of making up his own mind. I don’t need to be told what to read or see, be told how to interpret it or be told what to think. Lighten up and get off my back.