Harvey Mushman returns, exhibiting his European decadence by complaining about censorship of swearing and nudity—Ed.

There’s an Inmate who shall remain nameless (but if you’re reading you know who you are) who regular complains that his comments are taken down. I think those of his comments that I have seen are quite interesting, although I don’t necessarily agree with him. I wondered what it was that got him cancelled out, and asked one of the good folk who monitor the posts about it.

It turns out they’re being auto-deleted by aptly-named Artificial Intelligence* because they frequently use Naughty Words like f***. Hey, what happened there? I typed “f***”, and what has appeared here is “f***”. Wassup?

Ah, I see. Naughty Words are not allowed. Well, actually they are, because everyone knows what f*** really spells out. Likewise with s*** and, oh… let’s not stretch our freedom of speech for the Land of the Home and Free of the Brave, or whatever. You know what I’m saying, I’m sure. I suspect you, or certainly the percentage of you that actually thinks about stuff, is just as puzzled as I am. If you think you have an answer, please outline it in the responses.

It’s not just words, either. I really love cartoons and comics, and I look at them on the web. You cannot help noticing that someone takes great care to put smiley faces over boobs, er, I mean b**** or more specifically nipples, and also bottoms. Female bottoms, anyway. Why hide these body parts – in drawings, for heaven’s sake?

Just what is it that makes a drawing of a nipple a no-no? It can’t be that we’re protecting kids here. Kids – at least those who were fortunate enough to be breast (can I say that?) fed – know all about nipples and no doubt have very fond memories of them. If we’re not protecting the chillun, then, what are we doing? Are there adults who will be sent into some kind of uncontrollable frenzy by the sight of a (drawn!) pair of nipples or a backside? I doubt this, especially considering what is available on that same computer monitor, just a few clicks away.

And in art galleries and Serious Literature the images and the words are fine. Explain that. But enough of these problems…

There is a similar but kind of opposite concern that I have not seen mentioned, but that worries me a lot more than the above. It is the way motorcycles, and especially scooters for some reason, are presented in advertising. Not just, and indeed not particularly, motorcycle advertising.

Check me on this: in the United States, it is compulsory to wear some kind of eye protection when riding a motorcycle. This is not universal around the world, although wearing an approved helmet (which on the other hand is not compulsory in every state of the US) is commonly required in very many countries. If I understand this correctly, in France you even have to wear approved gloves. And probably sneers.

These rules, whether you agree with them or not, are intended to protect riders. And yet advertisements, be they photos or video, regularly show riders and passengers without helmets or eye coverage – unless they’re flogging sunglasses, I suppose in which case the product helps out. My question here is very simple: why is it all right to show models in advertisements not only breaking the law but setting a poor example? Remember that these kinds of ads are aspirational; you are supposed to want to be like the models, and to imitate them. These ads are not, then, just showing something that is illegal but are encouraging viewers to also break the law. I thought that kind of thing was discouraged by John Law? But just like explicit nudity in art and bad language in literature, breaking the law in advertising seems to be protected. I leave it to you to work out why that might be.

人谴责摩托车一样危险and antisocial will happily buy the perfume/fashion/hygiene products/cigarettes and whatever else is advertised in this way. Perhaps it’s an unconscious desire to be like one of the wild and crazy people who rides; I don’t know and I don’t care. What I do care about is that I seem to live in a society which can’t get its s*** together enough to at least be consistent in its attempts to “protect” its members.

*Those In Charge inform me they do try to approve all non-spam comments, even with swearwords, but sometimes the swearing comes in so hot and heavy that it’s hard to stay ahead. And also, our comment system hates URLs, even to innocuous sites, which is why a lot of other stuff gets auto-filtered.