In the spirit of public service, I wish to help our wise leaders in Washington clean up some of the proverbial roadkill rotting on the information superhighway. The institution of the 1996 Telecom bill is a clarion call for all conscientious and concerned adults to abdicate their own rights so that the wide eyes of innocents may be spared from the diversity of viewpoint and the banter of ideas which occurs on the media of tomorrow. Otherwise, this could corrupt their young, precious and closing minds. Now is the time to clean up the internet and the World Wide Web so that it may be overbroadly demeaned to that which is fit only for children.
To this end, I would like to share some helpful statistics which may guide the federal government as it prepares the hoes and shovels for this veritable spring cleaning. It may interest the federal government to know that, according to the web searcher Alta Vista (http://altavista.digital.com), the word "fuck" appears on the World Wide Web exactly 93,681 times. Furthermore, the word "piss" appears a paltry 15,697 times; "cunt," a mere 8,351 times; "goddamn" (and variants) appears a miniscule 9,955 times; "cocksucker," a disappointing 651 times; "motherfucker" (and variants), 4,044 times; and "shit" tops them all with 112,920 appearances on the World Wide Web. This leaves a grand total of 245,299 appearances of the infamous "seven dirty words."
Well, it's going to be a busy spring! It's a good thing it's not an election year or anything, because all the labor, resources, travel expenses, etc. would probably make the process of bringing the authors of these 245,299 web pages to justice pretty expensive. One could speculate as to how many they would have to catch and collect fines from in order to break even - 50,000 maybe? 100,000? Anyway, I'm just glad members of congress won't have to go to their congressional districts and explain to the folks back home why they've exhausted so much in the way of resources to nab these 245,299 web pages instead of other important things federal agents do (like catching people who copy movies from rental stores and chasing after UFOs). In fact, it could take so much effort the federal government may have to shut down again.
But since this isn't an election year, I can support this initiative with a clear conscience. Otherwise, I might suspect that it is a lot of calculated but moot posturing on the part of professional politicians who are trying to placate the public by playing on their paranoia. It's important to support this overinclusive and draconian measure because it's not like parental screening technology exists or anything.
Copyright © 1996, The Oberlin Review.
Volume 124, Number 15; February 23, 1996
Contact Review webmaster with suggestions or comments at ocreview@www.oberlin.edu.
Contact Review editorial staff at oreview@oberlin.edu.