Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Blame the Censors

When I think back on my life and wonder what lead me to want to be a writer or feel the way I do about certain things, I think about certain turning points in my childhood. One thing I clearly remember was something that happened in the mid 1960s. I was just a little kid then and a big fan of Saturday morning cartoons. Especially Jonny Quest, the Herculoids and some other action shows.

As a consequence of the Vietnam War, a bunch of lefty parents decided that kids should not be exposed to violence on television and the culture, because they claimed boys would grow up to be war-like. So they pressured toy makers to limit or ban toy guns. And they managed to get “violent cartoons” off the air (in other words, the ones I liked) to be replaced by tame, lame crap such as this junk. I was so offended by this junk, I raged about the injustice of these handful of people effecting the stuff I loved.

How could a small group of people have so much power over other people’s interests? That was my first lesson in the power of pressure groups.

I was only 11 in 1968, but I can tell you it pissed me off. So much so that to this day I have a deep abiding dislike for censors and political correctness.

Whatever happens to you as a kid has an effect on your later life. And even though I have outgrown those cartoons of my youth (I have checked them out on Boomerang and I still think they are way, way more imaginative and entertaining than that 1968 drivel and much of what followed), I am still dedicated to opposing the forces of repression. And that includes those who try to tell people what they should think, by banning what they can see, read or watch.  The actions of those self righteous parent groups in the 60s made me a libertarian at age 11.

I will keep fighting their ilk until the day die.