In praise of censorship

Let us all praise lovely censorship.

Till Noever has a BlogSpot blog in which he complains about censorship. Here is one of his claims:

The imposition of censorship, for whatever contrived reasons, no matter how apparently benign, on the expression of opinion, no matter how potentially offensive—is there any opinion that will not offend somebody?—is more demeaning and potentially damaging than anything that could possibly be expressed in words by anybody expressing themselves in the media in question.

So, Till, I can say anything about you or anyone else? Could I call a person--and I'm not talking about you--a convicted child molester without any regard to the truth? If I published some such falsehood, would the person about whom I wrote have only the right to complain that he or she was in fact not a convicted child molester? Would the slanderous statement be allowed to float around freely, with the slandered person left simply to hope that truth will out?

I don't think that's your position, Till. But if it is, let me know. We can put this assertion to a test.

In addition to complaining about the fact that a friend of his has been censored, Till is also complaining that his novel was "censored" by its publisher. Apparently, the publisher objected to some section or motif of the novel. Till feels that something bad was done to him.

Till, you had a choice: You could have chosen to tell the publisher, "I will not agree to have you publish my novel without this material in it." Had you done so, then the publisher could have decided whether or not--in light of your ultimatum--it would publish your novel.

Instead, you chose to agree with the publisher's request. But, having agreed to that request, you now want to whine about it. Moreover, you want to cast yourself as the injured party. That's really petty. You reach an agreement with someone, and then you complain about the ethics of the other party.

I think that approach is itself unethical, Till. You made an agreement with your publisher, and now you complain.

And let's describe the world that you want to inhabit: You think that you should have been able to insist to the publisher that it publish something that it did not want to publish. You wanted to deprive the publisher of its right to choose what to publish.

Do you want to do that with everyone, Till? Do you want to allow other persons to take that approach to your blog? Do you want people coming onto your blog and publishing, say, hard-core pornographic photographs?

And do you think, Till, that a publisher has any right to choose not to publish something? Am I entitled to go to a publisher and say, "Publish this!" and have that publisher jump to my command?

Is that your world, Till?

Well, of course not.