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A power-grabbing President made a State of the Union speech that revealed him to be dangerously delusional, terrifyingly disconnected or colossally corrupt. None is particularly heart warming. Speaking of which, in a predictable concatenation of circumstances, our tough, macho Vice President, after a boozy lunch, got out of his car to blow to bits a few defenseless birds with his Perazzi Brescia shotgun and ended up shooting one of his acquaintances in the face and chest, precipitating a heart attack. (Leave it to Cheney to "conserve" by driving around a Texan ranch -- replete with ambulance, SUVs and entourage -- belonging to the family of a Halliburton crony, shooting conservatives.) And then there are the cartoons. Under the penalty of perjury, I filed a declaration in 1997 in a case against the United States that ultimately made its way to the Supreme Court. I stated: "Upon being naturalized as an American, I took an oath to protect the principles of the Constitution from enemies foreign and domestic. A strong motivation for my wanting to bring this lawsuit is to fulfill that promise and have America live up to its promise of freedom." Now, two federal lawsuits later, as well as many risks in the name of freedom of expression that did not necessarily wind up in court, I find myself confronting the cartoon controversy and examining the complex interaction among free expression, respect, tolerance, and sensitivity. Of course I am referring to the Danish cartoon controversy. My decision to publish the Danish cartoons on Annoy.com (along with a visual reinterpretation) was only slightly more difficult than it was to decide to publish the anti-Semitic response from the Arab-European League (AEL), including the infamous image with Ann Frank in bed with Hitler. The AEL are partially correct. Europe is far less accommodating of their homophobic, misogynist, and anti-Semitic expression than it ought to be. As much as I dislike a lot of their expression, couched as it is as an illustration of Europe's double standards, I defend their right to express it. So long as I am not forced to engage in it, or required to adhere to it. Despite Annoy.com's stated mission -- created and designed to annoy -- the notion of deliberately publishing something that is riotously offensive to billions, and risking a fatwa or other such delightful repercussions, was not a pleasant one to contemplate. Why should I bother taking the risk, when there are other sites and blogs out there likely to do it for me? In a response on Annoy.com's blog Irrit8, I challenge the editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, Doug Clifton, who thought along those lines. In the end, for the same reasons I saw fit to publish the beheading of Nicholas Berg; the Special Feature on Pope John Paul II; the blasphemous poem of James Kirkup and my own image Who Would Jesus Torture? which inspired its own destructive controversy, I chose to publish the cartoons because that is what freedom of expression is all about. Today, a Pakistani cleric announced a $1 million bounty for killing a cartoonist who drew the Prophet Muhammad caricatures. In solidarity with them, I publish. I will continue to add to this feature as this disturbing story continues to unfold. |
| Annoy.com Editorials The Stakes of the Communion From the War on Iraq to the realities of Hurricane Katrina, the problem of sheltering the President from protestors and dissenters and shielding him from alternative viewpoints is that he appears to be hallucinating on ecstasy to the point that his speech came across as the incoherent ramblings of a lunatic. The President used the bully pulpit to spew a narrow, deluded world view that bares not a trace of reality, vision or wisdom. Representing a once-respected nation by turning it into a sick, despised caricature of democracy, achieved by preemptive force, violence and intimidation. A twisted Napoleonic melange of bullying, bellicose bravado, riddled with corruption, cronyism, greed and arrogance. The extent of the contrast betweeen the President's hot air and the chilling reality would be laughable if the consequences were not so horrific, painful and deadly. >>The Stakes of the Communion: Full Editorial |
| Annoy.com Covers The Superiors Crackpot, crap-shot, Dirty Dick, the plastic-hearted, demented Vice President of the United States shot his friend in the neck, face and chest, causing him to be hospitalized where he suffered a heart attack. Could it be the Veep was jealous that his 78 year old friend had a better heart (even for a corrupt funeral home owner and crony) or did the Veep think he was shooting Scooter Libby, who earlier in the week suggested the Dick had authorized him to leak classified information? >>The Superiors: Full Details |
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Who's Your Shepherd? Calling for the beheading of an artist for creating a caricature depicting a religion as violent is hypocritical. About as hypocritical as assaulting or killing a woman for appearing in a degrading beauty contest. Or castrating and sodomizing men who rape. As fanatical, intolerant Muslim clerics continue to incite violence over the depictions of violence, and as Israeli Jews deliberately incite riots by building unauthorized new structures in settlements, America's religious righteous -- armed with justifications from their churches, mosques and synagogues -- are mincing into gay bars with machetes and guns and opening fire. Others are frantically preparing to picket Coretta Scott King's funeral because she supported gay rights. The Pope, lost in the haze of his Nazi Youth is too busy purging the symptoms of his dysfunctional, homocentric Church -- in between satin dress fittings and Prada shopping sprees -- blissfully oblivious to the blatantly obvious causes. The one certain thing all of these Torah-touting, Koran-clutching, Bible-thumping, Scripture-screeching religious zealots seem to share, is an unbridled lust for violence. >>Who's Your Shepherd?: Full Details |
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Cry-Baby Remorseful Randy, Dainty Duke Weepy, wimpy, makes you puke Cunningless Corruption, Graciousless greed Ethicless embodiment, see it bleed Mascara-running Martha-Ann The weeping Ms. Alito Fedora donning gangster turncoat Convincing incognito Responsibility inability Accountability freeze Tearful tell alls, truthless grace falls Sentimental sleaze Embellished tales, increasing sales Rotten from the core The lies inept, the mounting debt And still we beg for more >>Cry-Baby: Full Details |
| First Amendment Project Roundup You say Mohammed, I say Muhammad... Where does freedom of expression begin and end? Should the prohibition of depicting the likeness of Muhammad apply to those who are not Muslim? What are the sacred cows? What is the difference between images that ridicule Jesus, Muhammad or other sacred figures and ones that ridicule human suffering, such as slavery or genocide? Notions such as hate speech are being weighed against religious expression. Is calling for the death of homosexuals, for example, acceptable because certain religions condemn it? Where does one person's freedom to express oneself end and another's begin? These are questions that have no easy answers. Editors and publishers in Europe, Africa and the United Sates grappled with whether the story could be told in the absence of the images themselves. Lost in that debate was the extent to which words alone can be as devastating. Ask Salman Rushdie. Why is a verbal description of Mohammad wearing a turban resembling a bomb or of Jesus submerged in urine any different from a visual depiction? >>You say Mohammed, I say Muhammad... |
| Freedom of Expression in Times of War By HANNA REGEV Last November, The First Amendment Project was prominently featured in a one-day symposium, Freedom of Expression in Times of War, organized by Hanna Regev and Clinton Fein in collaboration with the University of California Berkeley Extension. The symposium also included FAP Executive Director, David Greene. Since the symposium, we have been subjected to an unrelenting onslaught of information revealing violations of our constitutional rights and civil liberties. These include the recent egregious, domestic spying program of the National Security Agency's (NSA) -- eavesdropping on American citizens during the course of its work monitoring suspected terrorists and foreigners believed to have ties to terrorist groups. The revelations go deeper and tell us that the NSA's vast data-mining activities began shortly after Bush was sworn in as president, contradicting his assertion that the 9/11 attacks prompted him to take the unprecedented step of signing a secret executive order authorizing the NSA to monitor a select number of American citizens thought to have ties to terrorist groups. >>Freedom of Expression in Times of War |
| A Million Little Fleeces For those living in a bubble -- or outside America -- in a nutshell, James Frey cooked up a story called A Million Little Pieces, which was apparently rejected by his publisher as a fiction, and subsequently repackaged as a memoir. Not to be confused with an autobiography, which suggests a factually accurate, verifiable recalling of events, but simply a memoir, which is a non-fictional, but far less scrutinized recalling of events by the author. What Comedy Central's Stephen Colbert might call "truthiness." (Add that word to your word-processing dictionary). Memoirs sell better than fiction does. The enterprising sleuths at the web site The Smoking Gun on a quest to find Frey's mugshot to add to their considerable collection of celebrity mugshots, found themselves ensconced in a six-week investigation, uncovering details that made James Frey's memoir as an alcoholic, drug addict, and criminal as convincing a non-fiction as the White House propaganda that prompted the Patriot Act and apparent congressional relinquishing of their role as a constitutional balance of power. >>A Million Little Fleeces |
| Irrit8 Black and White and Yellow All Over American media's response to how to cover the Danish cartoon furor has been eye opening. Aside from the Philadelphia Inquirer, the only major newspaper to run one of the images to date, (and a few smaller publications in California and Wyoming), most newspapers have chosen to tell the story without using the images. Doug Clifton, editor of The Plain Dealer in Cleveland, told Editor & Publisher that he did not "see a need to insert ourselves in that fight." But Clifton said his paper will likely place a link to the images from another site when it runs an editorial on the issue over the weekend. "They will have the option to see it if they choose," he told Editor & Publisher. >>Word Count |
| Sticks and Stones While all the world's major religions -- Judaism, Christianity, Catholicism, and Hinduism -- shoulder responsibility for fueling extremist factions spewing hatred, violence and intolerance, Muslims do need to drop the victimization act and realize that just as they condemn and judge others with impunity, so too must they learn to cope with being subject to criticism. Until people stop, in Allah's name, stoning woman to death, killing homosexuals, cutting the hands off children stealing food to survive, flying passenger planes into skyscrapers, car-bombing innocent people, forcing their religious convictions onto others, and other such atrocities, and until Muslims loudly and clearly reject and condemn the violence perpetrated by those who have hijacked and perverted their religion, the likelihood of cartoonists depicting Muhammad as a gentle, olive-branch carrying dove is not particularly high. >>Sticks and Stones |
| Of Mice and Cowards ABC executives have canceled "Welcome to the Neighborhood" -- a reality show about a gay couple and their child that moves into a neighborhood whose residents "overwhelmingly identified themselves as white, Christian and Republican." According to the New York Times, ABC claims to be "concerned that viewers who might have been appalled at some early statements made in the show - including homophobic barbs - might not hang in for the sixth episode." Yet, in an annual letter to shareholders in 1998, Walt Disney Chairman Michael Eisner said he "always will defend the right" of the company to make entertainment that some might find offensive." He also pledged to "fight attempts by groups like the Southern Baptist Convention to change the content of Disney products." >>Of Mice and Cowards |
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In the News Cyberstalking law opens debate on what's annoying "It's a stupid law that has slipped in under the radar," says Clinton Fein, a San Francisco-based artist who runs annoy.com, a website that he says offers "unique and irreverent" commentary on politics and culture. "Who says what's officially annoying? Is that a business we really want our government to be in?" Richard Willing, USA Today, February 14, 2006 New cyberstalker law raises criticism Clinton Fein, who runs the Annoy.com Web site, is also aghast. His site is specifically set up to annoy people through, among other means, anonymous postcards sent through the mail that direct the recipient to read the sender's message at the Annoy.com site. Fein calls the new legislation annoying. Reid Goldsborough, Philadelphia Inquirer, January 29, 2006 Is it illegal, or just annoying? The nation's new cyberstalking restrictions started this month. The legislation updates laws designed to protect people from harrassment. The updated law makes it illegal to use the Internet to harrass someone. But a provision of the legislation also adds the word "annoy" to the types of communication that's illegal. LISTEN IN REAL AUDIO One of the people who picked up on this new language is the creator of the Web site annoy.com. Clinton Fein calls himself a political artist. He's based in San Francisco. He photoshops irreverant and frequently offensive digital postcards for users to send anonymously to whomever they want--the attorney general of the United States, for example, or perhaps your boss. Fein readily admits to pushing legal boundaries. But he wonders who, under the new law, decides what is legally annoying. Art Hughes Interview, Future Tense, January 20, 2006 Does New Cyberstalking Law Criminalize Free Expression? First, we will discover what Section 113 truly means when someone challenges the law. A candidate being mentioned on the Internet is Annoy.com; the site offers a "service by which people send politically incorrect postcards without being required to furnish their identity." The site owner Clinton Fein has a history of "seeking declaratory and injunctive relief" against the Communications Decency Act of 1996 through which "indecent" computer communication that is intended to "annoy" was criminalized. Fein believes Section 113 "warrant[s] a constitutional challenge." Wendy McElroy, Fox News, January 17, 2006 |
Previous Email With Intent to Annoy I know the year has barely begun, but already much is happening and I thought an update would be in order owing to the immediacy of what is happening. I will keep this one short and sweet and send a more comprehensive update towards the end of the month, as planned. Last Thursday, President Bush signed into law a prohibition on posting annoying Web messages or sending annoying e-mail messages without disclosing your true identity. And naturally, as the owner, editor and publisher of Annoy.com -- and having fought this issue all the way to the United States Supreme Court -- I am potentially impacted by the new law. Declan McCullagh of C|Net broke the story on Monday, January 9, 2006 in which he quoted me based on a discussion we had engaged in on Friday after the law was signed. >>The details... |
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This is a monthly online newsletter by Clinton Fein. You receive it because we're friends, family, know one another, or you have requested to be on this list in order to keep up with what I am up to. If for any reason, you don't want to receive this, please just hit your reply button and enter the word "Unsubscribe" in the subject line, and your name will automatically be removed from the list. Clinton Fein Email:  I try and send out updates about once a month, but am not alway able to be so fastidious. I will respond to all and any emails I get from anyone, so please respond when you can. Feedback is not just welcome, it's encouraged. |