You're Wrong
An Irregular Column
by Mykel Board
"However great a man's fear of life, suicide remains the courageous act, the clear-headed act of a mathematician.” Graham Green
"Psychiatrists claim, and most people now believe, that mental illness causes addiction, crime, suicide and countless other acts we abhor and fear. Therein lies the virtual limitless power of mental illness and psychiatry to undermine the idea of responsibility and subvert justice.” -Thomas Szasz
"Suicide is the most sincere form of self-criticism.” Robert Heinlein
I wipe the semen off my hands. Fuck! I don't spurt like I used to. Just a little dribble down that V in the back. The build up is as good as ever, but the climax is no better than a decent fart.
Ah well. I'm glad they've got free samples of those clips from Broke Straight Boys on Gaytube. I like 'em, but I sure as dripping cum don't want to pay for 'em!
After wiping up, I hit Facebook. Someone's posted a video of Ellen Degeneres. In the video, she talks about some college kid who jumped off a bridge. Someone interneted a spycam video of him giving a blowjob. It was just oo humiliating to live.
Among other things, Ellen says: "There are messages everywhere that validate this kind of bullying and taunting, and we have to make it stop. We can't let intolerance and ignorance take another kid's life."
My first reaction is: Uh oh! They're gonna used this as an excuse for internet censorship. There goes spycam.com!
“You see what freedom does?” they'll say. “It kills people! We need laws to stop this kind of thing.”
Then, somehow, they'll twist it so laws against posting cam pictures promote freedom. It's illogical. But I bet they do it.
And what about the kids who set up the spycam? As of now, they're charging them with invasion of privacy... as a hate crime.
The more I think about it, the more it pisses me off. I've written before about the dangers of bullying and hate crimes laws. I'll get to hate crimes later. But even before that... is this bullying?
Joe Jockstrap walks up to Wimpy Pudge, pokes him in the stomach. “Hey fatso,” he says, “gimme your lunch money or I'll lift up your belly, find your balls and cut 'em off.”
That's bullying.
Showing a picture of me jerking off to Broke Straight Boys is not bullying. It may be poor taste, uncivil, humiliating, tabloid journalism, an invasion of privacy, blackmail (if it comes with a threat) or a host of other things. But it's not bullying.
My pal Tony, who used to write in these pages wrote on Facebook: I think the answer is to teach young people by example how to stand up to bullying. It was something I was never taught as a young man. If some bastard made a video of you or me at our ages today and streamed it over the web we'd get furious & SUE the freak for everything he had.
It's the fact that the kid was humiliated that caused him to make a death leap. The only shield against a weapon of homophobic humiliation is to teach the kid how to refuse to permit himself to be humiliated. It's not enough to just be out of the closet if a gay kid still thinks his sexuality is somehow more humiliating than that of a straight boy. If a straight boy had something like that happen to him, he'd just get pissed off at the "prank" and fight back. You have to open the eyes of a gay kid and tell him to stand up for himself because he's no different than any straight boy. You say: "Hey, do you know any straight boys who'd kill themselves over that?"
Nothing makes a gay boy any less equal to a straight boy.
I like Tony's answer, but disagree with part of it.
First, if a straight guy sees videos of himself screwing on the internet, he does not sue. He brags.
Second, there are several things that make a gay boy less equal to a straight boy.
Take hate crimes laws. (Please!) I've written before about how these thought-crime bills are bad for civil liberties and worse as public policy. I could go on, but that's not why I'm writing this column. Besides Alexander Cockburn said everything I had to say on that. You can read it at: http://tinyurl.com/cockburnhate.
There is another aspect to the hate-crime bills, though. They create an us and a them. A protected group (them) and everybody else (us). As long as there are laws singling out special groups... As long as victims are defined as Negroes, Hispanics, Jews, or a myriad of others... When you disallow hate on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, nationality, but allow it for clothes or eye color, you create inequality.
If I punch you because you're a Republican, I spend 30 days in jail. If I do it because you're a homo, I spend 5 years. That means homos are not equal to Republicans. And it's the law that creates that inequality.
Then, there's the question of suicide itself. If you kill yourself, who's the murderer? Imagine this:
Radley Smirton is a comedian. His shtick is SUPERNERD, like Pee Wee Herman, but less creepy. He makes fun of jocks, meatheads, blonde airhead girls.
So this football coach walks into the locker room before the game. He talks to Joe Dirt, star running back.
“I'm not supposed to let you play since you failed math, but we need you in there. So if I ask you a math question and you get it right, you can play."
Joe frowns.
"Okay,” says the coach, “now concentrate...what is two plus two?"
Joe thinks for a moment and answers, "Four?"
At that, all the other players on the team began screaming, "Come on coach, give him another chance!"
Smirton takes a bow on Leno, walks over to him, pretends to give the high five... and misses. The audience is in stitches. This guy is headed for the stars... or at least Vegas.
Then it happens. Someone bugs his apartment. Sets up a spycam. Before long, there it is on the Internet. Ridley Smirton, sitting in an armchair, bowl of popcorn by his side, feet up, watching the Superbowl!
In a few minutes, it's everywhere. Smirton's career drops from Superbowl to toilet bowl. Instead of laughing with him, his former fans are laughing at him. Anti-jock nerdboy! Yeah, right.
Unable to stand the humiliation, Smirton buys a ticket to a New York Knicks game at Madison Square Garden. At the end of the game, he hides among the vendors' carts. Then, when the Garden is empty, he hangs himself from one of the baskets.
The press is outraged! His death is a hate crime! The result of bullying. There's gotta be a law. Someone has to pay for this. Ellen Degeneres makes a video. Yeah, right.
Suicide may be sad. It may even be a crime. But unless you're hypnotized or drugged, if you commit suicide, you commit the crime. If it's a hate crime... it's a self-hate crime.
I feel sorrier for the poor guys who set up the cam. In the case of the homo bridge-jumper, it was a pair of non-American born, non-whites: an Indian guy and a Chinese girl. Easy targets. I bet they feel worse about the death than any of the critics calling for their blood. And, unlike the bridge-jumper, they have to live with it.
Wake up, buckaroos. This is 2010. You EXPECT a camera behind every dorm room mirror. Your sexting photo today is gonna be on Facebook tomorrow. In England, 20% of all divorce cases involve Facebook. What were they thinking? Mark Zuckerberg says, “I don't believe in privacy,” then goes on to prove it.
Your morning wood, my jock itch, her foaming yeast infection, they're all out there. Videoed, tallied, reported. There are no secrets. That tube of KY you bought at CVS has been recorded and broadcast to every CVS in America. Check out the coupons at the end of your receipt. THIS WEEK 20% OFF ON KY JELLY. Hey, isn't that private?
The problem is not invasion of privacy. It's what needs to be private. What people are afraid others will see. That too is part of the crime. That kid who jumped from the bridge because he was videoed sucking cock. That he felt he had to jump is a crime, and America is the perpetrator.
[Aside: a former governor of New Jersey was caught in a similar video. He resigned, but has since become active in homo rights groups. See? You don't HAVE to kill yourself. There, Tony's right.]
Ah, what's the use? Americans are vengeful people. If somebody dies, somebody's got to pay. The victim and the society can't pay, so we'll find someone else. Hate is bad, so we'll put it in jail. That poor Indian guy is gonna go get raped by a bunch of thugs in a little cell somewhere. That'll teach him to love homos. Right? No more hate coming from him, right? It's sick.
I'm finished now, I think I'll go back to spycam.com. Maybe the next orgasm will be better than the last.
ENDNOTES: [email subscribers (god@mykelboard.com) or website viewers (www.mykelboard.com) will get live links and a chance to email comment on the column]
-->Speaking of unequal dept: Chuck Shepherd reports that until August, 2010, Nettleton Middle School in Mississippi had a strict policy for election of class officers for 6th, 7th and 8th graders: Only white students could be president. Only black students could be vice president.
Officials explained that it was the only way to insure black representation. Three-fourths of the students are white. A school memo was leaked to The Smoking Gun website in August. A day later, the school district rescinded the policy.
-->And on the bullying front: The Smoking Gun also reports that: With school bullying and harassment now the subject of a growing national controversy, the rapper Eminem has his own bully story.
As an elementary school student in Detroit, young Marshall Mathers was the target of bullying so severe that his mother sued the local school board for failing to protect her child.
In her 1982 Circuit Court complaint, Deborah Mathers alleged that her nine-year-old child endured repeated assaults while enrolled at Dort Elementary School. Her son, she reported, was beaten so severely that he suffered a cerebral concussion, post-traumatic headaches, intermittent loss of vision and hearing, and other injuries to his head, face, back, and neck.
The lawsuit, which asked for more than $10,000 in damages, was eventually dismissed on the grounds of governmental immunity.
-->And what's replaced it? dept: In an interview with a British newspaper, the singer Prince says that the Internet is completely over.
I donno. I must be jerking off to all those sites on the medium formerly known as the Internet.
–->International conspiracy dept: Ever wonder how China and Syria get the technology to censor all those pro-Democratic Internet sites? They buy it from the U.S.
Two particularly noxious programs: SmartFilter and Websense are marketed to parents in the U.S. They're supposed to keep junior from learning there's more he can do with his floppy than piss out of it. But as bad as that it, those programs do worse.
Governments even more repressive than our own use these programs to block access to unapproved pro-Democracy sites. Check out opennet.net for the scary details.
-->On the other side dept: Walid Al-Saqaf, former editor of the Yemen Times has developed Alkasir (alkasir.com). This program resides on a USB flash drive and lets a browser circumvent the censorware. Download it and give it to your friends in China... or to the kids at the elementary school down the block.
-->My kind of politician dept: Florida Congressman, Alan Grayson has complained that “next year's budget allocates $159,000,000,000 to perpetuate the occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq. That's enough to eliminate federal income taxes for the first $35,000 of every American's income.” He's introduced a bill to stop those wars and cut those taxes. You can join him at: TheWarIsMakingYouPoor.com
-->I'm writing this just before my Mexican trip. No right-as-it -happens blog on that one. No computer. If I die in Tijuana, you'll probably read about it here. I donno, I've always admired Ted Rall for his war reporting. I guess I'll be doing the same thing. (Or maybe the danger is just the press exaggerations. Maybe I'll even get laid.)
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