Megan asks us what we thought about the New Times article and the whole controversy in general, and I for one (especially having some time to reflect on the full thing) am ready to take up the call, especially if the extra blogging means extra credit for me.

My first question is... to what degree is this actually an issue of Free Speech-- by which I mean, "free speech"/"freedom of the press" as defined by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution? I'm hardly a constitutional scholar, but I think that that means the government has no right to curtail "speech" in this country (but it can regulate/censor material that does not, according to the Supreme Court, actually count as "speech", but rather as "obscenity", "fighting words", "hate speech", etc). The rules for a student newspaper at a campus university, however, could be quite different. Although, we are a *public* university, so maybe not....

That being said, though... either The State Press is considered an "independent daily", or it's not. Either Michael Crow has editorial oversight and executive privilege over student media, or he doesn't. If the SP were from the beginning billed as a news organ that is here at the pleasure of ASU's administration, said administration would be fully within its legal (morality is a separate issue) rights to fire any staffer or indeed pull the plug on the entire enterprise, if they were so dissatisfied.

It's the same principle by which my columns appear in the Press: at the pleasure of my editor, the editor-in-chief, etc. I submit my finished columns to my superiors, and the published product is quite frequently at least a little different from the copy that resides on my hard drive. It gets edited for content, clarity, brevity, etc., and though I am generally not happy with these changes, there is an understanding that the paper I write for is called "The State Press", and not "Eric Spratling's Unedited Opinionating", and that no one is forcing me to write for SP so if I am too unhappy with the arrangement I am more than allowed to find or start my own forum to air my ramblings (which I have been known to do on an occassion or two or three).

For example, earlier this semester I dropped the "f-bomb" a couple of times on an entry in my Web Devil blog (linked above), and soon enough got an email from Kristin Gilger, who politely informed me that the same rules apply to the Web Devil as to the State Press, so the f-word is not acceptable. Did I talk about the constitution and how my work is being censored? No, I simply went back and edited the post to more PG-13 levels (and sorry, but "freaking" just isn't as funny as, er, the other way).

But that's a side rant on knowing who the boss is. If my understanding of the Press' situation is correct, Crow isn't our boss, he's not in charge of us. He is in fact not someone I'd even trust to be in charge of a check-cashing business, but that's neither here nor there. I understand fully that donors are important for business and we should try to accomodate them if we can, but what it boils down to is that Crow simply had no right to try to throw his weight around like he did.

And honestly, I don't think that he's so stupid that he would have actually tried to shut down the "official" campus newspaper, as the fallout from that having actually happened would have ultimately been far more costly to ASU than losing Ira Fulton. Having his flunkies march down to the newsroom to talk about kicking us off campus was nothing more than the act of a self-important blowhard making empty threats, trying to scare our journalists into compliance via excessive bluffing. Fortunately our badass editors and our J-school professors (who quite frequently piss me off to no end, but right now I've never been prouder of) looked the villains in the eye and called their bullshit.

But one last little thing, and it's something everyone forgets: "censorship" is a word too commonly bandied about these days, a piece of careless rhetoric sometimes used by people who won't stomach any criticism of their whathaveyou ("Don't think my statue of a naked Jesus making out with a transvestite Pope, all covered in goat urine and made entirely out of used condoms is good, huh? CENSORSHIP! FASCIST!"). We've forgotten that censorship can be a very very good thing, and is something we all in fact all exercise.

For instance, if I creep into my roommate's bedroom while he's in the kitchen or something, then steal his credit card and give away all the information from it on the Internet, that's a crime (at least I think/hope so). If and when he called the cops on me for doing that and I cried "I'm being censored!", then frankly folks, that wouldn't stop them. In this case my roommate would have a very good reason to "censor" me.

Or, for a more realistic example: Megan, when we were discussing possibilities for this year's Stale Mess (the State Press' last-day-of-school, junior-Onion parody paper for those of you not in the know), I mentioned the possibility of me calling my fellow columnists "a bunch of liberal fags" (obviously this would be for the joke paper, because I'd never use such language in real life), and you said we couldn't do that, because you didn't want to use the word "fag", even in a joking context.

Well, see, there... you censored me. I didn't complain, because a) you're the boss, and b) I'd be a real fa-, uh, sissy boy if I complained about something so minor that I could work around anyway. You have moral objections to using the word "fag", (presumably) because it's a derogatory and offensive term for homosexuals; similarly, Ira Fulton was offended by the appearance of naked breast on the cover of SPM because he, as an article of his religious faith, believes that human sexuality and nudity are very private and personal matters... not to mention how offended he might be that the institution he donated tens of millions of his hard-earned money to has a paper promulgating what he views as immoral images.

Of course, the situations are not the same in every respect: Megan is in charge of what goes into the Stale Mess and thus has editorial veto power (not to mention that she's earned the right to ask me, as a friend, to not use terms that personally offend her) over its contents; Ira Fulton has no such position with student media and thus no such right to dictate our output. My point with this stuff is that let's not all charge off and laugh at the Prissy Mormon Stereotype just because he got offended, when in fact very few of us are immune to being offended. Except for me of course, because I don't care if I piss off homosexuals, and I loves me some boobies.

Bottom line: this is a college, we're all alleged grown-ups here. It's not some rinky-dink, high school, Mickey Mouse operation where the principal can scold us out for talking "dirty", and frankly very few people, if any, who saw that cover saw something they hadn't already seen. President Crow needs to chill and make an apology to the State Press and the university as a whole, which would be easier if he weren't such a glory-seeking turdweasel.