Lenny Bruce Pardoned

[MoeFaux]

http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=427979&section=news

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/nyregion/23CND-BRUC.html?ex=1072846800&en=d518198e3eb267b0&ei=506 2&partner=GOOGLE

(2nd link requires registration)


I've never been so happy to take a button off of my leather jacket. "Pardon Lenny Bruce" - it finally happened.

[no one in particular]

I do not know much about him, though, I hear he is not afraid.

[hgc]

My Lenny Bruce thread (http://www.randi.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=32857) has pictures!

[Boo]

Favorite Lenny Bruce quote: "Take away the right to say f@#k and you take away the right to say f%#k the government"


About time.


Boo

[Brown]

I was no fan of Lenny Bruce, but I felt that his prosecution for obscenity was an utter disgrace. It would have been preferable to make things right within his lifetime, but since that is no longer possible, the pardon is the next best thing.

[Brown]

My favorite Lenny Bruce quote: "People are leaving the churches... and are going back to God." (For some reason, this sentiment made a lot of people mad.)

[jimmygun]

I used to wear a button that said "Pardon Me!" but it just made everybody repeat themselves.:D

[LFTKBS]

"His performances included graphic language to describe oral sex, and bits including the story of a man with a bad leg who tries to avoid a trip down the hall to a bathroom by urinating in a sink. His roommate catches him, and suggests he go out onto the balcony instead.

He does so, and draws a crowd of firefighters and other onlookers convinced he is going to commit suicide by jumping."

Nice job making Bruce's act both incomprehensible and not-funny, Reuters.

[shanek]

Originally posted by MoeFaux
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=entertainmentNews&storyID=427979&section=news

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/23/nyregion/23CND-BRUC.html?ex=1072846800&en=d518198e3eb267b0&ei=506 2&partner=GOOGLE

(2nd link requires registration)

Hrmph...So they pardon him 37 years after their intense oppression drives him to his own death, after closing off every avenue of appeal he was entitled to. And we're supposed to feel good because they dug up his corpse and said, "Sorry"? Especially since many if not most of those rules against "obscene" language are still in effect today?

You'll pardon me if I fail to find this the cause for celebration you do, my friend.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Boo
Favorite Lenny Bruce quote: "Take away the right to say f@#k and you take away the right to say f%#k the government"

But the fact remains, that you still, in many venues, run into government regulations preventing you from saying f%<k.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Brown
I was no fan of Lenny Bruce, but I felt that his prosecution for obscenity was an utter disgrace. It would have been preferable to make things right within his lifetime, but since that is no longer possible, the pardon is the next best thing.

Other than, of course, making it so that people actually have the right to say whatever they want the way our founders intended.

[Dorian Gray]

You can still say f**k in public buildings! (unlike smoking, heh heh)

[peptoabysmal]

The liberals can understand everything but people who dont understand them.


My Favorite Lenny Bruce quote :D

[MoeFaux]

Originally posted by shanek


Hrmph...So they pardon him 37 years after their intense oppression drives him to his own death, after closing off every avenue of appeal he was entitled to. And we're supposed to feel good because they dug up his corpse and said, "Sorry"? Especially since many if not most of those rules against "obscene" language are still in effect today?

You'll pardon me if I fail to find this the cause for celebration you do, my friend.

Well, my friends had a big part in this, one of the lawyers and several of the comedians. I wore my, "pardon Lenny Bruce" button. The case killed him; it ruined his life. The least they could do was pardon him. Sure, it was awful what happened to him, but there's joy in this. I'm surprised at you, Shane.

[shuize]

Hey, that's f*cking great.

edited to add: Oh, so he can say it, but I can't?

[shanek]

Originally posted by MoeFaux
Well, my friends had a big part in this, one of the lawyers and several of the comedians.

Then I can understand your celebration. Your friends did a good thing; they fought the good fight, and they won. They've done a lot to be proud of, and you're very right to be proud of them.

But the fact of the matter remains, we still don't have the right to get onto OUR airwaves and say whatever the f**k we want. I won't even be allowed to get onto OUR airwaves within 30 days of the next election and make my case against the incumbent politicians who are enjoying free airtime at the taxpayers' expense. While your friends were fighting the good fight and winning, my friends were fighting the good fight only to be told by the Supreme Court that we don't have the same rights to free speech as incumbent politicians and the same rights to free press as the big media corporations.

So, again, you'll forgive me if I'm not in much of a mood to celebrate freedom of speech right now.

The case killed him; it ruined his life. The least they could do was pardon him.

No, the least they could do is fix things so that the rights we're supposed to have as human beings are restored. What would be the point of, say, pardoning Peter McWilliams and saying, "Sorry we killed you and all, by not letting you have the medicine your doctors said you needed to save your life" if hundreds if not thousands of sufferers still cannot get medical marijuana?

I'm sorry, but I just can't see this as anything other than an empty gesture on the part of the government.

[Nyarlathotep]

Originally posted by shanek


Hrmph...So they pardon him 37 years after their intense oppression drives him to his own death, after closing off every avenue of appeal he was entitled to. And we're supposed to feel good because they dug up his corpse and said, "Sorry"? Especially since many if not most of those rules against "obscene" language are still in effect today?

You'll pardon me if I fail to find this the cause for celebration you do, my friend.

My thoughts exactly Shanek.

It seems a pretty empty and meaningless gesture to me. If they had pardoned him when he was alive it may have meant something but now, it means precisely jack.

[subgenius]

"I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce....."--Paul Simon

Thank you masked man.

[NightG1]

Originally posted by shanek


But the fact remains, that you still, in many venues, run into government regulations preventing you from saying f%<k.
Examples? Can you site a recent case where someone was arrested for using the "f" word?

[Ed]

Originally posted by MoeFaux


Well, my friends had a big part in this, one of the lawyers and several of the comedians. I wore my, "pardon Lenny Bruce" button. The case killed him; it ruined his life. The least they could do was pardon him. Sure, it was awful what happened to him, but there's joy in this. I'm surprised at you, Shane.

Might one suggest that it is rather typically elitist for people in the public eye to spend their time getting a pardon for a dead guy and then pat themselves on the back for it?

[shanek]

Originally posted by NightG1

Examples? Can you site a recent case where someone was arrested for using the "f" word?

Just because people have been frightened into compliance doesn't mean the oppression no longer exists. The FCC has a 28-page report on what is considered "indecent" and impermissible.

[Ed]

Originally posted by shanek


Just because people have been frightened into compliance doesn't mean the oppression no longer exists. The FCC has a 28-page report on what is considered "indecent" and impermissible.

I don't have a problem with that.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Ed
I don't have a problem with that.

You don't have a problem with the government oppressing free speech and free press?

[Ed]

Originally posted by shanek


You don't have a problem with the government oppressing free speech and free press?

I don't have a problem with standards with public channels. no. I don't feel particularly oppressed, do you? I am not sure that hearing Dan Rather say "f*cking Bush" adds much at all, do you? I would also not wish to have to screen all tv and radio 24/7 for the kids.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Ed
I don't have a problem with standards with public channels. no.

Then just admit it: They aren't public channels, they're government channels that they condescend to let us use.

I don't feel particularly oppressed, do you?

No, just defrauded, after being told that these frequencies belong to "all of us," when really the government just siezed them with eminent domain.

[Ed]

Originally posted by shanek


Then just admit it: They aren't public channels, they're government channels that they condescend to let us use.



No, just defrauded, after being told that these frequencies belong to "all of us," when really the government just siezed them with eminent domain.

OK,I admit all. I am not sure that broadcast standards are a bad thing, realizing that this extends to areas of interference quality and so on. The private sector would have just mucked it up, I suspect.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Ed
OK,I admit all. I am not sure that broadcast standards are a bad thing, realizing that this extends to areas of interference quality and so on. The private sector would have just mucked it up, I suspect.

As long as you're honest about it. Personally, I don't see why property rights couldn't have been applied to this. You "own" Channel 3 in a certain area, meaning you have the right to broadcast Channel 3 in that area, no one else can, and you are not allowed to have any signals above a certain strength "leak" outside of that area. Or you own fequencies at a certain orbital slot. This would easily have allowed, for example, Dish Network and DirecTV to merge together and take us into the next generation of digital television broadcast, whereas the FCC just ended up being a pawn of Rupert Murdoch and blocked some competition he wasn't ready to deal with.

[subgenius]

A great read: "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People (The Autobiography of Lenny Bruce)"
This link has a short bio and his FBI file:
http://www.fadetoblack.com/foi/lennybruce/

[TillEulenspiegel]

Well folks in case you don't remember this was the same time in the country that protesters organizing "get out the vote" campaigns were attacked by police and police dogs and young black and Jewish kids were being murdered in the south.

I was accosted by the police once (late 70's ) for my T-shirt that said fuc* communism, they were wanting to arrest me but I ( being provocative, young and stupid ) carried around a card with the relevent findings of the courts and the constitutional background. I think the only reason I wasn't beatin half to death was because a detective pulled up in mid lecture. America! Fookin A' bubba

[Ed]

Originally posted by shanek


As long as you're honest about it. Personally, I don't see why property rights couldn't have been applied to this. You "own" Channel 3 in a certain area, meaning you have the right to broadcast Channel 3 in that area, no one else can, and you are not allowed to have any signals above a certain strength "leak" outside of that area. Or you own fequencies at a certain orbital slot. This would easily have allowed, for example, Dish Network and DirecTV to merge together and take us into the next generation of digital television broadcast, whereas the FCC just ended up being a pawn of Rupert Murdoch and blocked some competition he wasn't ready to deal with.

I guess that there is some stuff that I'd just as soon have the Feds deal with. If you think about it, it is not just interference, it is also quality of signal, encoding and other stuff. That and international issues like the border areas. I sort of think of the early days of the expansion of railroads. I recall reading something like it would have taken 18 train changes between NY and Chi because of the different rail gauges (don't hold me to that number(:D). And who was it that unified the rail system? Some robber baron. Like Murdoch, I guess.

All that stuff and technology standards, too.

I think that the FCC has done a bit more than act as a pawn for Murdoch recently. Then again, isn't Murdoch doing what you would expect in an environment without government regulation? Using the tools at his disposal (the FCC in this case) he is gaining power and control.

[shanek]

Originally posted by Ed
All that stuff and technology standards, too.

Dude, you're using a technology standard developed entirely by the private sector right now. It can happen, it does work.

I think that the FCC has done a bit more than act as a pawn for Murdoch recently. Then again, isn't Murdoch doing what you would expect in an environment without government regulation? Using the tools at his disposal (the FCC in this case) he is gaining power and control.

But without government regulation, the tool wouldn't even be there in the first place!

[subgenius]

Lenny Lives!
(Shameful attempt to get back on tiopic)

[c0rbin]

One can communicate an idea with using the word "f*ck." Unless of course one is talking about the word "f*ck." In which case, in instances where the word "f*ck" is not appreciated, alternatives like "the F-Bomb" may be used as an understood alternative to "f*ck."

My persuit of life, liberty and happiness is not impinged by curtailing the F-Bomb while I am at work or talking to my three-year old son.

[shanek]

Originally posted by c0rbin
My persuit of life, liberty and happiness is not impinged by curtailing the F-Bomb while I am at work or talking to my three-year old son.

That's fine, as those are voluntary arrangements you imposed on yourself. Not so when the government stifles free speech.