[PEN-L:6831] censorship and pen-l

[JDevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

since Paul Zarembka invoked my name in the current discussion of
kicking Shawgi Tell off of pen-l, I guess I have to weigh in &
say something (though the penultimate verb suggests that I have
to cut back on doughnuts).

Since pen-l is Michael Perelman's salon, kicking people off of
pen-l is in no way a violation of the first amendment to the US
constitution. That amendment only limits the US government's
ability to restrict speech (and the limits are probably too
weak): private corporations violate their employees' free speech
rights all the time and it doesn't violate the US constitution.

Since pen-l is Michael's salon, he has the right to kick people
off, just as I have the right to tell an unwelcome houseguest to
leave my wife's and my house.

However, I think free speech is really important to pen-l and to
the Left in general. I objected when the conservative (whose name
I forget) was kicked off. I think the best policy is for people
to simply ignore & not reply to Mr. or Ms. Tell's missives.
Usually people who are shunned in this way simply stop posting,
though I admit that Tell is unlikely to pursue that very rational
path.

So maybe we can bring in Herb Gintis to tell us how to program
our e-mail programs to automatically erase incoming messages from
Tell? It's easy in cc:Mail: I can create a rule that runs every
time I start cc:Mail that purges messages from folks I'm bored
with. I don't do that, though. I don't get pen-l directly,
instead reading pen-l via the csf.colorado.edu archive. That
makes it easy to skip Tell's stuff. It never crowds my mailbox.

I would like to know: is Tell male or female? what happened to
the discussion of gas? Seriously, we should simply move on to
serious discussion, like of NZ living standards or what the
triumphant Nader machine will do when it conquers Washington DC
in less than a month... ;-)

in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine   jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
<74267,2057@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Econ. Dept., Loyola Marymount Univ.
7900 Loyola Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90045-8410 USA
310/338-2948 (daytime, during workweek); FAX: 310/338-1950
"It takes a busload of faith to get by." -- Lou Reed.