Most of us have seen or heard of the new warning labels to be placed on cigarette packets rightly warning people, in particular our young ones, of the dangers of cigarette smoking.
Some of them are sufficiently gruesome to give people nightmares.
Well, last night I had a dream—to some of us who like to express our opinions in writing it could qualify as a nightmare—about another kind of warning label. The dream, or nightmare, was sufficiently impressionable that this morning I was having second thoughts about writing an article with some criticism, some satire, about George W. Bush’s superb memoir, “Decision Points.”
You see, a recent post critical of our next Speaker of the House, Mr. Boehner—a post where I had the audacity of expressing my dislike for the man—earned me one of those accusatory “petition for more Moderate threads here” labels that are being distributed at The Moderate Voice.
So here I am today, wanting to write a post, but suddenly the thought strikes me that my post or my comments might earn the seal of disapproval, that tell-all sticker that can be placed “on appropriate threads to help prevent the spread of contagion” and which would doom my words to the scorn in the eyes of the followers of this new “judge, evaluate and brand accordingly the ‘moderateness’ of posts and comments” movement—a movement that obviously feels that the Moderators here at TMV are doing a lousy job of thought policing.
A movement that obviously feels that it is solely capable of and entitled to judging what is and what isn’t “moderate” and that feels that its judgment as to what is politically, morally and ethically acceptable is final and should be adhered to at The Moderate Voice.
So here I sit today facing a quandary.
Should I continue to post here at the Moderate Voice and either comply with the movement’s definition of “moderate,’ and thereby gain its seal of approval, or continue to express my honest opinions and become the subject of the movement’s wrath, disapproval and warning labels?
There is a second choice. The choice of continuing to express my opinions freely, but elsewhere.
And there is yet another choice: to continue to express my opinions at the great Moderate Voice (emphasis mine) and say the hell with you, thought police—you go somewhere else and apply your definition of “moderate” there, you go somewhere else and apply your stickers “on appropriate threads to help prevent the spread of contagion” there, because—guess what—I am here to stay (If, after this, the TMV editors don’t kick me out) and to continue to incur your wrath and to ignore it.
Yes, warning labels can be very powerful—when applied wisely.
Coda:
By the way, kudos to Nick Rivera for his truly moderate words on this subject.
