Redstate

This post makes no sense whatsoever, Erick. Calling Lessig a communist displays a breathtaking ignorance regarding both Lessig and the nature of communism itself. It's an insult to Lessig, our intelligence, and the brave men and women who stood up to and died as a result of real communists.

And the post goes downhill from there.

I don't know that I agree with Lessig's views on net neutrality. I don't know if I agree with TimeWarner's views. I do know, however, that Lessig* knows a heckuva lot about copyright law. He deserves to be heard and considered, not slandered.

von

*Lessig's a former Scalia clerk -- natch, since Scalia's a total commie too.

For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.

The fact that Erick, you, and I all consider "communist" a killing insult doesn't mean that the same is true for academics - and the one that wrote the LA article was not trying to be insulting by calling the whole thing "Marxist-Lessigism."

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You should have read the Legal Affairs article, von

I did read it Moe. The article notes that Lessig has been called various names -- including "communist" -- by a columnist in Forbes and, in 1998, by the Ayn Rand Institute. The article goes on to explain how the charge is without merit.

By the way, it is false, as in untrue, as in not-even-a-little-bit-correct, as in not-even-fair-as-a-rhetorical-device, to say that "Lessig believes there should be no such thing as intellectual property rights -- patents and copyrights should be tossed." That is not Lessig's belief, it's not even close to his belief, and it really has nothing whatsoever to do with Lessig's argument.

Again, to the extent that this post attacks Lessig, it's an insult to our intelligence and an embarrassment. You don't have to agree with Lessig's ideas; indeed, I'm not sure that I agree with Lessig's ideas. But this is nothing more than an extended -- and false -- ad hominem.

For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.

ON THE OTHER HAND, WHILE LESSIG'S PROPOSED I.P. REFORM stops well short of the destruction of private property, it stirs a Marxian debate in a much more interesting and crucial sense. For starters, it is clear that I.P. reform is a conflict involving a significant class struggle. There are I.P. haves and I.P. have-nots. And in a world where the means of production are increasingly controlled by intellectual property, the dynamics exist for significant conflict. But the majority of the I.P. have-nots are in the developing world, which is why the globalization debate often involves intellectual property. Any Marxist-Lessigist revolution therefore is likely to be mediated through the cordon sanitaire of international trade, and through the World Trade Organization. The prospect of I.P.-induced violence, at least in the United States, is unlikely.

But more than this, I.P. reform arises out of a genuine Marxism, that of the open source movement. Open source, or "copyleft," as the movement is often called, involves the transfer of the means of cultural and creative production from capital to the worker. It is usually thought to be limited to computer software. The Linux operating system was created by thousands of programmers and has been freely distributed on the understanding that others might amend, fix, improve, and extend it. But while software might be the paradigmatic example of open source, the revolution it promises reaches much further. The widest-read and most influential newspaper in South Korea is Ohmynews, whose motto is "Every Citizen is a Reporter." Ohmynews hires no reporters, and relies wholly on individual contributions of news stories by its readers. Another example is the Wikipedia, an open source, online encyclopedia that is entirely written, edited, and rewritten by anyone who cares to contribute to it. Even though there is no control structure—there are no editors, nor is there a publisher—it rivals commercial encyclopedias in scope and quality of coverage. Or consider the Distributed Proofreader's Project, a group of people who volunteer to proofread and edit vast reams of scanned documents for inclusion in Project Gutenberg, another open source initiative that puts out-of-copyright books online.

Well, I'm sure that he'll take your nomenclature issues under advisement. Then again, perhaps not: this kind of theological debate is best left to people who actually believe in the core principles, which includes neither you, me, nor Erick.

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Erick shouldn't have made a blatantly false characterization of Lessig's positions on copyright and intellectual property. It's as simple as that.

He could have avoided doing so through some basic fact checking. Such fact checking might have included direct quotes from Lessig rather than citing (or copy-pasting) second hand accounts.

This is what Erick wrote: "Lessig believes there should be no such thing as intellectual property rights -- patents and copyrights should be tossed"

This is some of what Lessig actually says:

[Questioner] "Do you not agree that an artist's ability to copyright his work, if he chooses to, creates incentives for that artist to innovate and create?"
[Lessig] OF COURSE I do! Absolutely it does. And most of my work these days is devoted to making it easier for ARTISTS to choose how best to deploy the rights the law gives them.
[...]
I believe that copyrights, properly defined and reasonably balanced, ought to be defended by copyright owners, and organizations (whether the RIAA or others) devoted to defending such rights. I'm sure everyone at the EFF believes the same. But just as a lawyer who defends someone charged with auto theft does not therefore support auto theft, so too with the EFF: They are, rightly, defending the rights of individuals that they believe, rightly, should not be prosecuted in this way under this law. [cite]

But hey, it's a strange world we live in.

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin, with the legal backing of digital civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), has contested an attempt by major label Universal Music Group to have her podcast criticizing one of its artists removed from YouTube under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

Malkin recently called Universal hip-hop artist Akon a "misogynist," and his act "vulgar and degrading" in a podcast posted on YouTube, using video footage from an Akon show to back up her points.

Universal then submitted a takedown notice, claiming the podcast violated its copyrights; Malkin responded with a counter-notice, arguing she made "fair use" of the video for the purposes of criticism and commentary. [cite]

I suppose this makes Michelle Malkin a "Marxist-Lessigist" sympathizer!

This is a different conversation: i.e., why Erick called it "digital communism" in the first place. If you want to argue that he shouldn't have, then go after the LA article that he used.

Sheesh.

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What side of copyright and IP law would the LA Times take, pray tell? I don't think it'd be for any sort of reform.

Also, I would point out that Lessig started off as a Republican, then turned into a left-libertarian. On most issues, we're probably more in agreement with Lessig than Obama, actually. Does he have his faults? Of course; for one, he's advising Obama. That being said, I'd have more to worry about from Google than from Lessig.

"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

It does a heck of a job explaining the motivations of a paper who is trying to paint an advocate of shorter copyrights with the Communist brush.

"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk

Link?

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

That might explain some things.

Note to self... no more drinking and blogging :)

"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk

It happens. :)

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

The article got the key point right (emphasis mine):

LIKE MANY OTHER I.P. REFORMERS, Lessig is routinely denounced as a communist. [...] The Marxist slur is a simple rhetorical device that paints I.P. reformers as both dangerous and willfully ignorant. [...] Yet this use of the "Marxist" tag is shallow and empty.

When people such as Manes or those at the Ayn Rand Institute charge Lessig with Marxism, they refer to two features of Marxist-Leninism: the rejection of private property, and the civil uprising that Mikhail Bakunin and V.I. Lenin said was necessary to move from capitalism to communism. The kind of social reform of intellectual property proposed by Lessig doesn't involve either of these elements.

I'm hard pressed to find anything in the article that Erick could lean on to excuse his blatant mischaracterization of Lessig's position or the mis-labeling of Lessig as either communist or Marxist. If Erick would like to explain himself, I'm all ears. The closest it comes, from my perspective, is to try and draw similar characteristics around the concept of transferring "the means of cultural and creative production from capital to the worker".

If that kind of parallel is enough to get one labeled a communist then I imagine bloggers ought not get so carried away as they happily point out how their grass roots "revolution" has shifted the power of the pen away from Big Media to the little guy.

...of an article which explicitly attempts to define Lessig's arguments in Marxist terms, and show that they are compatible with a Marxist worldview.

If you have a problem with that, then take it up with Dan Hunter.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

an article which explicitly attempts to define Lessig's arguments in Marxist terms, and show that they are compatible with a Marxist worldview

From the article, again:

... this use of the "Marxist" tag is shallow and empty.
[...]
... they refer to two features of Marxist-Leninism: the rejection of private property, and the civil uprising ... necessary to move from capitalism to communism. The kind of social reform of intellectual property proposed by Lessig doesn't involve either of these elements.

So, no, the article doesn't come anywhere close to showing that Lessig's position on copyright is compatible with a Marxist worldview. It directly refutes that on two of the critical tenets of Marxist theory, and instead discusses a minor parallel regarding a transfer of the means of production. And when you actually read what Lessig says about property and copyright, you discover that, if anything, his position is completely incompatible with a theory that requires an abolition of all property ownership.

What's goofy about your defense is that the article also lumps together "citizen-journalists" with "open source programmers" - noting that both groups are part of the same kind of revolution (taking hold of "the means of production" in their respective fields). So I guess I could have written a post calling Erick a "journalism communist", cited the LA article that notes the activity of bloggers happens to look kinda like the proletariat if you look from a certain angle and ignore the lack of violence, and you would be on my side, of course, since after all, I did cite that pesky article that defined blogging in Marxist terms.

If you have a problem with that, then take it up with Dan Hunter.

Well, no. Only Erick can explain how the heck he came up with this factually incorrect characterization of Lessig's position. Trying to blame the article for that really isn't advancing your position, or his:

Lessig believes there should be no such thing as intellectual property rights -- patents and copyrights should be tossed. Lessig's anti-property theories ...

ON THE OTHER HAND, WHILE LESSIG'S PROPOSED I.P. REFORM stops well short of the destruction of private property, it stirs a Marxian debate in a much more interesting and crucial sense. For starters, it is clear that I.P. reform is a conflict involving a significant class struggle. There are I.P. haves and I.P. have-nots. And in a world where the means of production are increasingly controlled by intellectual property, the dynamics exist for significant conflict. But the majority of the I.P. have-nots are in the developing world, which is why the globalization debate often involves intellectual property. Any Marxist-Lessigist revolution therefore is likely to be mediated through the cordon sanitaire of international trade, and through the World Trade Organization. The prospect of I.P.-induced violence, at least in the United States, is unlikely.

But more than this, I.P. reform arises out of a genuine Marxism, that of the open source movement. Open source, or "copyleft," as the movement is often called, involves the transfer of the means of cultural and creative production from capital to the worker. It is usually thought to be limited to computer software. The Linux operating system was created by thousands of programmers and has been freely distributed on the understanding that others might amend, fix, improve, and extend it. But while software might be the paradigmatic example of open source, the revolution it promises reaches much further. The widest-read and most influential newspaper in South Korea is Ohmynews, whose motto is "Every Citizen is a Reporter." Ohmynews hires no reporters, and relies wholly on individual contributions of news stories by its readers. Another example is the Wikipedia, an open source, online encyclopedia that is entirely written, edited, and rewritten by anyone who cares to contribute to it. Even though there is no control structure—there are no editors, nor is there a publisher—it rivals commercial encyclopedias in scope and quality of coverage. Or consider the Distributed Proofreader's Project, a group of people who volunteer to proofread and edit vast reams of scanned documents for inclusion in Project Gutenberg, another open source initiative that puts out-of-copyright books online.

Are these two paragraphs not in the article that you read? - Because they are in the one that I did.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

...over to the create content section, hit new blog entry, and write for us a critique of the Hunter article? Much less aggro all round.

This is only a suggestion, by the way.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Well, it is tempting to tackle the article's rather absurd take that the open source movement is Marxist simply because, like blogging, it's an example of people exerting effort to produce and distribute some tangible good - ostensibly, for free - that was formerly only possible through a commercial, corporate structure. In fact I think I've addressed that mischaracterization of open source before, but I'll pass for now, because I suspect that, as someone personally invested in a website that uses open source software, you would already reject such a mischaracterization, given what it would imply about a relationship between RedState and Marxism...

But other than that, I don't find the article to be off base at all, particularly in the way it calls out for derision other entities who, like Erick, falsely smear Lessig as a communist. As the article says, it's a shallow and empty device.

Are these two paragraphs not in the article that you read?

I'll tell you what - when you continue ignore the plain text of what I've quoted from the article, which clearly and succinctly defends Lessig from accusations of promoting Marxism or being a communist, and try to use passages that at best assert that Lessig's position "stirs a Marxian debate" and at worst make a faulty association between open source, citizen journalism, and Marxism, then I'm quite comfortable standing pat on what I've presented thus far.

I would still like to hear from Erick himself, in regards to what the basis was for his statement, and whether he thought it was too much work to dig deeper and fact check himself:

Lessig believes there should be no such thing as intellectual property rights -- patents and copyrights should be tossed. Lessig's anti-property theories ...

Of course, if you'd like to point out for me which specific paragraphs from the article he got that from, I'm all ears.

No aggro intended - thank you for engaging!

...arguments in Marxist terms. See, I can keep repeating myself, too.

For the last time - which is to say, I'm not going to bother burning any more photons on this - if you have a problem with the designation, take it up with Hunter.

Moe

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Only Erick is responsible for what Erick wrote.

We'll have to agree to disagree on the matter of excusing Erick's gross mischaracterization because he misread an article that states that the "use of the "Marxist" tag is shallow and empty".

Moe Lane, I'm at a loss: how can you possibly think that this passage supports Erick's statement?

Have we completely lost our faculties due to the election?

For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

it certainly makes a good stab at it.

"A man does what he can and endures what he must."

You may feel it does but the religious freedoms this country was founded on include protecting speech like this video. You may this video offensive but that doesn't mean it should be censored.

I find the fact that Redstate seems to be coming out against network neutrality because of some perceived benefit in beating Obama up over this advisor a very sad and short sighted position. Lessig didn't make the video in question. He simply played it as an example of the read-write culture he was speaking about.

But, Redstate has decided to cut this tiny piece out and promote it like it was something Lessig created it.

On top of that ironically Redstate is essentially advocating censoring that video, which simply reinforces one of the points Lessigs discussion at the time was trying to make.

The practice of free culture is what Wikipedia is all about. This would have been impossible to do in a 20th century mindset. There are lessons that we should learn about how this is all made possible. If you look over the last 50 years, there's a repeated pattern. Look at interoperability - a proprietary instinct is natural, but freedom is a more important value. Consumers reject the idea of control. It's much better for society and innovation that there's interoperability and free standards encouraging the widest range of competition and the widest number of participants. That's the lesson of the last generation.

But we also need to enable a platform of free culture. We have to make it possible for this infrastructure to grow, and there's a threat to this freedom, a clear and present danger. Jack Valenti calls it a terrorist war - except the terrorists are kids remixing media. When they build the locks to protect the read-only internet, that will lock out the potential of the read-write internet. So we need to join Free Software Foundation to fight DRM, support free culture and free software, because they enable each other. There as important steps that all of us should take to facilitate free culture.

We need to enable a legal platform that protects free culture. We came up with the Creative Commons movement, stealing the ideas of Richard Stallman to use copyright law to carve out a space for freedom. Shift the default from all rights reserved to some rights reserved. They have a human element - a simple common deed, a legal element for lawyers, and a machine-readable element that computers can understand. Google and Yahoo use this machine-readable element to integrate CC into search engines. Now we're porting the legal layer for different jurisdictions around the world. There are now 140 million linkbacks to CC licenses as of last June. Content that explicitly says, We're free for you to use - and protects it in the legal code.

Redstate on the other hand I guess feels that scoring a few political points against Obama is worth promoting censorship of the internet.

Nice.

Link

Might be worth a listen before you get too up in arms about the Jesus video.

...will limit their opposition to phone calls and blog posts - even when their desire to object to the objectionable is cast as censorship. I wonder whether Lessig would have used this video if the Methodists reacted to that sort of thing with mail bombs?

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It's OK to protect what Lessig calls free culture but in my experience it should be completely voluntary and nobody should feel as though they're doing something wrong by opting out of his high-minded utopian fantasy.

Because in the real world, his frictionless ideas are less than satisfactory when it comes to paying the mortgage. I think he overstates the value of what he's promulgating, by a lot.

I've said this with equanimity to intellectual property law professors in fora less antagonistic than this one and they've agreed with me that nobody should be forced to use Creative Commons licenses just because Larry Lessig has written so expansively on them and added several valuable ideas to people's idea of copyright in a digital age.

I'm a strong supporter of DRM because the simple inescapable fact is that once you go one level away from Lessig's high minded ideas, you find yourself in the thicket of people who will simply steal whatever they can. He underemphasizes those people while overemphasizing the putative benefits of "free culture." More importantly, Congress should never adopt CC licenses as the "default" mode of copyright. Ever.

It has gone from 14 years to infinitely extended. As usual the only people that benefit are the lawyers. You have companies like Disney that owe their existence to the public domain but have done everything possible to prevent others from benefiting.

Net neutrality is another lovely issue. If we actually had competition it wouldn't be a problem. The sad fact though is we don't. Most people are lucky if they have broadband from one provider and very lucky if they get a choice between two. Allowing these people to filter what is advertised as unlimited and unrestricted access in effect turns your cable or phone company into your censor.

Probably Lessig's best point intellectually speaking was his criticism of the relentless extension of copyright into what is now very close to a lifespan and could become greater than a lifespan. It should be less than that. Probably it was close to correct at 14 years by default, and I have always thought that was his strongest argument, all Gay Jesuses aside.

My admittedly oversimplified view (which I nevertheless think is pretty close to correct) is that if you can't make any all the money you're going to make off of ironclad copyright enforcement in 14 years, it's time to find a different cash cow.

If through genetic engineering people can some day live to be 300 years old, I'll start seriously about extending it. But in that instance I think copyright is going to be the least of our problems: the bigger one will be the fact that you'll have people 230 years old who won't get out of the way, to quote Francis Fukuyama.

I also agree with him there -- not least because I live in an area where the primary ISP is Cox Cable, although Verizon and Hughes Satellite are now making inroads, so I now have a choice of 3 ISPs where I used to have only one -- Ray Nagin's former company.

Lessig has it backward when he says: Consumers reject the idea of control as though it is a Universal Truth that applies in all circumstances everywhere. It's one of the slick ways he gets people to nod in agreement with him, but it absoultely is not true.

Consumers reject the idea of control right up until the point that affects them personally -- when their product gets stolen, when their trademark gets misused, when their brand gets diluted, and when their intellectual property is hijacked. At precisely that instant the "consumer" that Lessig waxes so poetically about is revealed to be, in fact, the *producer* -- and don't give me any BS about how colleges don't protect their brands and their intellectual property trademarks.

I worked the Dean of a law school who spearheaded the effort to have a DePaulSucks.com cast into the pit of fire for violating DePaul's trademarks. And she was as liberal an individual as you will ever meet on this Earth -- except when it was HER ox that was being gored. And then she was a VERY strong advocate of the kind of copyright and trademark law that Lessig made his bones advocating against.

The practice of free culture is what Wikipedia is all about.

A little part of me just died. And dead academics, were they hooked up to generators, could power a large city they're spinning so in their graves.

"Any love letter is incomplete without a Ronald Reagan quote"
--my sophomore year roommate

I find this video extremely offensive and I consider it worthy of physical violence, (A punch in the nose...not terrorism), the same as Muslims view the Mohamed Cartoons and other postings pulled by Google that were offensive to Muslims.

I don't advocate banning either, (I'm sick of incidents like the Imus thing and all the other speech purges that are occurring across America) but if you are going to ban anti Muslim speech then you should have the same standard when it comes to this type of hate speech!

Technically threating to punch someone in the face in order to scare them from doing something is terrorism. Whether someone is terrorizing one person or a million, they are a terrorist.

Ben

My main point is that movies displaying my Lord and Savior being run over by a bus is equivalent to fighting words and are considered in some jurisdictions as just cause to punch someone's lights out. My overall point is that as dispicable as this is and as mad as it makes me, I would oppose the government restricting speech to prevent it. I also want to point out the double standard where Mohamed vs Jesus is concerned with the artsy fartsy crowd

I'm sick of being insulted by juveniles like this who think they're being smart. maybe if they were punched in the nose a time or two they'd grow up!

The post is a bit slap-dash.

I'd like to point out a bit of potential hypocrisy here, though. In dealing with legislature that enforces diversity, a lot of people say, "But we should choose who we get to associate with!" It has happened, though I can't cite any examples off the top of my head. If Google doesn't want to associate itself with certain groups, who are you to disagree with them?

What's the point of bashing them for this?

And, I haven't watched the video, but it sounds as if the OP might have inferred sexuality based on a set of cliched stereotypes? So, we're all gay if we like singing and/or dancing? Please don't go down that road, OP, or do you hate Frank Sinatra?

actually reading them. Added to mental list of people who are not worth reading.

The fanatics on the periphery of that religion are notorious for having much more vigorous methods for going after perceived trademark violations.

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absentee
Also now available at Political Machine.

Of course he wouldn't have shown a anti-Muslim cartoon. The fanatics on the periphery of that religion are notorious for having much more vigorous methods for going after perceived trademark violations.

That's certainly a creative way of putting it Moe...Genius actually

LOL

In that second paragraph I meant to say net neutrality is NOT popular in places like China and Europe. Whoops.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Network neutrality imposed by government fiat is not libertarianism, it's coercive regulatory power with no real perceived economic efficiency advantage. It is also not the current status quo, as so far the government has not issued any regulation on it (although the "neutral" network currently exists in the market). There may, due to possible market power issues, be a rational economic interest in access standards for digital content, but government imposition into the technical arena of this matter seems to be inviting a tragedy of the commons situation to arise.

"No matter how much lipstick you put on the taxation pig, it's still a pig... and it's currently snout-down in your wallet." - Michael Fisk

And that talking a good game isn't the same as actually having one.

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

Digital communist is not "communist" in the generic meaning. But yeah, this guy is parading around this video to cheering crowds at Google while Google would go nuts if it was Mohammed instead of Jesus.

Fight On!

I've used CC licenses on some of the things I've placed on Flickr and as far as CC goes, I've welcomed the chance to have an alternative copyright scheme in certain instances. But anyone in this thread who doesn't get the explicitly gay references has obviously never been to Spin or The Closet

It's as gay a remix of Jesus as they come, folks. And I say that as someone who used to get his hair cut by a transvestite drag queen in Lakeview.

Lessig covers his bases here and I would think the idea of a gay Jesus getting crushed by a bus would be offensive to gays as well, even though Lessig claims that Jesus "survives" in the next installment...

Which leads one to wonder...

Does getting hit by the bus cause him to go straight? Is that the cryptointellectual message Lessig is trying to convey? I'm sure the Advocate or the Village Voice will have an article about this soon. Lessig may have just managed to offend everyone, gay or straight. That's why he's a genius!

I've probably just learned more about your nocturnal activities than I had any right, or desire, to know.

"A man does what he can and endures what he must."

I lived in Lakeview primarily because my -ex girlfriend moved there when she went out to Chicago to get her doctorate degree in Psychology. She wanted to live in Lakeview because it was hip and gay, but also because as a stauch feminist she was terrified of being raped, and figured she was safer living in a gay neigborhood. As a result, I learned about gay culture firsthand and upclose over the entire time I lived there. I used to live in what was affectionately called (by gays, not me) the Homo Hilton. At the time I lived there it was the tallest all-rental apartment building in the world.

And a recovering anorexic-bulimic ballet dancer. And having lived with a vegetarian for the time I did, I can tell you personally that Jules was correct at least in spirit when he said:

Well, if you like burgers, give them a try sometime. Me, I can't usually get them 'cause my girlfriend's a vegetarian, which pretty much makes me a vegetarian. I do love the taste of a good burger. Mmm. [To Brett] You know what they call a Quarter Pounder with Cheese in France?

I wasn't ever a vegetarian but I had to accomodate and flatter the vegetarian sidekick whenever we planned dinners or nights out, and that made me pretty much a vegetarian first. Later on, it turned out that there were other aspects of her personality that I would also have to "accomodate" if I intended to stay with her -- things I didn't know at the beginning -- and those are really why we're not together today. It's terrible when people lie about things that are deliberately ambiguous.

I could have lived the rest of my life helping her carry the Vegetarian cross, but not the other things. At some point you have to draw the line, no matter how much you love the person. I like to think Jesus would have felt the same way.

Lakeview's a huge neighborhood. It goes all the way down to Diversey and out west past Ashland. I've lived all over Lakeview at some point in my life -- including, yes, near Boys' Town, the part of Lakeview that you're thinking about. (I wouldn't put the Irving park tower in Boys' town, but whatta-I-know.) It's a good place to live and has some pretty decent restaurants. (Yoshi's, for instance, at about Roscoe and Halstead).

I admit that, back in the mid-90s, I preferred living in Wicker Park and the Urkanian Village. But it had nothing to do with teh gays, and everything to do with being cheaper and (allegedly) hipper.

Right now, I'd love to move back to pretty much anyplace in Chicago.

So: I'd strongly encourage anyone considering living in Chicago-proper to look hard at Lakeview. The Southport corridor area (north of Belmont), in particular, has a nice mix of shops and tends to be a little quieter.

Thus endth my digression.

For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.

My view of the boundaries of Lakeview come from the landmarks that have been placed there by the City of Chicago and more than six years living in the neighborhood.

And being accosted in the elevator by a leather-clad 16 year old high on ecstasy one night in the Homo Hilton on Irving Park Road, who grabbed me and in his incoherence and inability to speak on his way to a big party in the building grabbed me and gave me a big kiss on the lips, which was uninvited. The doorman at that building was gay the entire time I lived there, and it was a regular occurence to see downtown accountants and lawyers walking off the elevators on Saturday nights clad in leather. C'mon, Von, I used to eat at the Bella Vista almost every week, and the guy I knew best from DePaul who was an indie theater producer/actor/artiste lived right next to the Alley...

Your boundaries might differ from mine slightly but that's all a matter of personal experience...

Irving Park isn't a part of Lakeview proper but Barry certainly is and that's why my -ex used to live. I walked there regularly from Irving Park and used to shop with her all the way out to Damen, on foot. I worked at Illinois Masonic Medical Center on Wellington in the Outpatient Psychiatry department for almost a year. I know the neighborhood pretty well.

The officially drawn on a map versions can be seen with a simple Google search.

My criticisms came across as too strong, Kowalski. I didn't mean to quibble with the boundaries of the neighborhood or your knowledge thereof.

For we have a peculiar power of thinking before we act, and of acting, too, whereas other men are courageous from ignorance but hesitate upon reflection.

Frankly I thought Lakeview was a fun place to live while I was there, and there was nothing about the place intrinsically that made me sorry to live there. The only thing that makes me regret the time I spent there was that the relationship I went to Chicago in the hope of turning into a lifelong commitment turned out to be a dead end. But that isn't anyone in Lakeview's fault, particularly not my former hairdresser's.

He/she was a very interesting person who had a very tough time in life as many transvestites do. Drugs, abuse, self-abuse, chaos, and total topsy-turviness combined with absolutely ridiculous amounts of money spent on changing his/her body that didn't produce the results she/he desired. I really cared about her just from a humanistic point of view. I wonder if she's still alive, sometimes I doubt it these days, her life was that bad once you peeled back the layers of glamour.

I don't have any compunction about discussing the things I saw and did and experienced while I lived there. I have nothing to hide or be ashamed of. I also don't feel as though I should keep my mouth shut when it's *pluperfectly clear* to me that using Diana Ross' song like this is about the most direct gay reference anyone could make except for having Jesus dressed up as Judy Garland and click his heels together.

That would have been edgy.

Hrm. I just checked out YouTube to find the South Park clip in question, and it's nowhere to be found*.

How odd.

Moe Lane

The Fuzzy Puppy of the VRWC. I've been usurped!

*Yes, I know that South Park puts everything on the web.

is just another example of what's wrong with the world. The 'opinion makers' reward morons like him with 'celebrity' status because they have lost all sense of what is actually important in the world. And there are just enough 'fellow morons' in the real world, the one the rest of us inhabit, to allow them to get away with it.

John
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Why would God invent something like whiskey? To keep the Irish from ruling the world of course

I've been trying to sum up my feelings on this and related issues for years, and I think you just did it for me.

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This too shall pass.

If this were an isolated thing you would be right. But it's become sheik to be insulting and belligerent toward Christians. It's everywhere all the time from the Hunky Jesus competition in San Fran recently to the Gay portrayal of the last supper to the plays about a gay Jesus having orgies with his disciples to dipping crosses in vats of urine to making virgin Mary's portrait out of manure, (I'm not Catholic and I find this deeply offensive), Barging in on a mass and throwing condoms on the Congregation, invading easter services and throwing blood on the parishioners, dressing as transvestite nuns and invading communion services in a Catholic Church and on and on and on it goes!

We'd be better off if we just ignored it?

I'm sick of ignoring it!

The remedy for speech is more speech, not silence.
People mouth off about the dumbest things in our society. We need to stick up for the what is important.