Mediaboss Marketing

Robert Mapplethorpe was one of the most famous photographers in the worldand one of the most controversial. When his work came to Cincinnati in 1990, it would be at the center of a vicious fight over obscenity and the First Amendment, one that threatened the future of art in America.

This episode of One Year was written by Evan Chung, One Years senior producer. It was produced by Kelly Jones and Evan Chung, with additional production by Olivia Briley.

It was edited by Josh Levin, One Years editorial director, with Joel Meyer and Derek John, Slates executive producer of narrative podcasts. Merritt Jacob is our senior technical director.

JoinSlate Plusto get a special behind-the-scenes conversation at the end of our season about how we put together our 1990 stories. Slate Plus members also get to listen to all Slate podcasts without any ads.

Sources for This Episode

Books

Bolton, Richard. Culture Wars: Documents from the Recent Controversies in the Arts, New Press, 1992.

Carr, C. On Edge: Performance at the End of the Twentieth Century, Wesleyan University Press, 2008.

De Grazia, Edward. Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius, Vintage, 1993.

Marshall, Richard. Robert Mapplethorpe, Whitney Museum of Art, 1988.

Meyer, Richard. Outlaw Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality in Twentieth-Century American Art, Oxford University Press, 2002.

Smith, Patti. Just Kids, Ecco, 2010.

Articles

Adams, Henry. Thirty Years After The Perfect Moment, CAN Journal, November 2020.

Adler, Amy. The Shifting Law of Sexual Speech: Rethinking Robert Mapplethorpe, University of Chicago Legal Forum, December 2020.

Andry, Al. Arts Case Strategy Perplexes Experts, Cincinnati Post, Oct. 3, 1990.

Andry, Al. Police Will Review Mapplethorpe, Cincinnati Post, March 23, 1990.

Anti-Mapplethorpe Strategy Began at March 7 Meeting, Cincinnati Post, March 28, 1990.

Barrie, Dennis. The Scene of the Crime, Art Journal, Autumn 1991.

Batson, Larry. Cincinnati Museum Still Under Siege From Keep-It-Clean Forces, Star Tribune, June 17, 1990.

Bermudez, Frederick. CAC Supporters to Face Charges, Cincinnati Enquirer, Sept. 25, 1990.

Bolton, Douglas and Sharon Moloney. Will Art Fury Hurt the City?, Cincinnati Post, March 30, 1990.

Burns, Michael. Cincinnati: Anti-Porn Capital, UPI, Oct. 19, 1986.

Dunne, Dominick. Robert Mapplethorpes Proud Finale, Vanity Fair, February 1989.

Cembalest, Robin. The Obscenity Trial: How They Voted to Acquit, ARTnews, December 1990.

City of the Year: Cincinnati, Sports Illustrated, Dec. 31, 1990.

Dennis, Debra. Art Critic Goes to Bat for Photos in Court, Cincinnati Post, Oct. 3, 1990.

Dennis, Debra. Photo Show Verdict: Not Guilty, Cincinnati Post, Oct. 6, 1990.

Dobush, Grace. 25 Years Later: Cincinnati and the Obscenity Trial Over Mapplethorpe Art, Washington Post, Oct. 24, 2015.

Faherty, John and Carol Motsinger. Pornography or Art? Cincinnati Decided, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 28, 2015.

Findsen, Owen. Controversy Brought Crowds, Cincinnati Enquirer, May 26, 1990.

Findsen, Owen. Group Wants Center to Cancel Photo Show, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 21, 1990.

Findsen, Owen. Museum Chief Prepares for Mapplethorpe, Cincinnati Enquirer, Feb. 13, 1990.

Findsen, Owen. Perfect Moments Time Arrives, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 6, 1990.

Findsen, Owen. Police to View Mapplethorpe Exhibit, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 24, 1990.

Findsen, Owen. Ruling that CAC Is Not a Museum Jolts Art World, Cincinnati Enquirer, June 21, 1990.

Fox, John. Then and Now: Mapplethorpe CAC, Cincinnati CityBeat, March 30, 2000.

Gamarekian, Barbara. Mapplethorpe Backers Picket the Corcoran and Plan New Shows, New York Times, June 17, 1989.

Glueck, Grace. Publicity Is Enriching Mapplethorpe Estate, New York Times, April 6, 1990.

Grundberg, Andy. The Allure of Mapplethorpes Photographs, New York Times, July 31, 1988.

Harrison, Eric. Sides Square Off for Mapplethorpe Photo Trial, Los Angeles Times, Sept. 23, 1990.

Hartigan, Patti. The Picture of Innocence, Boston Globe, Aug. 3, 1990.

Honan, William H. Congressional Anger Threatens Arts Endowments Budget, New York Times, June 20, 1989.

Horn, Dan. Post Poll: 59% Say Let Show Go On, Cincinnati Post, April 13, 1990.

Kastor, Elizabeth. Funding Art That Offends, Washington Post, June 7, 1989.

Kaufman, Ben L. Judge Refuses to Dismiss Indictments, Cincinnati Enquirer, June 20, 1990.

Kaufman, Ben L. Judge to Police: Keep Hands Off Exhibit, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 9, 1990.

Lobb, Monty, Jr. The Side of Virtue and Dignity, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 30, 1990.

Mapplethorpe: One Year Later, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 6, 1991.

Masters, Kim. Art Gallery Not Guilty of Obscenity, Washington Post, Oct. 6, 1990.

Masters, Kim. Defense Rests in Mapplethorpe Art Trial, Washington Post, Oct. 4, 1990.

Masters, Kim. Jurors View Photos of Children, Washington Post, Oct. 3, 1990.

McLeod, Douglas M. and Jill A. MacKenzie. Print Media and Public Reaction to the Controversy Over NEA Funding for Robert Mapplethorpes The Perfect Moment Exhibit, Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, June 1998.

Merrill, Elizabeth M. Zaha Hadids Center for Contemporary Art and the Perils of New Museum Architecture, Criticism, 2019.

Mezibov, Marc. The Mapplethorpe Obscenity Trial, Litigation, Summer 1992.

Moloney, Sharon. As Show Leaves, Debate Rages On, Cincinnati Post, May 26, 1990.

Moloney, Sharon. Perfect Image Clashes with Citys, Foes Say, Cincinnati Post, March 29, 1990.

Moloney, Sharon and Al Salvato. Police View Mapplethorpe, Cincinnati Post, April 2, 1990.

Moore, Kevin. Whipping Up a Storm: How Robert Mapplethorpe Shocked America, the Guardian, Nov. 17, 2015.

Moores, Lew. Photos Condone Behavior, Witness Says, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 5, 1990.

ONeill, Cliff. The Mapplethorpe Mess, OutWeek, July 3, 1989.

Palmer, Alex. When Art Fought the Law and the Art Won, Smithsonian Magazine, Oct. 2, 2015.

Prendergast, Jane. 4,000 Pack Photo Exhibit, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 7, 1990.

Prendergast, Jane. Arts Center, Director Indicted, Cincinnati Enquirer, April 8, 1990.

Prendergast, Jane. Funding Given Up by CAC, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 26, 1990.

Siebert, Mark and Lew Moores. Lewd, But Art, Jurors Say, Cincinnati Enquirer, Oct. 7, 1990.

Sischy, Ingrid. White and Black, the New Yorker, Nov. 5, 1989.

Span, Paula. The Childrens Portraits: Innocence or Pornography?, Washington Post, May 3, 1990.

Stein, Jerry. High Noon for Mapplethorpe Show, Cincinnati Post, April 6, 1990.

Sturmon, Sarah and Sharon Moloney. Mapplethorpe Suit Jolts City, County, Cincinnati Post, March 29, 1990.

Uzelac, Ellen. Mapplethorpe Trial Puts Cincinnati on Art MapBut Town Talks About Baseball, Baltimore Sun, Sept. 27, 1990.

Vaccariello, Linda. A Lion in Winter, Cincinnati Magazine, February 1997.

Vester, John W., William J. Gerhardt, and Mark Snyder. Mapplethorpe in Cincinnati, Cincinnati Enquirer, March 24, 1990.

Wilkerson, Isabel. Cincinnati Art Gallery and Director to Stand Trial, New York Times, June 20, 1990.

Wilkerson, Isabel. When a Crusade Is a Career, New York Times, April 14, 1990.

Audiovisual

Damned in the U.S.A, dir. Paul Yule, 1993.

Perversion for Profit, Citizens for Decent Literature, 1963.

Robert Mapplethorpe, dir. Nigel Finch, Arena, BBC, 1988.

Footage of the visitor reactions at the Contemporary Arts Center on April 8, 1990 was filmed by Bart Everson and Michael Northam.

Excerpt from:
Robert Mapplethorpe and Cincinnati: The Perfect Moment and the fight over censorship and obscenity. - Slate

From PEN America:

In a cumulative data summary released today, PEN America reflects on the nearly 6,000 book bans in public schools documented from July 2021 to June 2023. Spineless Shelves: Two Years of Book Banning illustrates the spread of copycat book bans and an apparent Scarlet Letter effect, where several works from an authors catalog were subsequently targeted after at least one of their works was banned.

Over the 2021-22 and 2022-23 school years, the sweeping attack on the freedom to read in public schools impacted 247 school districts across 41 states, affecting millions of students, the century-old free expression and literary group said. The data summary pulls together data from PEN Americas July 2021 to June 2023 School Book Ban Indexes for the first time and provides new insight into the movement to censor books nationwide.

[Clip]

In the new data summary, PEN America reflects on two phenomena: copycat bans and a Scarlet Letter effect.

Books that are banned in one district are frequently banned in others, with such copycat bans proliferating in school districts across state lines. A useful example is the work of Sarah J. Maas. In the 2021-2022 school year, her work was banned 18 times across 10 districts; but in 2022-23, that exploded to 158 bans across 36 districts a 778% increase. As PEN America explored in Banned in the USA: The Growing Movement to Censor Books in Schools, groups pushing for book bans frequently share lists of titles to target, which has inflamed this copycat effect.

Several authors have also experienced a Scarlet Letter effect, where several works from their collection were subsequently targeted after at least one of their works was banned. This is again illustrated by author Sarah J. Maas. In the 2021-2022 school year, eight of her titles were banned. This doubled to sixteen titles in 2022-23. A similar effect has impacted bestselling authors Ellen Hopkins, Jodi Picoult, Alice Oseman, Laurie Halse Anderson, and Rupi Kaur, among others, all of whom saw more of their catalogs scrutinized after one of their works was initially targeted for banning.

[Clip]

From July 2021 to June 2023, PEN Americas Index of School Book Bans recorded 5,894 instances of book bans. Florida and Texas lead the country in number of bans, but the crisis has spread to 41 states. A significant increase in the number of books banned from both school libraries and classrooms indicates not only an increase in the number of books banned, but that more of the bans are being enacted as permanent removals.

[Clip]

PEN America defines a school book ban as any action taken against a book based on its content and as a result of parent or community challenges, administrative decisions, or in response to direct or threatened action by lawmakers or other governmental officials, that leads to a previously accessible book being either completely removed from availability to students, or where access to a book is restricted or diminished.

Direct to Complete News Release

Direct to Full Text Report: Spineless Shelves: Two Years of Book Banning

Filed under: Data Files, Libraries, News, School Libraries

Read more from the original source:
New Report From PEN America: Two Years of Book Banning: Cumulative Data Set and Censorship Trends - LJ INFOdocket

The federal governments censorship-industrial complex is an existential threat to Americans First Amendment rights, several witnesses testified during a House subcommittee hearing on Wednesday.

The federal government not just participated, but led this creation of a mass flagging and censorship operation that was coordinated with a broader effort to pressure [Big Tech] platforms to do more censorship, independent reporter Michael Shellenberger said.

Titled Censorship Laundering Part II: Preventing the Department of Homeland Securitys Silencing of Dissent, Wednesdays hearing before the Subcommittee on Oversight, Investigations, and Accountability analyzed federal agencies extensive efforts to collude with Big Tech platforms to silence Americans online for questioning claims made by the government. During his opening statement, subcommittee chair Rep. Dan Bishop, R-N.C., underscored the role of the Cybersecurity & Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), a subagency within the Department of Homeland Security, in coordinating this censorship operation.

What is stopping DHS from overreaching its jurisdiction beyond elections to censor more Americans to protect whatever government-deployed orthodox notions it deems critical infrastructure? Bishop asked. The answer is: nothing.

Often called the nerve center of the federal governments censorship complex, CISA facilitates meetings between Big Tech companies, and national security and law enforcement agencies to address mis-, dis-, and mal-information on social media platforms. Ahead of the 2020 election, for example, the agency upped its censorship efforts by flagging posts for Big Tech companies it claimed were worthy of being censored, some of which called into question the security of voting practices such as mass, unsupervised mail-in voting.

An interim report released by House Republicans last month revealed that CISAs censorship enterprise was more extensive than previously known. According to that analysis, CISA along with the State Departments Global Engagement Center (GEC) colluded with Stanford University to pressure Big Tech companies into censoring what they claimed to be disinformation during the 2020 election. At the heart of this operation was theElection Integrity Partnership (EIP), a consortium of disinformation academics spearheaded by the Stanford Internet Observatory that coordinated with DHS and GEC to monitor and censor Americans online speech ahead of the 2020 contest.

Created at the request of CISA, EIP allowed federal officials to launder [their] censorship activities in hopes of bypassing both the First Amendment and public scrutiny. As documented in the interim report, this operation aimed to censor true information, jokes and satire, and political opinions and submitted flagged posts from prominent conservative figures to Big Tech companies for censorship. Among those targeted were The Federalists Mollie Hemingway and Sean Davis.

[RELATED: State Of Texas Joins The Federalist, Daily Wire In Suing The Federal Censorship-Industrial Complex]

Also highlighted during Wednesdays hearing was Missouri v. Biden, an ongoing court case to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court that documents efforts by the Biden administration to coerce Big Tech platforms to engage in similar censorship activities. In his testimony, Mark Chenoweth, president of the New Civil Liberties Alliance (NCLA), noted how the federal government pressured social media platforms into censoring Americans who dared to express rational and scientifically accurate views about the Covid-19 virus and the vaccines and in doing so, violated their First Amendment rights. NCLA is representing the individual plaintiffs in Missouri v. Biden.

Indeed, I daresay there are some in this roomon both sides of the aislewho brush away the monumental efforts of the Biden Administration to squelch speech on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and other social media sites as merely the actions of private companies. Not so, Chenoweth said. When the government coerces or pressures a company with inducements or threats and the company responds by crushing private individuals, that is state action, and the First Amendment forbids it.

Meanwhile, CISA officials testifying during Wednesdays hearing avoided answering questions from Republicans about how the agencys efforts to combat so-called disinformation have changed in recent years. When pressed by Bishop on how CISAs practices have evolved since the 2020 election, for example, agency official Iranga Kahangama declined to provide a straightforward answer.

Despite evidence showing otherwise, House Democrats attempted to defend the federal governments censorship activities by pretending they never occurred. In his opening statement, for example, ranking member and Maryland Democrat Rep. Glenn Ivey claimed the evidence showing CISAs role in the censorship-industrial complex completely misses the mark and further cited a quote from a CISA official asserting the agency doesnt censor speech as evidence that it doesnt engage in such behavior.

Meanwhile, Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., similarly attempted to convince Americans the myriad communications documenting government-compelled censorship do not exist, falsely claiming there is no evidence CISA has engaged in any nefarious or unconstitutional activity.

Shawn Fleetwood is a staff writer for The Federalist and a graduate of the University of Mary Washington. He previously served as a state content writer for Convention of States Action and his work has been featured in numerous outlets, including RealClearPolitics, RealClearHealth, and Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @ShawnFleetwood

More here:
House GOP Highlights The Feds' Censorship-Industrial Complex - The Federalist

December 12, 2023 at 6:15 a.m. EST

Almost no one believes the world needs more jerks. A Google search for the phrase returns exactly 12 hits, all of them sarcastic. Which only makes sense. Who likes being around jerks? Almost no one, thats who. Youd have to be a bit of a jerk to suggest that we ought to have more of them despoiling our homes, workplaces and social gatherings.

Allow me to introduce myself, then, as the jerk who thinks we need more jerks, particularly in knowledge-making fields such as journalism and academia or at least the kind of people who get called jerks for saying things their colleagues dont want to hear.

These professions used to be sheltered workshops for those kinds of jerks: naturally distrustful folks who like asking uncomfortable questions and experiencing an uncontrollable urge to say whatever theyve been told not to. These character traits dont make people popular at parties, but they might well help them ferret out untruths, deconstruct popular pieties and dismantle conventional wisdom.

Jerks were never the majority, which would be chaos. But they were a teaspoon of leavening that kept social pressure from compressing the range of acceptable thought into an intellectual pancake: flat, uniform and not very interesting.

These days, human resources departments have cracked down on all manner of jerk-ish behavior including, of course, saying things that offend ones colleagues. But if youre in the truth business, all this niceness comes at a cost, as a perspective just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences makes clear.

The papers multiple authors exhaustively categorize the rising pressures for, and tolerance of, academic censorship including self-censorship. For example, they write, a majority of eminent social psychologists reported that if science discovered a major genetic contribution to sex differences, widespread reporting of this finding would be bad.

Their paper challenges many of our common assumptions about censorship. First, that because its bad it must be done for bad reasons; and, second, that censorship is mostly a matter of outsiders tyrannizing truth-seekers. In fact, censorship is often done by scientists themselves and often for reasons that suggest, well, an excess of niceness: fighting injustice, promoting equality, protecting the weak. And if they also want to stay on the good side of their colleagues, well, nice people usually do.

Unfortunately, the universe isnt here to please us, which means niceness and truth will sometimes be at odds.

I think, for example, of my fellow Post columnist Lawrence H. Summers, who was forced out as president of Harvard several years ago after he speculated, at a small private seminar, that one possible reason for the underrepresentation of women in elite science and engineering programs might be that their ability was less variable than mens. So while both sexes perform about as well on average, the women might tend to cluster near the middle, while the men are overrepresented at the bottom and the top the latter being where elite programs draw from.

Understandably, this caused hurt and outrage among many female academics. But things can be true even if they make us feel bad, and Summerss speculation is at least compatible with what we know about sex differences in other animals. A truth-seeking institution would have set feelings aside and asked whether the hypothesis was right or wrong (as Summers himself said it might well be).

Instead, Summers resigned.

This was a watershed event that has influenced how university administrators are selected and how they behave as we saw in last weeks congressional hearing on campus antisemitism, where three nice university presidents struggled to mount a coherent, and plausible, defense of free expression on campus.

One reason they struggled was that campuses have in fact become more and more hostile to debate on issues of identity, as you will find extensively examined in The Canceling of the American Mind, a new book by Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott. But its not just a problem of overzealous DEI bureaucracies; scholars are censoring each other and themselves.

One has only to look at the way some academic disciplines have veered into activism unfortunately including public health during the pandemic. Or at the papers concerning sensitive issues like race and sexuality that were retracted under activist pressure. Or at recent editorial statements from the journal Nature suggesting that editors should vet papers not just for scientific accuracy but also for possible harm to marginalized communities.

Undoubtedly, the folks who wrote that editorial thought they were helping make the world a better place. But, undoubtedly, so did the men who prosecuted Galileo. Niceness doesnt prevent error in fact, it may make mistakes more likely.

Sociologist Musa al-Gharbi, one of the authors of the paper, pointed out that research shows people who viewed themselves as strongly principled were actually more willing to tailor their findings to the wishes of their funders or distort their findings to advance noble goals. In many cases, peoples perception that they are strongly committed to social justice and rigor actually makes them more susceptible to being corrupted, he told me in an interview.

Niceness also makes incidents of censorship harder to address. If they were driven by bad people with bad motives, then the solution would be easy: Get rid of those people. But when its driven by people who are good, who are committed to doing good work and who are trying to do good through their work,then the solution becomes more difficult.

It might be worse than that, I responded: By trying to get rid of bad people, you could make science worse, because the most likely targets might be the semi-antisocial folks who just said what they thought, even if it upset people.

I think this is true, al-Gharbi said. To the extent that we select for only the most pro-social people, we might actually be making science more vulnerable not just to censorship, but to some of these other problems like fraud and corruption as well.

They and we would be better off if they kept a few ruthless iconoclasts around to periodically jerk them out of that complacency.

Original post:
Opinion | The world needs more jerks, especially in fields like journalism and academia - The Washington Post

China's infamous censorship body revealed fresh plans to boost internet censorship in the country, South China Morning Post reported.

Short videos appear to be the main target this time, especially those spreading extremism and, for the very first time, pessimistic content. Video material generated using AI will also be banned.

These new guidelines come as the latest attempt to further restrict and control the internet within the country's borders. As a result, we expect that reliable China VPN services will become an even bigger necessity for visitors, and citizens, who wish to keep securely accessing the open wide web.

Since 2020 the countrys top censorship body, the Cyberspace Administration of China, has been regularly updating the list of content to censor within the country. As mentioned, this year's "Qing Lang" campaign (which means clear and bright) took a strong stance against short-form videos.

Despite being a Chinese-developed software, the popular video-sharing app TikTok is banned in China. However, censors plan to target its Chinese equivalent, Douyin, and other platforms where short videos are widely shared, including WeChat and Weibo.

The watchdog specifically expressed a commitment to cracking down on creators who make up "stories about social minorities to win public sympathy" as well as "fake plots and spreading panic," SCMP revealed.

Do you know?

According to the South China Morning Post, China's censors have deleted or blocked a total of around 1.35 billion online accounts, 76 million illegal or improper messages, and 10,500 websites as a consequence of the Qing Lang crackdown campaign between 2021 and 2022.

While extremism and so-called "incorrect values" like money, history, and mixed-race relationships have long since been among the censors' targets, it's the first time that content promoting "pessimism" is included. This new tactic seems to be linked to the country's continuous struggle to recover economically after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Another new entry on the blacklist is AI-powered videos. The watchdog plans to ban short videos that manipulate content and illegally use other people's voices or faces.

Finding a way to fight back against the threats of AI-generated content, especially video and audio scams, is no doubt a massive challenge, and priority, for plenty of the nation leaders in 2024.

In July, China proposed a set of guidelines for generative AI software and large language models to minimize their risks. The EU Commission has just concluded the final negotiations for the AI Act, which is likely to become the new standard across Western countries.

Short for virtual private network, a VPN is a security tool that protects your privacy and anonymity, while also allowing you to bypass strict internet restrictions and censorship.

How? Every time you connect to the software, you'll need to choose one of the available serversall the best VPN services offer a wide range of speedy and secure locations across the world. Your real IP address is hidden so that your ISP is tricked into thinking that you are located in another country, depending on where your chosen server is based.

A VPN then enables you to access websites and social platforms that aren't available in your home country and some VPNs can bypass the notorious Great Firewall in China. However, a VPN cannot help you access content that authorities have deleted or prohibited a certain platform from sharing.

It's also worth mentioning that Chinese authorities strictly regulate VPN usage while working hard to find new and effective tactics to block VPNs.

China topped the list as the biggest offender worldwide for VPN censorship between January and May this year. In fact, authorities block providers' websites over eight times (812%) more than the global average of 8%.

This is why you should take care when picking a VPN provider. Services implementing obfuscation technology, for example, are less vulnerable to such attacks.

We also suggest downloading several apps to hop from one to another in case these get blocked. Check ourbest free VPNspage to choose the safer freebies on the market as well as our updated guide to the best working VPNs for China.

Lesser-known tools, like the newly launchedSnowstormor Lantern, are also effective ways to reconnect a splintering web and access all the content you want, without restrictions.

We test and review VPN services in the context of legal recreational uses. For example: 1. Accessing a service from another country (subject to the terms and conditions of that service). 2. Protecting your online security and strengthening your online privacy when abroad. We do not support or condone the illegal or malicious use of VPN services. Consuming pirated content that is paid-for is neither endorsed nor approved by Future Publishing.

Compare the three best China VPN services right now:

View original post here:
China plans to boost up its censorship game to target AI videos and "pessimism" - TechRadar