david@mirror.UUCP (David Chesler) (12/06/88)
The following appeared in the Boston Sunday Herald, page 2, December
4, 1988. My opinion follows the article. The Herald has a circulation
of about 360,000 and is Boston Mass's tabloid. (The folio Globe has a
more highbrow outlook, more foreign and national coverage, less local,
and ever since Rupert Murdoch took over King Features Syndicate his Herald
has had better comics.) The Herald has been consistently and strongly
pro-Israel, and anti-Dukakis. I'd be interested to hear what the
Globe (as well as the Times, the Wash Post, the Christian Science Monitor,
and the Enquirer [oops, I'm editorializing :-)] have to say about this.
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Student raps 'racist' computer jokes
by Paul Sullivan
An MIT graduate student has started a one-man campaign to pull the plug
on an international computer network that has been sending what he thinks
are racist jokes to thousands of subscribers.
"I'm extremely angry that anybody would consider it legal to make fun
of 6 million people murdered in cold blood by the Nazis . It's obscene,"
said a furious Jonathan Richmond.
Richmond, 30, said he has contacted the FBI and the Jewish Anti-Defamation
League to help him get a computer network called USENET either censored or
off the air.
USENET is a computer service subscribed to by about 20,000 people worldwide,
most of whom live in the United States and Canada.
It is used for information on various subjects by students, computer
programmers, large corporations and anyone with a home computer who wants
to pay a fee and hook into USENET.
The system also features a joke file, a collection culled from the
subscribers and edited by Brad Templeton, who owns Looking Glass Software
in Waterloo, Ontario, Canada.
He's the man responsible for programming the several jokes -- which
appear several times a week -- that Richmond thinks are racist.
Richmond, a native of London now living in Cambridge, first became aware
of the jokes when he turned on his computer on Nov. 8 and picked up this
on his screen:
"Kill 6 million Jews and the rest of them lose their sense of humor."
"I was truly shocked," said Richmond, adding that the "joke" had been
transmitted on his screen on the eve of Kristallnacht -- which marked
the 50th anniversary of the night 1,100 synagogues were set on fire in
Germany and Austria as a prelude to the Holocaust.
"Each one of these types of jokes would be preceded by the key word,
'racist,'" Richmond said.
He said he first decided to tackle the problem with his computer and
he sent out messages that the "racist" jokes "were unacceptable and
must stop.
"An argument ensued and I got the justification on my computer, 'Can't
you laugh at yourself?' and 'Freedom of speech,'" Richmond said.
"Then, I was threatened when someone sent out the message, 'My ultimate
goal is eliminate Jonathan Richmond.'"
Templeton was unavailable for comment, but in an interview with a Canadian
paper he defended himself by saying: "It's my belief that it is better
to have a world in which we can laugh at the evil things that are in
the world, than a world where we must carefully consider whether or not
anything can offend someone."
Asked about the Holocaust remark, Templeton said, "Mostly, I was just
making fun there. That line was sarcasm. A lot of people wrote back
to say that was tremendously funny," Templeton said.
"The idea of what you are laughing at is the absurdity of the line; the
absurdity of suggesting that killing 6 million Jews was something to be
taken lightly," he added.
------------------------------- 30 --------------------------------------
First, it is obvious the reporter doesn't understand the difference
between Usenet and Compuserve, nor between a computer and a terminal.
I'm sure he's never spent any time reading the net.
If the article is to be believed, Mr. Richmond wants the net shut down.
"If you won't play by my rules I'm going to get my big brother to come
and take away the ball."
I'm not sure what the reporter's bias is, but the Herald likes to make
issues out of things. I'm sure we will see follow-up in the Letters
and Editorials on the issue.
Was Templeton unavailable for comment? Did the Herald make any effort
to reach Looking Glass?
Most certainly the quotes from rec.humor.funny were taken far out of
context. The joke which got Richmond going was the Jew and Scotsman
joke, which did appear sadly close to Kristallnacht, not the top 10
reasons why Brad should remain moderator, which was in response to the
furor, and was IMHO readily identifiable as in such bad taste as to
be obviously tongue in cheek. Had even one more word from the quote
been used such would have been obvious in the article. I suspect the
reporter did not check the readily available primary sources.
A couple of weeks ago I asked those that found the original joke to
be offensive why they found it so. So far I got one response (from
one of the main players) who apparently felt it was offensive and should
not have been posted because it offended people. Granting this party
probably means "is likely to offend people", so the causality counter-
argument is silly, this is still a second-order effect. I ask again:
what in particular was offensive about the original joke? (Select from
depiction of Jews as cheap, Jews getting murdered, bad timing, or
other.) Jonathan?
I think an awful lot of netters are going to be quite angry at
Jonathan. Rather than merely wasting bandwidth, or even weakening
the case of anti-anti-Semites by crying wolf, he has taken action
outside the net which is sure to harm the net.
And Brad, if this is going to be fought in the press, realize anything
you say can and will be held against you. Newspapers never use
smileys, and they like to have people readily available.
As for the rest of us, we can call and write the papers in question.
A rule of thumb for newpapers is that every caller represents 50 readers,
a letter-writer represents 100. I'll be calling the Herald, primarily
to object to the bad excerpting, and writing to the Kitchener paper
as soon as I can think of what to say. Since they are probably into
letter-counting mode already, a simple "Your article mis-portrayed
Brad Templeton. He does not show a racist leading. Jonathan
Richmond is just stirring up trouble" will probably suffice. The
Herald's number is 617-426-3000. Their address is 1 Herald Square,
Boston Mass, 02106.
-- David Chesler (david@prism.tmc.com, mirror!david)