ROANOKE TIMES 

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, June 28, 1990                   TAG: 9006290679
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A-12   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

CLEVERNESS IN MANIPULATING WORDS

I AM WRITING in response to the editorial of June 12, "Policing words in Florida." I have a hard time discerning whether the writer was merely trying to deceive the public, or perhaps, while enjoying a cleverness at manipulating language, has no serious reasoning capabilities.

To begin, he implies that it is impossible for a federal judge (or anyone else) to interpret the language of a Supreme Court ruling. He employs thinly veiled sarcasm to state that Judge Jose Gonzalez, in declaring 2 Live Crew's disgusting garbage to be obscene, is incapable of determining whether their lyrics "depict sexual conduct in a patently offensive way." I'd hate to be his wife!

He further indicates that neither the judge nor, by implication, anyone else, can determine whether "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value is . . . absent." He goes on to imply that it is impossible to determine community standards either.

Let's face it. The writer of that editorial doesn't believe that the Supreme Court has any right to tell 2 Live Crew or anyone else what they can or can't publish in the public domain. He is one of those freedom-loving champions of anything-goes who believe that the First Amendment is a license to say anything you please, regardless of the damage it may cause to humanity.

After all, words are harmless enough, aren't they? Lyrics like those of 2 Live Crew, and other free-speech champions couldn't psosibly have any influence on events in "real life," could they?

Why don't we just forget slander, and libel as well? After all, they are just words. People's careers aren't really ruined by spreading a few malicious lies, are they? And how about advertising? It couldn't really affect the behavior of humanity to simply aim a salvo of convincing words at them, could it?

If I wasn't so angry at the abuse of such power to influence the public, I would probably be rolling on the floor with laughter, to think that somebody would publish such nonsense in a popular newspaper. But some people out there aren't quite clever enough to see through the tricky language you employ, aren't there, Mr. Editor? You should be ashamed of yourself. KEVIN SPENCER GLADE HILL 


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