Me and Larry Flynt

Welcome to the 21st Century on Facebook, where images that weren’t even considered pornographic in the Cold War Era are now being effectively suppressed by the American Taliban.  I’m opening this up for public discussion as I ponder, at the bare minimum, the degree of incompetence of a company that has such a complete track record of nearly every aspect of my life, and yet could so easily be misled into taking what I believe many of you will agree with is a customer service social faux paux of the highest possible order.  They didn’t just ban the picture, they banned me from any posting on Facebook over an illusory violation of a breach in their “terms of service”!

For fuck’s sake they’ve never so much as lobbed a first warning at me in response to any of the umm…more colorful language I use on Facebook with enthusiastic reckless abandon.  I’d at least have a bit more sympathy for Facebook, but no more respect, if that was the issue under consideration.

Keep in mind I ignored their first warning to remove the photo after reading that if I didn’t remove it immediately it would be put under a higher level of scrutiny, which I naturally assumed would involve some actual person at Facebook Central Command laughing his ass off while deleting the “complaint” that spawned the banning.  A complaint lodged by what I suspect was some militantly pissed off rightwing goober offended by my liberal politics or lack of proper respect to the memories of their imaginary Jeebus.  

Before you take the trouble of wasting your time trying to explain to me how it’s all automated, I’m going to respond that it hardly matters to me from my perspective.  If they are willing to pass off this decision to artificial logic, they need to do a much better job of programming, and I’m willing to make an example out of myself in the greater interest of maintaining free speech on the internet.  

Facebook may well be a private company, but they are operating in the public space on infrastructure built and maintained at great taxpayer expense and have a certain responsibility in regard to that position which is totally independent from their ham-handed customer service policies.  And let’s be clear, that’s what is ultimately at stake here unless we’re willing to push back against the religious trolls intent on defining pornography down to a level where a picture of a naked Barbie doll gets you banned from all social media for life.  Slippery slope and all.

In any event, I think it’s highly ironic that at a time where tech, mainstream and financial news headlines are filled with stories of youth fleeing Facebook in droves, they are willing to risk offending someone of my advanced age (and online spending habits) by willy nilly banning me over the aforementioned “pornography”.

What rights of mine have been violated, if any?  Have I not been recklessly slandered by someone that Facebook could easily identify to me (under court order e.g.) so that I may seek compensation for damages in a court of law against this defamation (I’ve essentially been accused of being a public pornographer).  If there’s an eager young lawyer out there looking for a pro bono case to make a name for himself (win, lose or draw), I’m easy to get ahold of.

It’s “only” a 24 hour ban right now, and a minor perturbation in terms of access to Facebook, but  in the overall picture of which social media service I intend to give the bulk of my data (and hence their income stream), you can bet that unless I get some type of feedback from Facebook in the form of an apology (at a minimum), I’m going to be moving off their service (like so many others have lately) and will share my marketing information with a data management service that has the competency to judge my character more judicially based on the weight of a hundred thousand web postings I’ve already shared with them against the baseless complaint of one lunatic pearl-clutching prude intent upon helping them ruin their market share.  In the meantime I encourage those of you who support or sympathize with me on this issue to help spread this blogpost as far and wide as possible.  All it takes for evil to take over is the lack of action by a few good men.

Enjoy.

High Society

I’m doing a little housekeeping and while sorting through the myriad boxes of “life” that have collected over the ages I ran across this old newspaper clip:

It’s an article that a newspaper in Orange Texas published back in the Apollo 11 era. The article included a picture of my wife Rita (top) when she was fifteen years old, who at the time, was traveling around the US with her mother and grandmother.

For what it’s worth, nobody here in Europe did a newspaper story on me when I got here.  As far as I can tell they don’t give two tugs on a dead dog’s cock about me, but then I’m not the rock star my wife is/was.

The text on the original is faded and difficult to make out clearly, so I took the time to transcribe it for posterity.  Any bolding or hyperlinking (duh) has been added by me:

A teenager who has combined, as the old Dionne Warwick song goes, “the best of both worlds” is visiting friends with her family in Orange (Texas).

She is Rita Brunson, 15 –but doesn’t look it– from Essen, Germany. Along with her mother and grandmother, she is making a two week trip to the United States.

They are staying for several days at the home of Mr. And Mrs. Richard Reese, whom they met in Le Havre, France, when the Reeses were on vacation there.

The story in itself would be interesting enough, but put this in your pipe.  During her young life Miss Brunson has lived in almost every Western European country, Guatemala and once she called Jersey City, NJ home for a year.

To make it even more confusing she is an American citizen, and speaks English flawlessly.

The story, however was clarified when she said she was the daughter of an American engineer.  Her mother is German and operates a restaurant in Essen.

She had attended French, German and American schools, was born in Germany and has spent about two and a half years of her life in the U.S.  With the exception of Jersey City, most of these were whistle stop trips.

Thus far on this trip her family has visited New York, Illinois, Ohio, Arkansas – to visit friends they med in Madrid – and Orange.

She responded to questions about life here as opposed to Germany.

“American young people, they have more activities.  The German’s go to church because most are Catholic. The sports are more interesting here.  In Germany they belong to clubs and you have to be 18 to join,” she said.

The clubs she said, are special,clubs, and youth participate in such activities as tennis and horseback riding. “In Orange, you can’t do much here, but it is fun in a way.  If you know people, you can do things. The people, are very friendly, helpful.  They’re warmer,” she said.

“The Germans have an older culture than Americans.  Americans live freely, but Germans don’t live as freely.

“The Americans, their jobs pay more.  In Germany, that’s not it.  The Americans don’t specialize on industrial work and that’s what the Germans do,” she said.

Miss Brunson said that in Germany, the “young people go to discotheques in the evening and the older people just stay home and have a good time.  That (discotheques) is what they don’t have here.”

Miss Brunson said the educational system in Germany was much more specialized than that of the United States and that students begin training for a profession at a very early age.

For the record, Miss Brunson prefers the American way of dating.

“In Germany, if they go out with a girl they just meet. They go alone. In America the boy acts like he was grateful for the date and in Germany the boys don’t. Here, you go more steady.”

 

I’ve chosen to share this with my readers as a tribute to my lovely wife and as documentary evidence that I am indeed the luckiest man alive.

 

Enjoy.