Subj: Bummer, dude
Date: 02/07/96
To: president@whitehouse.gov

Dear Mr. President,

(when you're done reading this -- Read the President's reply!)

I'm not one to indulge much in obscenity or indecency, but if you sign the Telecommunications Decency Act today, I will engage in a long tirage of choice words -- and I may even do it in public. The act is bad law, particularly the part that abridges our right to free speech over the internet.

The internet is not another phone company. It's not a cable company. It's not limited in its bandwidth and not restricted to only a few entrepreneurs who can afford it. It's a meeting place for the entire world. It's a town hall. It's speaker's corner. It's a subway wall. It's a conversation over the backyard fence.

By signing this bill ... you are disallowing its use as a true public forum. People there will no longer be able to have unrestricted freedom of speech. Words like "shit" and "fuck" will be disallowed ... these are arguably distasteful to many, but still important parts of our language and culture. People use these words at important times, when anger and emotion need to be expressed. Like now.

I think this is a SHITTY law.

Did you not ever use vulgarity when protesting the Viet Nam war? I should hope you were angry enough to use the very words that you are making illegal. How would you have felt if, when you were protesting that despicable war, a judge said to you "You can protest this war ... in which our boys are being blown to bits ... but just don't use the word PISS, okay?"

Please, Mr. President, what's more important for our children is not a "protected" environment where our children won't see the word "cocksucker" ... but an environment that is free from speech restraints that are more commonly found in police states. What we are asking for is an environment were cows can still have tits, and if a vulgar person wanted to refer to a woman's sexual organs as a "cunt" ... he or she may.

Respectfully,

Jim Etchison

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