Hillary Clinton, Marilyn Manson rethink the Net
I took advantage of a Vermel-free household last weekend by opening a bottle of wine, putting on a 12-CD anthology of Edith Piaf, and trying my hand at Grandma DuBaud's chicken cordon bleu recipe.
First Lady Hillary Clinton and shock rocker Marilyn Manson are also unlikely bedfellows (metaphorically speaking, bien sur), having both recently expressed a desire to clamp down on irresponsible Internet behavior. Hillary may not shock too many in the role of Net nanny, but imagine my surprise when I heard similar rhetoric from antichrist superstar Marilyn Manson, an Alice Cooperesque goth geek whose anti-religion rants and questionable fashion decisions have earned him--yes, it's a "he"--the vituperation of everyone from Pat Robertson to E. Dolores Tucker to Congress. Despite his wild image and obvious dependence on the First Amendment, the intelligent, soft-spoken Manson (on tour to promote his memoirs) complained earlier this week to National Public Radio's Terry Gross that his reputation has been "maligned" because of the Internet. He says Net-based rumors about his concert behavior--including sex on stage and crowd-participatory child abuse--have often been accepted as fact "simply because they're on the Internet," and that some kind of laws were needed to keep things in perspective. Not exactly an Orwellian call for a thought-police state, but it was a bit disappointing to hear the cross-dressing, rage-spewing, teen anti-idol sounding more like a concerned mother. What's next, a Marilyn Manson bake sale to raise money for the local library?
Hillaryphiles will recall the First Mother's comment to reporters that "we are all going to have to rethink how we deal with the Internet" after Matt Drudge blew the cover off her hubby's sex scandal story. Although her concerns about the coverage of l'affaire L'ewinsky may be justified, it echoed another recent incident in which the feds paid an unfriendly visit to a UC Berkeley student columnist. Blinded by Cal-Stanford "Big Game" fever, the kid's ill-advised column in the Daily Californian identified Chelsea's dorm on the Farm and satirically urged his readers to show their school spirit on "Chelsea's bloodied carcass." The columnist claimed Hillary had ordered the Secret Service to search his apartment. Agents denied the allegations. Chelsea's carcass remained safe.
Another call for more regulation came from an unlikely source last week: Bruce Sterling, contributing writer for Wired magazine and well-known technolibertarian guru. During a speech wrapping up the Computers Freedom and Privacy conference in Austin, Texas, Sterling criticized the U.S. government for essentially abandoning its role in shaping the Internet. He said that the feds have adopted the attitude that "policy development in cyberspace is just plain too hard to do." Instead of democratic debate, we've seen rule by "ad-hocracy," which in the case of the Internet Engineering Task Force and its technology-standards process has been a good thing, said Sterling.
"March on with IBM"
Words by Fred W Tippe
Music by Vitterio Glannini
Marvelous, isn't it? It inspired me to write my own Rumor Mill song. A-one, and a-two... Send me your rumors.