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The compulsive do-gooders -- an odd coalition of
hard-core feminists and right-thinking authoritarians who
agree that society will be improved if they control what we
can read or see -- are at it again. Next week, the U.S.
Senate Judiciary Committee will commence hearings on the
Pornography Victims' Compensation Act,
their latest
effort to purify American thought.
Suppose Cretin X rents a saucy video. Then he commits a heinous rape. The proposed law allows the victim to sue the video-rental shop, the producer and the distributor of the video, and perhaps even United Parcel Service for delivering the video to the shop.
If you might have helped activate Cretin X's glands in any imaginable way, then you are responsible for compensating the victims of his crimes.
This resembles the moronic defense that rapists used to employ -- the victim dressed suggestively, thereby provoking savage passions, so the rapist really can't be held responsible, can he?
But just as soon as we eliminate the injustice of blaming the victim, misplaced blame appears in a new form: the fault lies with the video shop, the bookstore, the magazine rack, the producer, the writer, the distributor, the publisher -- everybody but Cretin X.
Does this mean that if you rent Dances with
Wolves,
Kevin Costner should shell out millions of
dollars because you get so agitated that you go on a
rampage of rape and pillage against any surviving Pawnee
you can find?
Will we ever see another Penguin Classic if some dolt reads the Iliad and thereby concludes that the path to excellence is to emulate its hero, Achilles, by sacking cities and taking the women?
However, not only rapists will benefit from this new legal doctrine. Suppose an ad in this very newspaper does its job, and makes me covet a 33-mhz 80486 computer with a 330-megabyte hard disk. Thanks to that suggestive ad, I'm obsessed. Lacking sufficient funds, my only cure is to go out and swipe such a system -- and it won't be my fault. The paperboy or the ad copywriter was responsible for my wicked thoughts, and one of them can pay, just as someone else will be responsible if a Saturn or Lexus ad inspires you to steal a new car.
At first I opposed the victim compensation act because I was afraid that some nincompoop might read one of my old adult westerns, and I'd have to pay because he disemboweled a corrupt senator or beheaded a land speculator. But I can afford to run that risk if it means I can take anything I want, and somebody else gets the bill so long I can point to some words or pictures that might have provoked me.
All we have to do is abandon the archaic principle of holding an individual responsible for his own actions, and find somebody else to blame. The Pornography Victims' Compensation Act is an excellent start.
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