Naked Jen Goes To Washington
It’s true that the drapes are finally off the Spirit of Justice’s perky aluminum boobies, but Homeland Security is still busily spending its budget to protect you and me from the pernicious effects of — wait for it — Naked Jen. Here she is in front of the Capitol — three cheers for good old fashioned American anti-authoritarianism — but she says the climate for nudity in D.C. ain’t what it used to be:
That picture I’ve shared is 100% genuine. I really wanted to take pictures with all the national monuments while I was in DC (especially the White House), but let me tell you that DC is a whole new place since 9/11. Gah. I have never seen so many special police officers in all my life. And the Washington Monument is “under renovation” and I couldn’t even get near it. Boo. I felt kind of sacrilegious taking a naked picture at the Lincoln Memorial as well as any of the War Veterans Memorials, but the Capitol. No problem, obviously. Although, as soon as we took this photo we noticed that the special police for the Capitol had taken notice of us and we abandoned our thoughts that taking a picture on the actual steps of the Capitol would be a good idea.
Funny thing, I can still remember living in an America that used to revile the sort of countries where a mischievous citizen had to worry about being noticed by the “special police”.
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=1147
colour me special… years ago, a friend and i got drunk after work and went on a topless photo spree here in dc… we hit every major spot surrounding the mall. the cops we encountered were quite amused.
yeah, pity that these days they’re more likely to think you’re got an explosive device hidden under that shirt you’re taking off :(
Tony Comstock said:
“Never in a million years did I ever expect that any artwork I would make could ever make me fearful of government sanction or fearful that speaking up would make me a target. Yet here I am, an anxious tightness in my chest as I post this comment to your blog.”
I’m curious. What, precisely, do you fear will happen? Have a lot of dissidents in the US been arrested recently? I’m no fan of censorship (hence I read this blog), but I haven’t seen any NKVD officers yet.
I’m old enough too.
Just last weekend I was talking with a friend and reminiscing about the stories we were told about courageous Soviet dissidents; poets and playwrites thown in jail or mental institutions because of what they wrote.
Never in a million years did I ever expect that any artwork I would make could ever make me fearful of government sanction or fearful that speaking up would make me a target. Yet here I am, an anxious tightness in my chest as I post this comment to your blog.
Happy happy Joy joy.
-TC
If you aren’t worried about boobies you might be trying to use your freedom of speech. And it’s filtering down elsewhere. Recently a large author organization attempted to pass “graphical standards” for covers and excerpts or content on websites of authors who are linked from their chapter websites. This of course was a thinly veiled attempt to push certain segments (read erotica)out of the organization.
It didn’t work, of course the authors of such randy works are pretty uppity, especially when they are dues paying members of said organization. But this chilling effect on certain kinds of speech is everywhere.
My apologies, Mr. Comstock. I misread your initial post, mistakenly believing you feared persecution for the post *itself*, rather than for your other actions.
I cannot say that you are wholly unreasonable in your fears. Nor am I pleased that your speech has been chilled in this way. Might I suggest, however, that a direct comparison between yourself and, say, Alexander Solzhenitzyn, might not be apt?
Perhaps I am being unfair to you. Upsetting though it is, however, I am uncomfortable with equating a few dozen obscenity prosecutions with the USSR.
I’ll say it if Tony won’t, because I was alluding to police states as odious as the USSR: I don’t find such comparisons inapt. The difference is a matter of degree, and what I was commenting on was the appearance of an unwelcome presence in our formerly free society. Jen felt, I feel, Tony feels, chilled in the exercise of free speech by the presence of what what Jen termed “special police”. It’s easy to say “yeah, but it’s not as bad as all that.” I never said it was. But it’s getting worse, in a society which used to pride itself on rejecting things like “special police”.
“It’s not that bad yet” is not an argument that convinces me to stop worrying.
‘ “It’s not that bad yet” is not an argument that convinces me to stop worrying.’
Fair enough. Insert various quotes about ‘eternal vigilance’ here. I do think you made a disingenuous conflation of “special police” in the totalitarian sense — i.e., domestic spies working to root out and oppress peaceful dissenters — and “special police” in the 2005 USA sense — i.e., additional peace officers who could care less about dissent, but who are trying to ensure that tourists live long enough to bore their neighbors with their vacation photos. I’m sorry Jen got hustled off, but those police officers aren’t there for that purpose. Indeed, I’m not sure Jen’s conduct even qualifies as “expressive,” in the sense of having First Amendment protections: public nudity has never been legal in this country. As such, even “regular police” would hustle her off. Or perhaps she’s just better at charming the police than I am.
You say that there’s only a difference of degree between obscenity prosecutions and bans on public nudity, versus the Soviet gulags. I’ve never been on the receiving end of either system, so my statements are potentially mistaken. I’m inclined to disagree, however. I have no statistics to back me on this, but I suspect that the death toll among Americans prosecuted for obscenity is significantly lower than the death toll among gulag inmates.
I know politics isnt’t the point of this blog, and I want to thank you, Bacchus, for providing such an entertaining site. Your post and the subsequent comments, however, struck a chord with me, and I felt compelled to respond. If you’re annoyed by my hijacking of this thread, however, I apologize.
“What, precisely, do you fear will happen?”
What, you ask?
I worry the government will use fortiter laws to take the (not inconsiderable) assets that my wife and I have worked for twenty years to acrue.
There are films that I would like to make, but I (as yet) have not. The calculus for that is imprecise, but my fear that my own government would use my distrution of my work as a pretext to seize my property and perhaps even jail me or my wife is not an insignificant factor in the equation.
Never mind the chilling effect that my own government has on the films I <i>might</i> make in some theoretical future, my wife and I are already measuing whether or not we will send our gay and lesbian titles to some states/counties.
I am reasonably confindent that even before the most conservative jury, my films would find sanctuary in the third prong of the Miller test. But the cost of defending our art, our livihood and our liberty would no doubt leave us broke.
In my middle years I’ve grown fond of living under a roof I own, driving a car that’s paid for, and having some money in the bank, and am in no hurry liquidate our assets to defend my First and Fourteenth Ammendment rights.
More over, a typical government tactic in “mom and pop” obsenity proscecutions involves freezing assets before conviction, the logic being that a criminal should not be able to use the fruits of their criminal activity to defend themselves.
Without the financial resouces to sustain a legal fight, you plead out, then you loose your assets to forfeiture. You go to jail and you lose your house.
Does that answer your question?
-TC
I realize that I’m posting rather late, after the original, but does anyone agree with me that commenter #1 should patriotically post those photos here, (purely so that those living in suppressed countries abroad can observe the joys of freedom of course…)?