Submitted by Danny Grubb, Seattle, WA
I have been out of the news loop lately. So imagine my surprise when I came across this article. What the hell Amazon!? Selling a book that promotes pedophilia is arguably the WORST THING YOU CAN POSSIBLY DO EVER.
It is a cold hard fact that the exploitation of children is nothing new, but giving a pedophile a forum in a marketplace as large as Amazon is reprehensible. I wonder if Amazon has given any thought to the fact that their allowing this book to be sold could possibly help justify someone’s criminal acts upon a child.
Parents worry that they can’t protect their kids every second of every day anyway. The fact that now we can’t even expect better from the company that a lot of us bought our high chairs from is incredibly disappointing.
The page selling the book eventually came down, though at this moment in time the method used to remove it is still under question (I’m looking at you 4chan).
Now don’t misunderstand me…
Censorship Is Wrong
This has been and will be my position for the foreseeable future. You can try to change my mind about it, but you won’t. Censorship is the definition of the slippery slope argument. IMHO censorship has the effect of suppressing a lot of issues which deserve to be spoken about freely. People who ban books tend to be at the top of my shit list in that respect (Harry Potter? Really?).
That being said…
Companies Have A Choice
Amazon has always had a choice in what it carries for sale on its site. If it wanted to make a statement about censorship, there are plenty of ways to accomplish that without resorting to de facto promotion of pedophilia. If their PR department couldn’t get a point across that this was a bad idea, then they deserve to all get fired (then hired again, and fired again – until the point sinks in!).
If this child molester who wrote the book wants to sell it, he can do it on his own website in the deepest, darkest corners of the internet with the rest of the scumbags (and may his server die a thousand deaths – and possibly burn down his house with him in it).
Allowing him access to the audience of the largest online marketplace is what really seems out of place here. Hopefully the public outcry has had an effect at Amazon.
Hypocrisy?
Is it wrong to denounce Censorship and decry the selling of a pedophilia book in the same article? Perhaps it is. But people’s opinions/beliefs are often more complex than we give them credit for.
My hope is that your love for good literature will make you re-read these books and that the fact that you are a parent will make you fight the exploitation of children in whatever form it may take including (large air quotes here) “literature”.
But what do you think? Where does one draw the line and what constitutes a double standard in this case?
