Don't Read This!

For a brief time back in college, I was a student teacher at an elementary school. I was working with a group of third graders on their creative writing assignments. One day, I asked them to write a story. I then told them to exchange papers with a classmate. I don't remember the logic behind this, all I know is I stumbled upon a wonderful experience. The kids would read a little of the other person's story, then start reading their own paper over the classmate's shoulder, and then grabbing their paper back saying, "Wait. Let me change that." Yes, my lesson plan was derailed, but the trade off was watching young writers willingly revise and edit their own work. The only problem I had to talk to them about was the fact that once you turn something in, you can't grab it back to fix something.

That was the 1980's. Today, young people text, email, and blog on a daily basis, and some have learned the hard way that once you put something out there in cyberworld, it's pretty hard to put that toothpaste back in the tube. But the adults haven't learned this lesson.

Some time ago, LeBron James got into a pickup game with an unknown college freshman. At some point, the unknown dunked on the great LeBron. The LeBron James Image Machine immediately leaped into action, confiscating video recordings and still images of the "incident."

Now, I've never been a "vid" at a news or sports event, so I don't know the proper procedure in these cases, but I can't imagine anybody, anybody, taking my tape away from me. I may be only 5'8" but that sonavabitch is going to have to get through me before he gets that tape. It's my property. (Well, the TV station's property, to be exact. But I'm responsible for it.) If you didn't want people shooting video in here, you shouldn't have invited a bunch of reporters in here in the first place. And unless we've somehow been transported into Cuba and Castro is in charge, there isn't a force in this world that can tell me what to do with my camera, or the images I shot with it. Taking things by force is defined as robbery in this country. Aggravated robbery if you get tough. OK, LeBron, you might get the tape, but you won't have much of an image to protect after I have you arrested and charged for aggravated robbery and assault.

Remember John Stewart making fun of President Obama's first pitch at the All Star Game. I hope you do, because you'll never see it again. Major League Baseball told Viacom, parent company of Comedy Central, to take it off the web. Viacom caved, opting instead to chose their battles, but at what price? Apparently now MLB can arbitrarily dictate what news footage can and cannot be used by a media organization. I had no idea that Major League was run by the Chinese Government.

If you own a Kindle, the e-reader device, you can download and store hundreds of books in the device. But, did you know they can be deleted - without your consent? Amazon.com's Big Brother pushed a button and extracted the works of George Orwell from Kindles all over the world. Apparently, the publisher hadn't cleared the rights properly. Had you brought the book in it's more conventional book form, and it was learned after the fact that the publisher had botched the legalities, it would've made for some interesting news viewing to watch Amazon try to break into people's homes to take back 1984. No sir, we're not here to take away your guns. We just want your books.

I could sound alarm bells about our freedom of the press being endangered. I could point out it's not that far of a leap between a pampered athlete's image people confiscating a basketball shot to a pharmaceutical company censoring newscasts for any negative mention of a drug with a serious side effect, perhaps weighing in some influence with lots of ad dollars spent during those newscasts. I could make a simile between Major League Baseball controlling their image by denying video of our elected Commander in Chief and the president of Iran denying the Holocaust, but that would be bordering on bad taste. And I could point out how that Holocaust started out with among other things the destruction of books, but that might make readers squirm.

Instead, I'll just be content with the knowledge that these things got out anyway. I saw blurry footage of the dunk on LeBron on TMZ. ESPN has made plenty if fun of it, too. John Stewart is The Most Trusted Man in America, a title I'm sure he finds as ironic as anyone. And your local bookstore is still selling Orwell in paperback. The toothpaste is out of the tube. And those who wish to grab it back and fix it need to go back to the third grade.