What we have below is crude but effective. It is a rhetorical crystallization of a point of argument that is persuasively, but somewhat offensively, put. The offensiveness increases the persuasive force, in this particular case, by its attention- getting "shock" value. So here's the thing that occurs to me: This passage would be "censored" by the devices against which it argues. Do you want your nine-year-old to read this passage after returning home from vacation bible school? Probably not. Do you really mind if you fifteen-year-old reads it after asking you what is this debate all about anyway? Maybe not. Consider it then as not only a rant against over-inclusive filter/blockers but as an illustration of the very problem it tries to address. MacN On Fri, 8 Aug 1997, TruthMailer wrote:
What we have in common is that you don't want to have Little Johnny do a search for "Jesus" and get 5,000 sites with pictures of Jesus shoving a crowbar up his ass, and I don't want to try to find a site to buy a crowbar to work on my house and get 5,000 sites with pictures of Jesus shoving a crowbar up his ass. My point is that I don't object to you supporting InterNet tools which allow you to screen out pictures of Jesus with a crowbar up his ass, but I object to a "quick and easy" solution which blocks out all sites with a reference to "crowbars," because one guy in Toledo "used to have" a site with a single picture of Jesus with a crowbar up his ass.