That’s me. You might not recognize the expression on my face as one that I’ve ever made, but it’s me. It was drawn by the cartoonist for The Hook, accompanying a well-written article about one of my hobby sites, cvillenews.com. (In a nutshell: some fool from UVa was trolling the site. I got sick of it and, after selective bans didn’t work, banned *.virginia.edu until I could come up with a solution, which I did about 2 days later. It’s not a ban that I would have done normally, but it’s summer, so school’s out.) The article did a good job of expressing the fact that this is not, in fact, censorship.
People not understanding the first amendment is a pet peeve of mine. Many people mistakenly believe that it’s unconstitutional for individuals or organizations to limit expression. This is not true. Many people also believe that individuals can be forced to fund the expression of others, which is not true. This is why free-speech advocates, by and large, don’t have a problem with making spam illegal; why should we, the receipients of spam, be forced to pay for the expression of others? The answer, of course, is that we should not be. No more than I should have to shell out $45/month to host cvillenews.com and put up with some troll, as if all Americans have some fundamental right to access my privately-owned website on my privately-owned server on my privately-owned DSL. Besides, anybody can post anything on one of my other websites, the chalkboard. As I told Courtney Stuart when she interviewed me, let it not be said that I don’t provide plenty of options for free and open expression on-line.
Anyhow, I guess nobody got word to the illustrator. His image, of course, is intended to portay me as a mean-spirited hypocrite that can dish it out but can’t take it. Though it is a funny and well-drawn cartoon, it would be funnier if it portrayed the situation realistically.
But, hey, he did a good job of capturing UVa. :)