A funny thing happened to my hometown rag...

See, I grew up in a smallish community in Oklahoma (after two years in a town where the stray dogs literally outnumber the people, I have a hard time calling Enid, Oklahoma a "small town"), and being close to it, I pay close attention to the newspaper, because if there's an event worth attending, it's a nice road trip and we're there.

This paper has a forum on the forum service "Hey Martha!", ostensibly kept for Enid citizens and interested people to discuss current events, etc. I say "ostensibly" because their latest round of cuts has proven they're not interested in any sort of open discussion.

Over the past two weeks, one individual was warned for "advertising" a forum she hosts on this other forum. I'm loathe to call it a "competing" forum, because, well, it's hard to say one's competing for free customers. If anything, this other forum could potentially help the original forum by providing external links to it, but that's something the admin of the forum didn't want to consider. Basically what happened is the individual in question started a chat room on her forum, at the request of several users of the original forum who didn't like the forum's chat because it wasn't regularly opened, and because it wasn't restricted to users that frequented the forum, but rather was open to all of "hey Martha". As the events progressed, at least two others were outright banned. Both were controversial, and both people I tended to disagree with a lot, but neither of them did the kinds of things that should have merited a ban, in my opinion. But it's their forum, their rules.

But it's also my right to walk out. And I did.

It got me to thinking. Here is a forum, hosted by a newspaper, that is afraid of free speech. What horrible depths have we sunk to in this nation when even our PRESS fears the consequences of free speech, and takes efforts to squelch it? These individuals were not spamming, they were not using vulgar language, they were engaging in thoughtful, meaningful conversation, even when it was controversial. And the forum's hosts, in their infinite wisdom, decided that was too much for them and showed these individuals the door.

We've had our share of spats on JU. We've had our share of bannings, and exiles. But I can think of few instances where an individual was banned where warnings didn't precede the ban, and I can think of only ONE instance where an individual was banned and not allowed to return. Period. To put it flatly, we have it pretty good here, even though we don't always see it.

And the "free press" on the other hand, is throwing down bans left and right.