Friday, May 20, 2005

Our boy Bukie

So I was hanging out at the Republican Club of Capitol Hill between events recently (WHAT?) and I decided to check my office email remotely. I headed down to the business room only to discover that none of the computers had working internet. I asked a club staffer, who told me the club has a huge problem with people looking at porn in the business room and clogging up the computers with the resulting spyware.

And I thought of Pat Buchanan’s recent prediction that “morals” conservatism of the Jesse Helms variety was dying, being replaced by more power-focussed neoconism.

Wouldn't vote for Bukie, of course, but I never said the man was stupid.

CC

3 comments:

Chalicechick said...

Oh, yeah.

I usually like a populist. I don't always agree with them, but I like them as people.

Buchanan represents his constituents very, very well.

Too bad his constituents are nuts.

CC

Steve Caldwell said...

ChaliceChick wrote:
" I headed down to the business room only to discover that none of the computers had working internet. I asked a club staffer, who told me the club has a huge problem with people looking at porn in the business room and clogging up the computers with the resulting spyware.

That sounds like incompetent computer security combined with clueless users.

It's possible to surf erotic sites with very few "spyware" effects to the computer. It's just a matter of having sufficient anti-spyware programs installed. There's also the Mac O/S alternative that is more resistant to spyware than Windows machines.

Norton Antivirus Corporate Version 9 combined with various freeware spyware blockers (Ad-Aware, Spybot, Spyware Blaster, Microsoft Antispyware Beta), hardware and software firewalls, Firefox instead of Microsoft's browser, etc .... these protections should allow a user to surf most porn sites with reasonable computer security.

A bigger problem for a computer in a workplace environment being used to view erotic images is the legal risk to the employer. Erotic images in the workplace can create a hostile work environment and be consisdered a form of sexual harrassment when displayed in the workplace environment. The legal issue would bite any employer if unresolved (and would be a political embarassment for the GOP as well).

But erotic images may be acceptable in private settings.

Since I'm a feminist in the "Susie Bright - Carol Queen" school of sexuality-positive thought, I would suggest that being anti-porn isn't

the same as being pro-morality. This would assume that erotica is immoral.

There are bigger moral concerns to be worried about from my perspective ... internet censorship and its effect on youth attempting to find sexual health information, rampant homophobia and heterosexism in our culture, a degradation of access to reproductive choices, etc.

A man or a woman looking at porn doesn't really rank up there as a burning moral issue for me.

Anonymous said...

While it's hard for me to say publically that I agree with Patty, he hit the nail squarely on the head.