(Hattip to the Good Vibrations blog, The Perverted Negress, and Reason magazine's Hit and Run blog.)
The last time we blogged about Obama's DOJ appointments and free speech implications, it was concerning the new president's disappointing choice of Eric Holder for Attorney General. However, there seems to be somewhat better news afoot in Obama's choice of Deputy Attorney General, David W. Ogden.
If this name doesn't ring a bell, its probably because, like many in this part of the blogosphere, you don't follow right-wing media sources, who are all in a tizzy right now over his nomination. He has largely not garnered much mention in the mainstream media, either. Among the more notable source gunning for him are "morality" wingnuts like Fidelis.org, Judith Reismann, Focus on the Family, and the American Family Association. The source of their ire is Ogden's "pro-porn", "pro-abortion, and "pro-homosexual" stances. And it appears, there's some basis for the "pro-porn" (or, at least, pro-free speech) label, as Ogden has, while in private practice, represented porn companies like Playboy and Penthouse, and earlier, while a clerk for liberal SC Justice Harry Blackmun, authored several memos denouncing "moral majority types" and their attacks on free speech. He is also on record as having opposed expanded 2257 legislation, for which some of the usual suspects are branding him "pro-child pornography". Patrick Trueman, a religious right activist and the Bush Administration's cherry-picked anti-obscenity prosecutor, calls Ogden "everything the pro-family movement has fought against".
If a lot of this sounds too good to be true from our side of the political fence, it very well may be. During his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary, he backpeddled quite a bit on his prior positions, stating that the legal opinions he wrote while defending porn companies were those of a hired gun and not indicative of what his stances might be while working for the government. And his earlier denouncement of "moral majority types" he apologized for as youthful "immaturity", though whether he was backpeddling on his opinions or simply his rhetoric is not clear from the news sources I've seen.
Still, given the current political client, I think Ogden is the best we're going to get and hopefully somebody with the political will to maintain strong free speech protections in a political atmosphere where such rights are under attack from both the far right and some sections of liberalism and the left.
Like many sources in the free speech blogosphere, I feel like I've really dropped the ball with this story. The usual suspects on the moralist Right have been stepping up their political machine against this guy for months, and this is the first time I've ever heard of him. (Note to self – follow Religious Right sources more closely, even if radfem chest-beating seems more immediate and in-your-face.) He had a confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, and I'm unclear as to whether he still needs to be confirmed before the full Senate or what are the other steps to confirmation. But I think the Good Vibes blog had the right idea in that its really a good time to contact your Senators with letters of support for this nominee, and point out that you support free speech and sexual autonomy and you vote. The other side is definitely active on this – don't let them create the impression that they speak for the entire public.
A sanctuary for supporters of sexual free expression and the adult sexual media.
Ogden was nominated by President Obama himself.
ReplyDeleteOgden has a record of anti-censorship DEEDS, not just words.
Against that, all Holder had is a feel-good letter he wrote to some wingnuts back in the Clinton Era.
I have always felt quite strongly that some folks here were too worried too soon about Obama. I suppose that's the result of accumulated shellshock from being let down and betrayed over the years.
Chicago, Obama's home base, is still the corporate HQ of Playboy, Inc. It has been a player in local Democratic party politics for decades and if Obama were in any way hostile to its interests, Hefner would have issued an alert a long time ago.
Yes, Cass Sunstein is now serving in the Obama Administration (as is his wife, Samantha Power, notorious for calling Hillary a monster during the primaries), but Sunstein's review of Nadine Strossen's critique of MacKinnon in a 1995 article in the New Republic was hardly an endorsement of Mackinnon. It agreed with Strossen on some things and criticized her for not making her case well enough.
It is standard practice for nominees to backpedal in front of opposition senators at confirmation hearings. It is not clear that this is indicative of future performance. If Ogden is a hired gun only, then he would have taken jobs for both sides of the political fence. His "mercenary" portfolio is decidedly selective.
Wow, I didn't know Samantha Power and Cass Sunstein were partners. I'm familiar with both of them, but in very different contexts.
ReplyDeleteI believe Sunstein has endorsed MacKinnon's position more strongly in other writings besides the review of Strossen's book, and I believe he's one of those people like Richard Delgado and Stanley Fish that wants to weaken First Amendment protections for certain categories of speech. I haven't read Sunstein's case as to why this would be in the public good, but needless to say, its not a position I'm very warm to.
Samantha Power is somebody I have a higher opinion of based upon Genocide: A Problem from Hell and I think would have been a good addition to the Obama administration, but unfortunately she was a casualty of some of the more petty politics that were played out between Obama and Clinton during the primaries. Calling Hillary a "monster" might not have been the most polite thing to say, but people have said worse things during a political campaign. And in a really weird twist, when you compare the fact that she was given the axe over a relatively minor statement, while Jon Favreau was kept on for doing something that was arguably more insulting to Ms Clinton, and you have to wonder if there wasn't more going on there than was reported.
Oh, I see according to Wikipedia, Powers was taken back on board by Obama and is now on the National Security Council.
ReplyDeleteSheldon,
ReplyDelete"I have always felt quite strongly that some folks here were too worried too soon about Obama."
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I suspect I'm one of those folks.
Despite the fact that some wingnuts have seized on Ogden as yet another example of the "liberal extremists" in Obama's circle, I don't take my cues from them and I don't necessarily assume that Ogden will any more of a friend to people like us than his boss, Mr. Holder, or Cass Sunstein or any of the other two-degrees-left-of-center crowd actually within that circle.
I still think the MacKinnon endorsement is troubling, as is Holder's appointment, my doubts about which are not dispelled by the casual dismissal of his detailed plan to sink the porn industry as a mere "feel-good letter" from back in the day.
While I'm reasonably certain that Holder's DOJ will be quite different from that of Ashcroft and Gonzales and will be more interested in prosecuting Wall Street raiders than pornographers, that doesn't mean that this administration won't have its own hostile agenda regarding Constitutional protection for speech labled pornographic.
There is too much talk in the air, and on so-called liberal blogs, about the glories of The Swedish Solution and the urgent need to crack down on "secondary effects" of the sex industry for me to feel any safer now than I felt six months ago regarding the core issues concerning freedom of sexual expression.
If prohibitioniist sentiments are now undergirded with nominally leftist rhetoric instead of biblical ranting and the approach is one of "regulatory supervision" for the good of "prostituted women and children" and society in general with the same ultimate goal of satisfying those who want their version of "wholesome" sexuality to prevail over all others, what is the real difference?
I agree that what will ultimately matter will be deeds and not words, but until I see the deeds, I can only go by the words, and many of those words coming from sources close to the new administration are, from my POV, "problematic," as progressives like to say.
Neither neo-libs nor neo-cons are big on personal liberty or individual freedom philosophically speaking. Until proven otherwise, both must be regarded skeptically as potential opponents on the issues that impact me most directly.
And that's exactly how I will continue to regard them, whether extremists of whatever persuasion also find fault with them or not.
Iamcuriosblue, you're right about Sunstein having been pro-MacKinnon, certainly before 1995. I found this from an editorial review of his 1993 book "Democracy and the Problem of Free Speech":
ReplyDelete"[Sunstein] suggests allowing "deliberative" racist or sexist political speech, but not hateful epithets, which he compares to obscene phone calls. Convinced that there is a causal connection between pornography and violence against women, he endorses the proposal, advanced by legal scholar Catharine MacKinnon and feminist author Andrea Dworkin, for civil action against violent pornography."
It looks like the good ship Bipartisanship is firmly docked in the Oval Office once again - Sunstein on the one hand, as head of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, and Ogden on the other hand (if confirmed) as the #2 man in the Justice Department. Based on the OIRA job description, it's unlikely that Sunstein will have any influence over policy on sexually explicit material.
The links posted on Ogden's "backpedaling" also had him doing so on the issues of abortion and gay rights, not just porn - see his remarks about "activist judges". Since Obama lifted the Gag Rule almost one day after his Inauguration, the right-wing is correct in viewing the backpedaling with skepticism. But as long as the Repugnicans are pre-occupied with Obama's legislative initiatives, Ogden will slip in through the, ahem, back door.
Unless he didn't pay his taxes...
Brief correction - since Sunstein's post does cover the Internet, he could conceivably make some trouble for producers of porn on the web, although not to the scale that anti-porn Justice department could.
ReplyDeleteI'll e-mail Rachel Maddow at her MSNBC address at the nearest opportunity to get her to ask Sunstein some tough questions about his stance on these matters.
She's not shy about criticizing Obama from the Left.