Aug 2022
Dear Anonymous Google Accuser:
Thank you for your note, the contents of which sound much like the block warden’s caution (“Your attitude is noticed, comrade.”) to Yuri in the film version of Doctor Zhivago.
I have re-read the column, which I wrote nine years ago, and find nothing offensive in it (although it is rather puerile), nor do you detail exactly what is offensive in it and why I should be sanctioned. You are being Kafka-esque, and I say this as someone who has read Kafka: you do not tell me what offense I have purportedly committed nor do you face me with an accuser. You do not even face me with you, for you do not give your name. You employ the passive voice in referring to an “Adult Content policy” and to “Community Guidelines,” which sound like something from an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner: “The Committee won’t like this, Number Six.”
Google (and one could find “google” offensive, with its history of mocking someone’s physical characteristics) is a private company, and so is free to publish or not publish, as is only right. And I am free to pity Google for moral, ethical, and literary cowardice.
But you say that I am insensitive.
I was raised in situational poverty, barely graduated from high school, and spent 18 months in Viet-Nam. Upon returning to the USA (with life-long skin cancer which the DVA denies) I worked straight nights (double shifts on weekends) as an ambulance driver and later an LVN to put myself through university. I taught for almost forty years in public school, community college, and university as an adjunct instructor of no status whatsoever. In retirement I volunteered with our local school’s reading program until the Covid ended that, and I still volunteer with the lads at the local prison. I volunteer in community cleanup after our hurricanes (tho’ I’m getting a little old for that). I’ve worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, paid off my house at age 70, receive only half of my Social Security because of some vague law, and never gamed the system. Indeed, I would say that the system has gamed me.
But you say that I am insensitive.
In Viet-Nam, by the way, I was not the shooter; I was the shootee. I served as a Navy Corpsman in the ICU at the Station Hospital in DaNang, in the outpatient clinic at Camp Tien Sha in DaNang, and finally at Moc Hoa on the Cambodian border. Several hundred people, mostly young Americans, but also ARVN, VC, NVA, Vietnamese civilians, and Cambodian civilians survived because I was there for them.
But you say than I am insensitive.
And was all of this so that some frightened committee of anonymous inquisitors staring at an Orwellian telescreen or a Mordor-ish Palantir could find an innocuous scribble insensitive?
Pffffft.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Hall
Thank you for your note, the contents of which sound much like the block warden’s caution (“Your attitude is noticed, comrade.”) to Yuri in the film version of Doctor Zhivago.
I have re-read the column, which I wrote nine years ago, and find nothing offensive in it (although it is rather puerile), nor do you detail exactly what is offensive in it and why I should be sanctioned. You are being Kafka-esque, and I say this as someone who has read Kafka: you do not tell me what offense I have purportedly committed nor do you face me with an accuser. You do not even face me with you, for you do not give your name. You employ the passive voice in referring to an “Adult Content policy” and to “Community Guidelines,” which sound like something from an episode of Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner: “The Committee won’t like this, Number Six.”
Google (and one could find “google” offensive, with its history of mocking someone’s physical characteristics) is a private company, and so is free to publish or not publish, as is only right. And I am free to pity Google for moral, ethical, and literary cowardice.
But you say that I am insensitive.
I was raised in situational poverty, barely graduated from high school, and spent 18 months in Viet-Nam. Upon returning to the USA (with life-long skin cancer which the DVA denies) I worked straight nights (double shifts on weekends) as an ambulance driver and later an LVN to put myself through university. I taught for almost forty years in public school, community college, and university as an adjunct instructor of no status whatsoever. In retirement I volunteered with our local school’s reading program until the Covid ended that, and I still volunteer with the lads at the local prison. I volunteer in community cleanup after our hurricanes (tho’ I’m getting a little old for that). I’ve worked hard all my life, paid my taxes, paid off my house at age 70, receive only half of my Social Security because of some vague law, and never gamed the system. Indeed, I would say that the system has gamed me.
But you say that I am insensitive.
In Viet-Nam, by the way, I was not the shooter; I was the shootee. I served as a Navy Corpsman in the ICU at the Station Hospital in DaNang, in the outpatient clinic at Camp Tien Sha in DaNang, and finally at Moc Hoa on the Cambodian border. Several hundred people, mostly young Americans, but also ARVN, VC, NVA, Vietnamese civilians, and Cambodian civilians survived because I was there for them.
But you say than I am insensitive.
And was all of this so that some frightened committee of anonymous inquisitors staring at an Orwellian telescreen or a Mordor-ish Palantir could find an innocuous scribble insensitive?
Pffffft.
Sincerely,
Lawrence Hall
Google is creepy.
