Wednesday, April 9, 2008

Pronograph* (for Pornography)

Marie Barone on "Everybody Loves Raymond" once asked her son if the DVD player his wife had gotten him for Christmas was a "pornography machine." Which isn't too far off the mark for some people, although you're unlikely to see them marketed as "pornographs" anytime soon. Pronograph* appears in OhioLINK five times (with WorldCat revealing ten cases of Pronography and three of Pronographic), but with email this sort of thing is apt to be intentional, since many office apps are tricked out with crude filters that can't distinguish between actual porn and the word "porn." Another word my own system can't abide is "Lolita." This makes it difficult to discuss the debate over porn filters in libraries—or the Nabokov classic and its two film adaptations, all of which have been the targets of censorship. Purposeful misspelling of these words is an effective workaround. (Former A.G. and antiporn guy John Ashcroft standing in front of the "Spirit of Justice," which he preferred to be hidden by a curtain, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

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