Banned!
Posted: August 5th, 2008 | Filed under: International | 41 Comments »
Sure, I had heard the news that the subversive Web site firejoemorgan.com was banned here in China. I understood that. I mean, seriously, you cannot openly inflame the minds and hearts of more than a billion people by just allowing them free and clear access to Dusty Baker’s strategic mind and also various sportswriter slanders. The situation here is too volatile, the stakes too high to take any chances. The idle brain is the devil’s playground!
What I did not know until I arrived, however, is that my own blog is banned as well. I mean, seriously, what is the world coming to? I keep hearing about this one-world thing, but how can we be one world if more than a billion people are denied the basic human right to name their Pixifood and express how they feel about Derek Jeter? We have so much more we must do as mankind. Miles and miles before we sleep.
Anyway … I am here in China now after my 895 hour flight during, which I was able to see about 27 different movies that I never wanted to see in the first place. Saw that movie “21″ about blackjack and Kate Bosworth, and it reminded me that unless your card movie has John Malkovich with a terrible Russian accent or Kenny Rogers in any role, it has no chance. Also saw “Made of Honor” while sitting next to a prominent member of the Canadian softball team, which did not really make the movie any better. I’m actually fine with harmless date movies — especially when the clear and present goal is to fall asleep — but I’ve never liked movies where it seems quite apparent that the lovable man and woman who find it so hard to express their feelings for each other will, within five years of the movie ending, get divorced.
Finally, I did finally see both parts of Martin Scorcese’s epic documentary about Bob Dylan, and it is remarkable, I’m only a passing Dylan fans, so while I’d always known, in general terms, about Dylan shaking everyone up by going electric at the Newport Folk Festival, I did not really know the details (for instance, I did not know that he went back up AFTER the electric set and played an acoustic set while Pete Seeger freaked out backstage and talked about getting an ax). Scorcese found this incredible footage of Newport (the boos are clear) and even better footage of people in England screaming “Judas!” at Dylan. He also found great stuff reporters asking the dumbest questions. In one case, a reporter asked Dylan how many of his friends were involved in the protest song movement. Dylan looked at him funny and asked back, “How many?” The guy said, “Yes,” and Dylan said, “Uh, I guess about 127.” And the goofball didn’t laugh, didn’t smile, didn’t give any indication that he realized there was a joke going on. Instead, he barked back, “About 127? Or exactly 127?” And Dylan said, “Well, it’s either 127 or 142.” And it was clear the guy STILL didn’t get it.
And I cringed, because I’ve been to enough press conferences to know it’s not so different now.
In any case, the plane finally did land in China, and so I’m here, on the other side of the hole you dug in your backyard. I can’t give you too many details yet because I have spent most of my early time here unconscious on a bed that is moderately softer than my front driveway, though not as level.
Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on the point of view) I cannot see my blog and cannot post directly to it from here for those political reasons, so my lovely wife, Margo, will be posting anything I send back. I obviously will not be able to see your comments and make any necessary adjustments. If you see errors that must be fixed or have a comment to make that simply cannot wait three weeks, you can email me soon.
And I’ll get this Albert Pujols post up when I can.
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I’ve made that trip; exhausting. Go Joey; it’ll get better. The best hamburger of my life was at the HRC in Hong Kong. After a week of eating the kind of chinese food that causes the Chinese to flee their homeland for America…
i have to wonder what calloway kid’s hamburger was really made of..
hope you have a good time, know we will all love your reports…and stick with the veggies while you’re there..
If it makes you feel better my blog is also not available in China which means a billion people are missing out on my hillarious antics.
Brian Bannister is a threat to Chinese national security, I’ve heard.
Actually, I think that about half of the people that read my blog live in China. Now that I think about it, maybe I should send that guy an email to thank him or something.
Margo,
Thank you.
The ghost of Henny Youngman is coming for you, motherscratcher.
You know, I really like the way motherscratcher looks at the end of that sentence. Not sure what that says about me…
Sneak over to the WaPo HQ. They have a dedicated T1 line installed and no internet blockage.
Our intrepid reporter, Joaldo, finding a way to get his posts up even in a country where he is banned. Alright!
Thanks Margo
Thanks Margo!
I’m actually more concerned that Joe makes it through his Beijing experience than I am about the athletes themselves…those athletes aren’t working on any baseball books I really want to read; what do I care if *they* survive the smog?
They must have banned ScorSese in China too.
I notice that people have been clicking over to my blog since I commented earlier. I guess it’s because I said I was banned. I appreciate your interest but I don’t think I’ve done anything to get banned, I believe most blogs from the US are banned in China.
I think Will is right. The Chinese government exerts a lot of control on what is seen on the internet in their country. And what they let be seen is not a whole lot.
My wife, health food nut, vegetarian, abstainer of all things with fat said the best meal she ever ate was at a Pizza Hut in Beijing after a week in China.
She also recommends Joe stick with the bottled water, though there is no way to communicate that to him. Poor guy.
I also want to say thanks to Margo for bringing us Joe’s dangerous words from China.
One of the headlines in the news today is from an Olympic official saying that it isn’t pollution in the skies over China, but rather just a yellowish “mist” that is caused by humidity and evaporation.
Also, Joe, while you are in China you should read a great book by a famous dissident author named “Brown Spots on the Wall” by Hu Flung Poo.
My China experience was purely tourist-y. I stayed in hotels the entire way, and ate at restaurants obviously designed for tourists. And the thing I remember most about those meals was the lack of any water. Instead, they’d have 2-liter bottles of pop. You can imagine my disappointment, especially if we had to split two of said bottles between 15 people.
Anyways, have fun in China, and many thanks to Margo for the updates.
I feel so subversive. And just to make the Chinese censors feel better…
Free Tibet!
my own blog is banned as well.
I blame the comments…
Does China somehow block VPN connections? Yes, it would be slow, but at least you could get your unfiltered on.
In hindsight, I regret telling the People’s Armed Police that “Posnanski” is American slang for “revolutionary” and that a “Banny” is a type of enhanced Molotov cocktail.
It was really just a goof. Sorry Joe.
Yes, the reporters are clueless in No Direction Home. They constantly try to label Dylan and force him to answer pointless, unoriginal questions- mainly to make it easier for them to describe Dylan to the public.
I like when that shy, young female reporter asked Dylan,”Do you prefer songs with a subtle or obvious message?” and then says that she understands his songs are supposed to have a subtle message.
When Dylan asked where she heard that, she admits “in a movie magazine.”
His point was made.
Thanks, Margo!
And does this mean that we’ll get to vote on the greatest living pitcher for 3 more weeks? By then I should be able to make up my mind.
Not related at all, but I just stumbled across my own pixifood yesterday…the Totino’s Party Pizza. I probably could have survived on those as a kid. Plus, I loved the idea that I could eat an entire pizza, even if it was party-sized.
Yesterday, though, I was babysitting my niece, and needed to make her some lunch. I saw one of those in the freezer and thought “perfect…we can split that”. Ugh. I did eat about half of it, and I felt awful the rest of the day. It was like someone put ketchup on a cardboard box. And that was just plain cheese…if I remember right, the “pepperoni” version had little square “pepperonis” on it. I can’t imagine any scenario where those pepperonis aren’t completely disgusting.
The good news was that my niece seemed to like her half. Which seems to confirm that the Totinos Party Pizza is officially a pixifood.
who else thinks margo should take a few liberties with joe’s posts and find subtle ways to tease him?
Gives new meaning to the term Banny Log, eh?
I think we all saw this coming, given Duane Kuiper’s prominence in Falun Gong.
What a line:
In any case, the plane finally did land in China, and so I’m here, on the other side of the hole you dug in your backyard.
The question is:
Do Chinese children dig holes in the ground to get to America?
I’ve always considered Dylan, among his other achievements, as the first rapper. Give a listen to, “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m only bleeding)” in the context of the time (1964), and see what you think.
And yes, Totinos Pizza is classic Pixifood, with the cubed, rubbery pepperonis. My wife likes them for some reason – she’s easy to please, obviously – and I grabbed a piece of hers not long ago, remembering how I used to devour them as a child. Good lord. I’m fairly certain that plastic isn’t an ingredient (plastic should melt in the oven, and possibly catch fire, right?), but that’s what I taste when I eat them.
I don’t know why they would consider this blog subversive.
By the way Joe, the chair is against the wall. Repeat, the chair is against the wall. Your mother is coming to visit. Your mother is coming to visit. That is all.
Joe,
Working for the military has a price…
I asked my friend who teaches in China to check most of my favorite blogs and my own personal one and all of them were blocked
I guess they didn’t much like your disparaging words about Tang, since that dynasty ruled China for almost 3 centuries and was considered a high point in Chinese history.
The Dylan doc is certainly cool, especially to a newbie/passing fan. I remember watching it over two or three nights on tv when it came out and thinking Scorsese didn’t really bring that much to the table though. If you saw the Pennebaker thing and already knew the basic ark of his career/work, I’m thinking you have to be a little disappointed, like Scorsese just shallowly throwing himself at an iconic topic (ie Shine a Light, which I didn’t see but am guessing it was less than revelatory).
Last Waltz was good, somewhat ponderous, and given the lineup and moment, pretty hard to screw up, I thought.
Hey Joe,
As a longtime reader of both blogs who rarely comments, I just wanted to add my own two cents in precisely when you won’t be able to read it. But I just couldn’t keep silent – it’s too important. What’s too important, you ask? (Oh that’s right, you can’t read the comments) Totino’s Pizza Rolls.. I got them the other day for my kids because they’re on sale and the kids love them…I know, I’m going to hell…and there are a few left over and I pop one in my mouth and …. holy schmazzoly, they are DELICIOUS! How is that possible?
totinos pizzas are amazing on a drunken night at 2am. you guys are crazy!
The pressser in the Dylan bio was great.
I also like the hippie asking him about the significance of his motorcycle shirt on the “Highway 61″ album cover. From what I recall, the hippie launched into his rendition of the symbolic nature of bi-cycled vehicles and the duality of their nature in regard to youth culture or some such thing while Dylan, dumbfoundedly, could only respond by laughing and saying something like, “Um, yeah. Motorcycles are nice, I guess.”
I think the thing that I got out of Scorcese’s bio that I didn’t get out of Pennebaker’s is just how much of a toll the fame took on Dylan. You could see by the end of the film that he was really cracking up. What it really reminded me of is the arc of Kurt Cobain. They are very remarkably similar. Both were seen as the voice of a new, uprising, self-important youth culture. They had their music over-analyzed, their words popularly over-emphasized. And neither could really understand what the hub-ub was all about. It seems to me that if Dylan didn’t wreck his motorcycle, we could have lost him in the same way we lost Cobain.
Bellweather,
Good analogy. The difference IMHO is that Bob was smarter, set out purposely to craft Dylan from Zimmerman, and seemed to enjoy the repartee with the “square”/”philistine” press at least early on. Cobain bought into a kind of commercial-noncommercial paradigm whereas I think Bob’s view was a bit more, let’s say, transcendent. I think Cobain was a bit more unstable, fatalistic by constitution….
I agree that the fame took a toll on the guy and that he was done with the spotlight by hook or by crook after Blonde on Blonde. But you could compare him to others besides Cobain and anyone else that huge that has to go a little bonkers some time, like that Seal song. Brando, Elvis, Lennon, Elton John, Eddie Murphy, Michael Jackson, etc. he fared okay.
I’d like to think that I’m Joe’s biggest fan actually living in China, and if I may I’ll shed some light onto the situation.
Even for a country with a massive labor force like China, it would simply be impossible for the Chinese censors to ban blogs individually. Certain sites, such as those pertaining to Tibetan Independence, the Falun Gong religious movement, or Wikipedia (usually) are singled out but for the most part the government will just do a blanket ban of all Blogspot or Typepad powered blogs. Why Joe’s is banned I have no idea, but I believe FJM is run on Blogspot so that’s why it isn’t permitted here. That, or members of the Chinese Communist Party secretly believe that certain pitchers “just know how to win”.
Luckily for us, there are proxy servers that allow us to see prohibited websites undetected, though it does slow loading speeds down considerably. So don’t worry, Joe, no one in the Chinese government has an axe to grind with you!
Enjoy yourself in Beijing, Joe, and thank you Margo for keeping this wonderful blog up and running.
Joe,
Maybe you can share experiences with Luther Campbell and 2 Live Crew about being banned. Censorship turned out to be very lucrative for those guys.
AV
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