Word: avatars
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...that isn't the point. Whether or not Avatar is written well or not is not grounds for its being suppressed. Important issues never come conveniently packaged. Let's suppose that Avatar is the worst written of the underground newspapers (which it is not). Who is to say that tomorrow some Cambridge magnate might not decide that the CRIMSON is offensive and badly written. The parallel is admittedly a bad one because Harvard University wields a big stick in town and the local officials wouldn't want to tangle with Harvard Law professors over the issue. The point is, however...
...trained that even when we see all the ideals we are taught to respect and cherish broken and flaunted in our faces in our own backyard, we don't act. I refer to the manner in which Cambridge and Boston police have managed to arrest 32 people for selling Avatar without so much as a whimper from the Harvard community. What were they arrested for? For not having a peddling permit? But didn't I hear that they had tried to obtain the permits? Oh, but it's obscene is it? Who are you kidding? Do you mean those colorful...
...most recent Avatar, the Children's Issue? Because if you didn't you should buy it and decide for yourself whether it is obscene in comparison with the girlie mags. If it isn't obscene then the police are cracking down on political obscenity and not literary obscenity. Perhaps local officials want to crack down on the mouthpiece of the hippies. But where is there a law that says you can harass a segment of the population you disapprove of? Haven't we been fighting that kind of thing in the South? Oh, but local politicians get mileage...
There is another, more subtle, more insidious excuse for not worrying about Avatar's fate. "It's a bad magazine, the writing is poor, and there's that kook who thinks he's God in it." To begin with Avatar has improved immensely and personally I really like the rag. Go into the University Restaurant some afternoon when a new issue has just come out. Everyone has a copy and many a professor has been caught chuckling over its refreshing tone...
...paper is in bad shape both legally and financially. The only thing which will prove to Cambridge officials that Avatar is here to stay is if lots of respectable people come out and sell it in the streets," he said...