rary political sensibilities; they can cost you a fortune. To my mind, this crossed the line. The film's opponents weren't just criticizing Milos Forman's film but trying to make it go away. Their censoring will have more bitter and wide-ranging effects than if millions of Americans saw the film and learned that a revolting magazine and its sleazy publisher spurred a landmark Supreme Court ruling protecting satire as a legitimate form of free expression. The line between criticism and censorship can be blurry, and easy to cross as a media critic, so I've set out some guidelines for myself. I criticize ideas but rarely the individuals responsible for them. I generally focus my criticism on institutions considerably bigger than those I represent - publishers, media moguls, icons, politicians, billionaire software developers. This is, admittedly, treacherous territory for a critic, but as strong as my opinions may be, they aren't intended to - or likely to - silence or harm an individual or kill an idea. Once, writing last year in The Netizen, I urged a boycott. Wal-Mart, as the largest retailer of pop music in America, has, by refusing to sell what it deems offensive, pressured music companies to sanitize CDs by deleting "offensive" songs, lyrics, and jacket covers. I was widely criticized, even by libertarians, for urging such punitive action against a company simply exercising its right to sell whatever it wished. People could shop elsewhere, they said. If I were writing the column tomorrow, would I take the same position? Yup. I'd criticize the practice of sanitizing music and call once more for a boycott. I was not seeking to kill an idea, cultural offering, or institution, but to change a noxious and, to me, transparently insincere policy. This is patently different from trying to stop people from seeing a movie or other work of expression. What I was aiming to do was counterbalance the economic pressure from those supporting the san...
