Earlier today I read a news article that stated that someone had successfully knocked the Westboro Baptist Church offline effectively silencing them online. There are few people who get under my skin, but these people, they hit all my buttons. They hate gays and are obnoxious about it.

While I don’t approve of their speech being curtailed, as the First Amendment protects us all, despite the quality of what we say and I must respect that. Deep down their silencing does gratify me, despite it technically being a crime.

What I think should be a new element of popular media is a type of banishing. Banishment has always been a really effective punishment for anyone. Yes you committed a crime, and so you are sent away. In this context however it’s impossible by the law to actually physically banish anyone. What I propose is a kind of attention-banishment. In the case of the WBC they are allowed to spout their vitriol and hatred according to the First Amendment, but every popular media outlet agrees that they are to be ignored. This could only work if all the elements of popular media could be brought together in this way, but it doesn’t really have to be an all-or-none deal, a majority would do just as well. Everyone agrees that stories that touch on the WBC are skipped. It’s not that anyone curtails the WBC’s speech, it’s just that nobody really learns of it or hears about it. In many ways, they are banished, ignored, and over time and enough starvation of attention they will fade into nothingness. The majority of the banishment would be covered if Google removed every reference to the WBC from its index and CNN purged all the stories in its archive that touch on the WBC. In a way, it’s a little like 1984, that if we all agree to forget, and if we all agree that organizations like the WBC exist, then in a very real way, they actually cease to exist. Yes, they can continue to scream and protest and carry on without any curtailment to their actual speech, but we all agree to turn our backs on them and ignore them. Eventually there won’t be any reason to grandstand and show off and protest for them because it’s meaningless. Nobody sees them, everyone ignores them, and no cameras will point their way. No reporters will write stories on the WBC and their existence will be struck from public consciousness. It’s even within this argument that the Wikipedia article for Westboro Baptist Church be eliminated. No historical record of them will be shared.

With this type of banishment, especially in our increasing socially connected world, anyone who is declared banished might as well just give up what they are doing, as it’s just a waste of time, money, and energy.

This reminds me of one of those late-night sci-fi shows that used to be on, like Outer Limits, where criminals weren’t incarcerated at all. They had a mark placed on their forehead that they couldn’t cover up and anyone who saw the mark behaved as if they didn’t exist. They weren’t seen, they weren’t talked to, they weren’t THERE. They could do anything they wanted, but they were cut off from the rest of humanity – and in a way, banished. What a punishment. It just takes my breath away.