I ran into the censor. Of all the things I have thought of doing, tested the waters about and accomplished, being censored was not on the list. I was a censored virgin. Oddly, I never knew that and somehow now I feel violated.
Syria had been in the news at the time. That despotic regime certainly looked to have the capability of using chemical weapons, though the rebels also appeared to have similar capability to be similarly barbaric.
The Syrian situation became the focus of a blog entry as I sorted out my own feelings on the matter. When I find myself unable to define a particular position on a subject my recourse is writing. Writing, for me, is an exercise that serves to align thought in my mind. Though I am not always quick with words of wit, cutting sarcasm or soaring rhetoric I find it simple to sort ideas out through written words. We writers enjoy the 7 second delay of editing.
Some of my mind ramblings end up under the delete button when I can’t get to a coherent thought expressible in succinct text. Some end up in the ideas file for later reconsideration and some of those spend a life sentence never again seeing the light of the monitor.
On occasion I come up with a piece that speaks even to me. From the raw word dump to the screen, through editing, after uncountable rewrites and perhaps even an out loud reading to flush out lingering errors some pieces stand out demanding exposure. Some demand to be shared and when they do, I do.
Any of you who have been subjected to my unending stream of articles, blog posts, Facebook posts, emails, Tweets and other general ramblings know that. Mostly I do it for me and I am happy when anyone else enjoys this piece or that.
Out of the soon to be censored work grew a blog entry titled “Middle East Indecisiveness.” I actually found it rather informative and enjoyed writing it. In the end I found myself clear on why I had been unable to decide which side of the issue to take. Once the piece was rewritten, edited and finished I knew that I stood on the side of avoiding involvement.
I posted the piece to my blog. As usual I posted a link from my blog to my Facebook wall to alert readers of the entry. As a teaser I copied in a sample — ‘Supporting one group of brutal killers to protect them from another group of brutal killers leaves the mind stuck, indecisive. For in that indecisiveness resides the honesty of not wanting to act once again in the interest of others at the expense of ourselves.’
Facebook said “no thanks.” Actually Facebook said ‘this may not be posted to this wall,’ or something close to that. I tried it on my own wall instead of the news feed. Facebook didn’t like that either. Thinking it might be a computer problem I closed the browser and after reopening it and Facebook gave it another try with the same result. Being persistent I opened my laptop and attempted it again. Same result.
Momentarily flummoxed, looking over my shoulder for the ‘Facebook Spelling Police,’ I tried a different post. I wrote “hi” on my wall and Facebook liked that just fine. I posted the blog link only without the description and Facebook liked that just fine. I retried the blog link with the description to no avail.
Of the offending text I presume that Facebook does not like the use of the term brutal killer. That or it doesn’t like the word honesty. Who knows? And in the end, who cares, because Facebook is a free service controlled by others. It would, however, be nice to at least be able to tell specifically what offends Facebook. Being a writer I can find another word that says the same thing; after all English is an enormous language.
Ric Reily is the author of two books, “Money Is The Root Of All — Skip The Debt Habit,” and “Gregory’s Hero.” His firm CFO On Call provides small business finance and operations consulting. Ric is married to John, his partner of 26 years, and lives in South Florida with their Havanese dog, Buckley. You can reach Ric at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
