    22

    desi gner H.R. Geiger included in a Biafra album.  The poster had been

    displayed in numerous galleries.  Its content was a surrealistic landscape of

    penises and vaginas designed to "criticize the standardization of mass

    consumer society."

    For nearly two years, Biafra was forced to abandon music and mount a

    legal defense.  By the time he was acquitted, his rock group had disbanded.40

    In Illinois, a law was introduced before the legislature that would have

    enabled officials to arbitrarily declare the goods of a bookstore, record store

    or video store obscene.  Armed with this charge, the government would have

    been empowered to seize the suspect's property--his store, inventory, bank

    accounts, and even his home--without a trial.41  A similar piece of

    legislation--the so-called  Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement

    Act--was introduced in Congress.  Though numerous Congressmen and

    Senators admitted privately that the bill was thoroughly unconstitutional, it

    passed both Houses without a dissenting vote.42  The hysterical search for

    scapegoats had mounted to such a height that "innocent until proven guilty"

    was about to be suspended in the case of pop culture.

    The pattern was a common one in history.  A slide down the ladder of

    nations brings a search for scapegoats...and a rise in sexual hysteria.  When

    Rome was under attack by Hannibal, its citizens looked for a solid,

    conservative dictator.  The man they found pointed out that the traditional

    religious rituals had been either dropped or carried out with appalling

    carelessness.  The new leader hurriedly restored the old-time worship of the

    gods.43  A year later, Hannibal was still ravaging the countryside.  So Rome's

    brave citizens looked for a few humans to blame their troubles on.  A diligent

    "inquiry" uncovered the fact that two of the vestal virgins had been less than

    entirely virginal.  To rid the city of its sins, the Romans buried one of the

    oversexed young women alive.  (The other saved her neighbors the trouble.

    She committed suicide.)   Just to be safe, the guardians of respectability

    interred a few visiting foreigners as well.44

    The return to Rome's old moral shibboleths did not make Hannibal go

    away.

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