Censorship

BANNING the stage adaptation of Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird" at Owings Mills High School may have one beneficial effect. Students who have not yet read the novel -- required of all ninth graders in Baltimore County public schools -- may now pick it up to see what all the fuss is about. That would be the best outcome of Principal Margaret I. Spicer's unfortunate decision to squelch a student production of the play. Like many works of literature, "To Kill a Mockingbird" makes a moral point by depicting a moral vacuum; the topics it addresses -- including rape and racism -- create discomfort.

Be careful what you wish for.Museum director Arnold Lehman sought to create buzz and draw attention to the Brooklyn Museum of Art by importing from England a controversial exhibition that included human blood, animal parts and a painting of the Virgin Mary splattered with elephant dung.He surely has done so. But he also has incensed New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who on Wednesday threatened to cut off all financial support to the museum unless the exhibition, scheduled to open next week, is canceled.

MASTER Li Hongzhi teaches how to channel energies. From New York, the leader of the banned meditation and exercise movement, Falun Gong, channels his own energies on the Internet.In their panic at the success inside China of this outlawed body of traditional teaching culled from China's ancient qigong exercises and meditation, the Communist rulers of China have gone bananas.Their draconian crackdown puts to the test the supreme question of the Internet age: whether it is possible to ban any idea, teaching or popular culture when computers and access to the Internet are prevalent -- as they must be in an economy as modern as Beijing wants China's to become.

Baltimore County has been slapped with three suits by adult video store operators who say that a new county law forcing them to move is unfair and illegal.The suits, filed by operators of stores in Towson and Essex and a countywide chain, allege that the law restricting adult video stores to manufacturing districts amounts to censorship. The law took effect in March."The Baltimore County Adult Entertainment Law is vague, ambiguous, overly broad and lacking in standards so as to be subject to manipulation for purposes of censorship," according to the suit filed recently in U.S. District Court in Baltimore by Allno Enterprises Inc., the operator of 104 Video Adult Sales and Gifts, which is across from a Catholic church in the 1700 block of Eastern Blvd.

Residents of downtown Annapolis have long hated those newspaper racks and boxes of free publications, those perceived insidious eyesores that clutter their beautiful historic district.Like mushrooms, they pop up. Three, five, 22 in a row on the city's narrow sidewalks. Last summer, Alderman Louise Hammond, a Ward 1 Democrat who represents downtown, was so frustrated that she counted all the boxes within the city dock area.She counted 98. In an area just about the size of three city blocks.

BEIJING -- This capital's Hua Shi Theater was scheduled to play a sure-fire hit last month: "Rush Hour," a Hollywood blockbuster starring Hong Kong action star Jackie Chan.But at the last moment, the government ordered the theater to show old propaganda movies in preparation for this year's 50th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.Instead of the Hollywood action comedy that would have drawn huge audiences, theater manager Li Lihua had to screen such fare as "Dragon Year's Policeman," a state-made tribute to hard-working Chinese police officers.

The painting that was pulled from the walls of the House office building in Annapolis did not show a crucifix immersed in urine. Nor was it provocative, homoerotic shock work, in the vein of Robert Mapplethorpe.But some who cruise the hallways felt the classical depiction of a male nude -- legs crossed discreetly, eyes in contemplation -- was a tad too racy to keep on display. So they took it down.The decision was viewed as benign in the corridors of the Lowe House Office Building, where virtually all of the art depicts sailboats, landscapes, birds and other innocuous scenery.

THE DECISION by the library system in Carroll County to block pornography on its public-access computers may fly in the face of the American Library Association's view that such filtering amounts to censorship. It may be rare among library systems in Maryland, most of which don't filter or do so sparingly. But that doesn't make the action wrong.The decision in Carroll, one of the best-used and best-funded library systems in the state, is sound recognition that both children and adults use the Internet, and that protection of minors should be a significant concern.

AS ANALYSTS debate whether the elections resulted in a net benefit for the Republicans or the Democrats, there is a better question to ask: Does it really matter? The debate over the elections assumes there is still some substantive distinction between the two parties. But is there?A recent New York Times article on the Senate race in that state observed that the two candidates - Republican Alfonse D'Amato and Democrat Charles Schumer - are not nearly so opposed on political ideology as is generally thought.

"An Embarrassment of Tyrannies: Twenty-Five Years of Index on Censorship," by George Braziller. W.L Webb and Rose Bell. 347 pages. $30.In 1972, Index on Censorship published its first issuprotesting Soviet show trials of dissidents Larisa Daniel and Pavel Litvinov. With this volume, editors W.L. Webb and Rose Bell offer a stunning anthology of 65 selections that not only celebrates the magazine, but provides a history of censorship, repression and resistance around the globe. Poems, short stories, polemics, narratives, interviews and analyses mix freely in this kaleidoscopic chronology.