Case in point: in an interview with The Guardian on Sunday, Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google, said that the principles of openness and universal access that underpinned the creation of the internet are under threat. “Very powerful forces have lined up against the open internet on all sides and around the world”. Brin says that the threats come from governments increasingly trying to control access and communication by their citizens; the entertainment industry’s attempts to crack down on piracy; and the rise of “restrictive” walled gardens such as Facebook and Apple, which tightly control what software can be released on their platforms.

Brin has accumulated a fortune that Forbes says is worth $18.7 billion, by creating a powerful research tool that has almost achieved monopoly status in its ability to help find information. And what he seems to be objecting to is the ability of others to infringe on his monopoly.

Brin seems most reasonable when he objects to government interference in the ability of its citizens to use the web. Everyone hopes that the efforts of China, Iran, Russia, North Korea and Saudi Arabia soon collapses in failure. But Brin objects not only to traditionally authoritarian states, but also to Great Britain, which plans to monitor social media and web use. The UK is doing this in response to concerns about terrorism and about criminal activity. Now, anyone with half a brain knows that whenever a government monitors its citizens, the government itself has to be watched with a close and skeptical eye. But fighting terrorism, child pornography and cyber-bullying are activities squarely within the legitimate police power of the state. Do we want to stop terrorists from conspiring in restaurants but allow them to plot away in cyberspace? Don’t be daft.

Now look what else Brin objects to: the attempts of entertainment companies to fight piracy. Where is freedom under threat here? I don’t think stopping people from stealing the work of other people is a threat against freedom. It’s a pollution of the language to think otherwise. Brin also objects to the tight control Facebook and Apple exert over their platforms. “There’s a lot to be lost,” he said. “For example, all the information in apps – that data is not crawlable by web crawlers. You can’t search it.” He says that under such rules, he and co-founder Larry Page would not have been able to create Google. “You have to play by their rules, which are really restrictive,” he said. “The kind of environment that we developed Google in, the reason that we were able to develop a search engine, is the web was so open. Once you get too many rules, that will stifle innovation.”

It seems to me that the main reason Brin is objecting to other people protecting their property is that it makes his property less valuable. He says that he’s concerned that having these kinds of regulations will stifle innovation. I’m sure he’s right. Look how locks and safes have stifled growth and innovation in the field of bank robbery.

It was interesting to place Brin’s spirited defense of freedom in light of Google’s announcement last week that it was going to split its stock. It seems that the freedom that Brin so staunchly champions in cyberspace is not something he values as much on such real world places as Wall Street. As Andrew Ross Sorkin reported in The New York Times on Monday (speaking of places that probably wished it could have preserved the value of its intellectual property on the internet), Brin, Page and company chairman Eric Schmidt “cleverly” created the stock split so that Google could issue a special new class of shares to current shareholders. The catch: the new class of shares has no voting rights. “In other words, the entire point of the stock split was to solidify the founders’ control of the company by diminishing the future voting power of the shareholders. So even as the founders continue a plan to sell some of their shares over the next three years through a program they enacted in 2009 and the company continues to issue new shares to employees, they have developed a plan to retain an iron grip over Google.” This decision will be put before shareholders at the company’s annual meeting, but since these three principles own two-thirds of the company, the result is a foregone conclusion: with every new non-voting share they sell, the voting shares they retain will be all the more powerful. “At a time when shareholders are increasingly seeking a bigger voice and more democracy,” says Sorkin, “Google is going the other way.”

It’s not threats to freedom that Brin wants to stop. It’s threats to his power.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

The fifth season of Mad Men got off to a fast start, and although a lot was happening, the episode will likely go down as the `Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo’ episode, after the song that Jessica, Don’s young wife, performed for him at the birthday party she threw for him.

As Lauren Streib reports in The Daily Beast, the song is actually called `Zou Bisou Bisou’. “The original version was recorded by Gillian Hills, a Brigitte Bardot lookalike who found fame as a French yé-yé girl—one of a handful of young, female European singers who catapulted yé-yé music into an international movement, popular among teens during the era. (“Yé-yé” refers to exclamations of “yeah yeah!” during rock and roll.) Roughly translated, “zou” is a casual exclamation and “bisou” is a sweet kiss—a peck on the cheek to say hello and goodbye. So the lyrics hash out to: Oh! Kiss kiss / My God, they are sweet! / …Oh! Kiss kiss / the sound of kisses /…Oh! Kiss kiss /…That means, I confess / But yes, I love only you!”

The song was performed by Sophia Loren in the 1960 film The Millionairess, co-starring Peter Sellers. “Loren sang an English version, Zoo Be Zoo Be Zoo. Loren’s version uses the same tune, but the lyrics and delivery swell with a bit more sophistication. The movie was a hit in the U.K., though the American response was lukewarm.”

At least that what he seemed to be saying. He led off referring to a lame joke that Robert DeNiro made at an Obama fundraiser about whether America is ready for a white First Lady, which caused professional mischief-maker Newt Gingrich to pause in his brilliant parody of a political campaign to demand that President Obama offer an apology. DeNiro tugged his forelock and everything was set to be forgotten when Maher chose to spotlight the event as Exhibit A in his campaign against Excessive Touchiness.

“When did we get it in our heads that we have the right to never hear anything we don’t like? In the last year, we’ve been shocked and appalled by the unbelievable insensitivity of Nike shoes, the Fighting Sioux, Hank Williams Jr., Cee Lo Green, Ashton Kutcher, Tracy Morgan, Don Imus, Kirk Cameron, Gilbert Gottfried, the Super Bowl halftime show and the ESPN guys who used the wrong cliché for Jeremy Lin after everyone else used all the others. Who can keep up? ‘’

Surely I can’t; I wouldn’t pass the final if these questions were on Intro to Contretemps 101. But this appeal to reason was hardly Maher’s true agenda. Maher was camouflauing himself amid these minor offenders because just a couple of weeks ago, after Rush Limbaugh was roundly and soundly rebuked for his nasty and misogynistic vilification of the Georgetown Law school student Sandra Fluke, Maher found himself dragged up on similar charges. In the Daily Beast, Kirsten Powers cataloged the painfully large number of insults that supposedly liberal commentators used against women who happened to hold views different than their own. Among those she cited: Ed Schultz calling Laura Ingraham a “right-wing slut” on MSNBC ; Keith Olbermann saying on MSNBC that Michelle Malkin was “a mashed-up bag of meat with lipstick’’; Chris Matthews, again on MSNBC, calling Hilary Clinton at various times a “she-devil,” “Nurse Ratched,” “Madame Defarge”, “witchy,” “anti-male,” and “uppity”; and Rolling Stone’s Matt Taibbi, who wrote in his blog, “When I read [Malkin’s] stuff, I imagine her narrating her text, book-on-tape style, with a big, hairy set of balls in her mouth.”

“But the grand pooh-bah of media misogyny,’’ wrote Powers, “is without a doubt Bill Maher—who also happens to be a favorite of liberals—who has given $1 million to President Obama’s super PAC. Maher has called Sarh Palin a “dumb twat” and “a cunt.’’ He called Palin and Michelle Bachmann “MILFs’’–“Morons I’d Like to Forget.’’

As is now all too obvious, Maher didn’t write the article because he was concerned about people being too insensitive; it’s because being a pig and a boor is a big part of his act, and he’s probably worried that if too many people start to call him on it, he’ll lose his HBO gig and find himself back in front of a brick wall at Mr. Laffs saying “Hey, tell me—what’s with chicks and shoes?’’

“I don’t want to live in a country where no one ever says anything that offends anyone,’’ writes Maher. “If we sand down our rough edges and drain all the color, emotion and spontaneity out of our discourse, we’ll end up with political candidates who never say anything. . . ‘’

Is that what Maher is doing when he calls Palin a cunt? Being a little rough-edged? Supplying a little color? Emotion? I know it’s not spontaneity. Every one of those witless insults is measured for effect, calculated to get the meatheads in the audience to go “Woooooo!’’

These remarks are not clever, or witty, or even very entertaining, and certainly not brave. They’re just markers, a way Maher tells the audience that he and they are alike because none of them likes Palin, except that he’s a bigger truth-teller, because he’s willing to be bolder, more irreverent, and more obscene.

In fact, all he’s doing is being a pig. He may as well oink at his audience, and let them squeal at him in return. He may as well run as advertisement that says “I can’t help it if I’m not as smart as Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert.”

Maker may contend that he treats men just as harshly as women, but he’s smart enough to recognize the weakness of that argument. Men are not laboring under the effects of centuries of discrimination and worse. He wouldn’t use words like nigger and kike, and for the same reasons, he shouldn’t use cunt or slut or twat. These words cut more deeply than we can see. A 2010 study showed that calling a female candidate such sexist names as “ice queen” and “mean girl” significantly undercut her political standing, and did much more harm than gender-neutral criticism based solely on her policy positions and actions. “Harder-edged attacks, such as referring to her as a prostitute, were equally damaging among voters,’’ reported USA Today. “The female candidate lost twice as much support when even the mild sexist language was added to the attack. Support for her initially measured at 43% fell to 33% after the policy-based attacks but to 21% after the sexist taunts.’’ The study showed that the drop was significant among both men and women, those under 50 and over 50, and those with college educations and without. “The sexist language undermined favorable perceptions of the female candidate, leading voters to view her as less empathetic, trustworthy and effective.’’

Maher says he doesn’t want to live in a country where no one ever says anything that offends anyone. I don’t think he’s in any real danger of that. What I don’t want is to live in a country where my wife or my daughters or my friends could stand up and speak their minds, and be slagged as a slut or a cunt by nitwits like Limbaugh or Maher. This isn’t Afghanistan or Iran. Women shouldn’t be ridiculed and degraded for speaking their minds.

Maher’s on HBO, so his piggery can’t cost him advertisers. But what it ought to cost him is the approval of free-thinking people. So here’s my question. It’s for Charles Blow Arianna Huffington Alexandra Pelosi, Andrew Sullivan, Russ Feingold, James Carville, Ross Douthat, Neil deGrasse Tyson, John Heilemann ,Eliot Spitzer, Al Sharpton Bill Moyers, Jennifer Granholm, Chris Matthews and all the other leaders who have been on guests on Maher’s program. Is whatever you’re selling so important that you will perfume Maher’s stench with your presence on his stage?

“You know there’s and old Irish saying–there’s all kinds of old Irish sayings. (Laughter.) At least my Grandfather Finnegan, I think he made them up, but it says, may the hinges of our friendship never go rusty. Well, with these two folks that you’re about to meet, if you haven’t already, there’s no doubt about them staying oiled and lubricated here. Ladies and gentlemen — (laughter) — now, for you who are not full Irish in this room, lubricating has a different meaning for us all.”

There’s the line Halper thinks is a dirty joke: “Lubricating has a different meaning for us all.”

Well, lubricating may have a lot of meanings, but the Oxford English Dictionary offers only three. The first is to “apply a substance such as oil or grease to (an engine or component) to minimize friction and allow smooth movement: remove the nut and lubricate the thread.” The second is to “make (a process) run smoothly: the availability of credit lubricated the channels of trade.” The third is “informal, to make (someone) convivial, especially with alcohol: men lubricated with alcohol speak their true feelings.” Drinking. Biden was talking about drinking. He was meeting some Irish people, and he saw an opportunity to bring up a cliched and by now faintly insulting stereotype about the Irish and drinking. But to leap to the idea that he is referring to something sexual?

I think there are two ways to interpret this story. One is that Biden made a glancing sexual reference at a White House function for the female prime minister of Ireland. The other is that Daniel Halper has told us entirely too much about the contents of his night table.

The brilliant Harlan Ellison on the sad state of the American writer.

Doonan’s second great observation was that Monroe was not materialistic. “Marilyn Monroe. . .owned diddly-squat. . . . There were no Renoirs or Picassos. Her knickknacks were pedestrian. Her cookware was greasy. Her spatulas were bent. Even her Golden Globe was broken. The majority of her clothing showed surprising wear and tear. She had worn it all repeatedly and there just wasn’t that much of it. Her jewelry? With the exception of her DiMaggio wedding ring it was a bunch of paste danglers and costume crap. Shoes? Yes, there were several pairs of black suede Ferragamo stilettos with worn heels. But Marilyn—brace yourself for another shocker—was more into books than shoes. Her poignant desire to cultivate her mind and give herself an education resulted in an extensive library of first editions.”

I love that!

In one of those bits of harmonic convergence that we used to call coincidence, on the same day I read Doonan’s article, I read that Eve Arnold had died. The brilliant photographer had created many stunning images of celebrities and nobodies alike, but she was perhaps best known for her pictures of Monroe. You can see why.

This, of course, is the same excuse law enforcement officials have used for 24-hour CCTV coverage, national identity cards, DNA data bases, and other forms of surveillance: “If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.” But we do all have things to hide, and not all of them rise to level of criminality. Burping, farting, scratching our nether regions, picking our noses, pleasuring ourselves, making rude remarks, cracking thoughtless jokes, drinking milk straight out the carton–well, that would be an inventory of my morning that I wouldn’t care to see immortalized on the world wide web. And there are other activities–lighting up a doobie, stepping out on the missus–that may be immoral or illegal, but really aren’t any business of the public. It’s not the kind of information that the authorities should be accumulating, and it certainly isn’t what journalists should be gathering either.

I’m not about to go all Columbia School of Journalism all over McMullan, but as someone who, as an editor of Spy was party to going through the trash cans of celebrities, and to playing pranks on the rich and powerful that involved identity misrepresentation, I think I’m in a pretty good position to tell McMullan where to get off. Privacy is not the space bad people need to do bad things. Privacy is the space people need to avoid judgmentalism, and it is not up to us who needs it and why. Pedophiles are not entitled to privacy for the obvious reason that they are perpetrating a crime; privacy is a non-factor once another party has been injured. McMullan, of course, and his ilk do not spend very much of their time capturing pedophiles, and spend a far greater portion tracking philandering footballers and amorous starlets and kinky executives. When Lindsay Lohan and Mel Gibson sprawl their problems on the sidewalk, it seems to me that they are fair game for journalists. But journalists are not the Mutaween, self-appointed enforcers of morality and the law. We don’t get to pursue and harass, and we certainly don’t get to lap the police in being able to probable without probable cause and warrants. That’s just not our job; it’s just not the way we do things. It’s kind of refreshing that McMullan spoke up for himself so unapologetically before the lawmakers, but I am happy to say that if he ever came into any of the publications where I worked and proposed using his usual news gathering techniques , I’m certain we would have unapologetically kicked his ass into the street.