secret irony

last sunday's postsecret batch included a picture that has circulated online for some time. it was a photoshopped depiction of what a particularly disgusting ailment might look like and was viscerally, knee-jerk yucky. the secret was something like, "even though i know this isn't real, it still haunts me."

i mentioned some of my reaction here, but i wanted to add this: most of the online debate (at least 120 pages' worth as of tuesday) revolved around a) whether the picture was offensive and b) whether removing it constituted censorship. let's deal with those, for just a minute.

a) corina is very much affected by pictures of dry, cracked soil, maps that emphasize topography, and that scene in splash when daryl hannah's legs turn back into her mer-tail. she just is. i don't have to understand why something upsets her, or be upset by it myself, in order to care enough to protect her from it. so, i warn her when especially gross scenes are coming up on episodes of house. the ridiculous online argument about whether this picture was offensive is a waste of time. people are not offended by the secret or plotting to track down whoever sent it in... they're just viscerally upset by the image. given that little good can come from the picture's presence (see my previous post), why continue upsetting them? to what end?

b) ok, but would removing it be "wrong"? no. frank, the aptly-named founder and moderator of postsecret, picks and chooses what he puts online. from the hundreds of postcards he receives each week, one or two dozen make it to the blog. more make it into his books, but the process nevertheless involves selectivity, the criteria for which are entirely frank's prerogative. hence, the censorship issue is moot.

(actually, this whole debate is moot, because the secrets are new this week, as always. regardless...)

one final note: some people expressed concern that whoever sent the postcard would be hurt by having it removed. i somehow doubt that. part of the goal of the project is to remind us how connected we are. how, even in our darkest secrets, we are not alone. like countless others, this secret resonated with many of us. ironically, by removing the secret, we would have been standing in solidarity with the secret-sharer. we would have been saying, "hey, it haunts us, too. let's stop looking."