Pussy Riot's Pioneer Valley Invisibility Cloak

from P. Riot's Facebook page 

It’s 2012 and The Daily Hampshire Gazette—the flagship newspaper for the liberal Massachusetts zip codes of Northampton, Amherst, and the Pioneer Valley--aided and abetted by the L.A. Times--is too timid to reveal the name of the female Russian punk rock trio whose members face serious jail time for “staging a brief, obscenity-laced musical protest in Moscow's cathedral of Christ the Saviour, calling on the Virgin Mary to "throw Putin out."   [L.A. Times, 7/30]

The condensed blurb on July 31 in the Gazette with an L.A. Times by-line neglects to mention the trio's true name--Pussy Riot--instead calling it a punk group with a profane name. This is apparently a case of double standards by the L.A. Times. The risk-averse bowdlerized blurb went out to the provinces via the paper's news feed, but the full story in the Times itself did not pussy foot in revealing  the band’s true name.

from the Daily Hampshire Gazette 7-31

Of Pussies and Posses

So what if  the name Pussy Riot is a  tad overstimulating?   It’s small beer compared with a  dreaded  moniker like Insane Clown Posse, which for some evokes evil clowns on the verge of violence and mayhem. Coulrophobia aside, I suspect that the posse’s name will prove forever inviolable  with the Gazette, the L.A. Times, and other American newspapers—yet another example where violence plays better in Peoria  and Amherst and Northampton than a libidinous alternative. Where have we encountered that before?

Ultimately though, it's baffling to behold the odd coupling of questionable censorship in Northampton via L.A with a story about the prospect of draconian punishment in Russia over freedom of expression. In that, I'm grateful to be on America's side of the bed, but these are strange bedfellows, odd bed-time stories.

No sad clowns need apply