One afternoon last week I was sitting around doing homework when my friend, we’ll call him Mr. X to protect the devious, asked me if I had ever looked up www.whitehouse.com.

“Silly Mr. X,” I replied. “The White House is part of the government, so the web site is .gov, not .com.”

He insisted that I try it anyway, so I went over to the computer, typed in the address and pushed enter. Naturally, I was expecting to see a picture of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, a couple of flags and maybe the mug of good old Bill. However, when Netscape finished doing its magic, I found myself face to face with the head of Hillary Clinton superimposed upon the buxom body of a young lady and two strategically placed stars.

I laughed, Mr. X laughed, and then I scrolled the page down to find more of the same featuring Bill, Al Gore and Ross Perot with crazy cartoon bubble dialogue as well as a number of links to pages about free speech. I couldn’t resist going to the viewer feedback page. Much of the response was positive. Some people thought the jokes were the funniest things since soap on a rope. Someone from the Netherlands was envious of our freedom to mercilessly criticize our political figures.

As you might imagine, not everyone appreciated the site, many of whom were not conscious of the .com/.gov difference. Most of these letters dealt with imposing value systems upon others, but one of these caught my attention. It came from a teacher who was a little bit miffed when her elementary school class experienced the same surprise that I did when attempting to learn about government on the White House kids page.

I for one think that if you can send people to the moon with slide rules, you can probably learn about government without the Internet. All I learned from Socks the Cat’s tour of the White House was that President Clinton likes the color blue, bananas, math and the movie “High Noon” (no mention of favorite interns) and Benjamin Harrison had a goat named Old Whiskers. I’m not so Victorian as to suggest left-handed spoon use leads to sexual perversion, but I can’t help agreeing that kids would be better off without seeing the first lady modified.

This is where most people make the folly of assuming this is a free speech problem. I would say that this is a maturity problem. The people behind this page are most likely a couple of goons with sophomoric senses of humor who think they are light-years smarter than the general populace because they know that .gov is for government. Their motivation is more likely based on a need for attention than philosophy.

The question of how to get rid of them then arises. The wrong answer comes from a woman from Tennessee who writes she will “do anything in [her] power to get this smut off the computer.” This statement can make knees shake when it bellows from the depths of the chests of superheroes, but from the lips of an average citizen it sounds desperate and ridiculous. I’m sure it thoroughly amused the operators of the site.

If anything, making an issue out of offensive things makes the situation worse as it attracts attention. A few years back, a Cincinnati museum curator faced obscenity charges for displaying a Robert Maplethorpe exhibit. Some of the works on display were considered by some to be pornographic and had homosexual themes. This caused a lot of discussion about what is and isn’t art and which artists and museums should receive federal funding and which should not, which is an entirely different bag of marbles.

I personally have a special place in my heart for anything that bothers Jesse Helms and would suggest that if you’re afraid of catching the occasional glimpse of Mr. Winkles, you shouldn’t hang around art museums. At any rate, if you gave me something to hide ten years ago, I would have considered putting it in an art museum in Ohio because I would have never guessed anyone would look there. Arresting people and tossing around the word “pornography” is about the best conceivable way to make the average person go to the art museum and see what they ought not.

Remember all the commotion that accompanied the debut of “NYPD Blue?” If you think that the creator of the show actually believed that flashing butts on the screen was intrinsic to the story line of a show about cops, you’re nuts. His previous attempt with “Cop Rock” was a far cry from the glory days of “Hill Street Blues.” He needed something to push his show into the limelight again, and since all he does is make shows about police, it obviously wasn’t going to be creativity. By ruffling peoples feathers about asses on television he rode the wave of free publicity into artificially high ratings.

(Every body part has made numerous cameos on public television in the past, but since public television seems to be a closely guarded secret, people rarely complain.)

The freedom of speech will be around for a long time to come. Taking that right away would only transform the Michigan Militia from a lovable bunch of anti-government weekend commandos into a serious problem. Without the First Amendment, we would be better off living somewhere with better health care. With this in mind, we can never stop people from saying and painting things, so we are left with the burden of dealing with them. We can resort to Elwood’s humorous dealings with the Illinois Nazis or we can act responsibly and save ourselves a lot of trouble.

I have often thought that the closest humanity has come to altruism can be found in the rules of the playground. The best advice is the most simple — don’t encourage people. This requires much less effort and strain on your ticker than any other method. Every time someone brings objectionable things to public light, the rest of us get stuck with Marilyn Manson or 2 Live Crew. Just think of all the people who will be typing www.whitehouse.com into their computers this afternoon who would have never thought to unless they saw it in the newspaper.

Every now and then something pops up, like Dick Seed, which requires public action. It’s always a good idea to give politicians hell and to keep a close eye on groups like the KKK, but when it comes to art and “art,” cut your losses and let the artists create and the “artists” amuse themselves. Perhaps the only sure-fire way to separate the real artists from the fame seekers is to ignore them and let time decide. Many of the most revered artists from the past enjoyed little success during their lifetimes but continued to do their work anyway, while nearly all the sensationalist dime novel tales of cowboys and Indians have long since been forgotten.

There will always be people are out there saying and doing objectionable things. The larger the fuss you feel obligated to make will only draw more attention to the things you want to keep subdued and send a more encouraging message to those using our freedoms for gross personal gain.

As a footnote, sometime in the past few days www.whitehouse.com decided to abandon their philosophical ideals in order to focus more on pornography. No longer is it a light-hearted realm of political satire, but rather another spoke in the viscous wheel of the sex industry.

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Erik Hoversten is a junior in math from Eagan, Minnesota.