The single issue I care most about politically is free speech and freedom of expression. This Film Is Not Yet Rated, which I have previously discussed on Blogcritics, is, I think, one of the most important films made in the past decade. Stores with huge market shares, like Wal-Mart, that decide what material is or is not suitable for their customers drive me insane. I was enraged when a bunch of Congressmen got together to show official displeasure with Ice-T’s “Cop Killer,” and believe me, if Steve Earle’s “F the FCC” comes up on my iPod shuffle, I’m turning it up. It even dismays me that obviously racist material like Amos and Andy and Song of the South have been suppressed from viewers who might want to see what the fuss is all about.

The modern era with its almost omnipresent pornography on the internet has made things tough for a guy like me. It’s not Lenny Bruce and Naked Lunch people are upset about these days, and who really wants to be the one at a dinner party arguing for the need to preserve 2 Live Crew?

Freedom of expression is paramount to me, but that doesn’t mean certain things I’m forced to defend don’t still skeeve me to the bone. Once on an el train in Chicago I overheard a child of less than ten singing along with a rap song he was listening to that was essentially a boast about an upcoming rape. It didn’t change my views, but that has to send shivers up your spine, especially since most censorship arguments are based on dangers to children.

One person who is obsessed with the state of our youth is Larry Clark. Larry Clark creeps me out more than any filmmaker or writer I’ve ever come across. Clark was an accomplished photographer when he made a big splash in the movies with his film Kids. Kids is scarier than any horror movie ever made. If I ever thought the characters depicted in Kids were representative of even 1% of the youth of America, I’d pray endlessly for Armageddon.

These “kids” make the amoral drugged-out youth of River’s Edge look like Harvard Business School graduates. Its final scene, where a drugged up, barely conscious, HIV positive Chloe Sevigny gets raped at a party by another teen is perhaps the single most disturbing and repulsive thing I’ve ever seen in a movie.

I’ve now seen three of Clark’s movies, and I’m completely convinced that he isn’t a voice out to warn us about the dangerous youth we’re spawning, but just a creepy guy who has a fetish for filming graphically sexual material featuring heroin-thin, barely pubescent teens - and I haven’t even seen Ken Park, which apparently makes the rest of his work look like Romper Room.