Monthly Archives: September 2021

Facebook and YouTube Join Twitter, Requesting Transfer of Censorship Cases to NDCA – Law Street Media

Posted: September 22, 2021 at 2:53 am

A group of social media companies and their leaders have asked the Miami, Florida federal court overseeing the cases filed against them by former president Donald Trump and several other social media users to move the lawsuits to the Northern District of California. Twitter Inc. moved to transfer the case pending against it earlier this month on similar grounds, that its terms of service mandate that litigation filed against it take place in the proposed transferee district.

The July-filed complaints allege that the platforms illegally censored the plaintiffs in violation of federal law and the U.S. Constitution, as previously reported. In Facebooks filing, the company notes several procedural pitfalls plaguing the lawsuit, including the plaintiffs failure to serve either the company or its CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Facebook also recounts how the plaintiffs filed an amended complaint that added two Florida law claims for unfair business practices in addition to its allegations that Facebook and Zuckerberg violated the First Amendment by censoring protected speech. The lawsuit also claims that Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act incentivized Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg to deplatform and censor Plaintiffs, and so is unconstitutional, according to last weeks motion.

Both transfer requests note at their outset that the cases are legally baseless and should be dismissed. They argue that the companies terms of service forum selection clauses govern where lawsuits may take place, and that place is the Northern District of California.

Facebook first contends that its mandatory forum-selection clause is valid, explaining that the plaintiffs cannot meet their heavy burden of showing that enforcement would be unreasonable. The claims also fall within the ambit of the clauses broad scope, Facebook asserts. Finally, the motion claims that no extraordinary circumstances justify rejecting the agreement that the plaintiffs entered into when they signed up to use Facebook.

In their motion to transfer venue to the same district, YouTube and defendant Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google LLC, YouTubes parent company, make similar arguments in favor of transfer based upon YouTubes term of service and its binding forum selection clause.

Facebook is represented by White & Case LLP and Kirkland & Ellis LLP, YouTube by Stearns Weaver Miller Weissler Alhadeff & Sitterson P.A. and Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and Twitter by Homer Bonner and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr.

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Texas’ Social Media Law is Not the Solution to Censorship – EFF

Posted: at 2:53 am

The big-name social media companies have all done a ratheratrocious jobof moderating user speech on their platforms. However, much like Florida's similarlyunconstitutionalattempt to address the issue (S.B. 7072), Texas' recently enactedH.B. 20would make the matter worse for Texans and everyone else.

Signed into law by Governor Abbott last week, the Texas law prohibits platforms with more than 50 million users nationwide from moderating user posts based on viewpoint or geographic location. However, as we stated in ourfriend-of-the-court briefin support of NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Associations lawsuit challenging Florida's law (NetChoice v. Moody), "Every court that has considered the issue, dating back to at least 2007, has rightfully found that private entities that operate online platforms for speech and that open those platforms for others to speak enjoy a First Amendment right to edit and curate that speech."

Inconsistent and opaque content moderation by online media services is a legitimate problem. It continues to result in the censorship of a range of important speech, often disproportionately impacting people who arent elected officials. That's why EFF joined with a cohort of allies in 2018 to draft theSanta Clara Principles on Transparency and Accountability in Content Moderation, offering one model for how platforms can begin voluntarily implementing content moderation practices grounded in a human rights framework. Under the proposed principles, platforms would:

H.B. 20 does attempt to mandate some of the transparency measures called for in the Santa Clara Principles. Although these legal mandates might be appropriate as part of a carefully crafted legislative scheme, H.B. 20 is not the result of a reasonable policy debate. Rather it is a retaliatory law aimed at violating the First Amendment rights of online services in a way that will ultimately harm all internet users.

We fully expect that once H.B. 20 is challenged, courts will draw from the wealth of legal precedent and find the law unconstitutional. Perhaps recognizing that H.B. 20 is imperiled for the same reasons as Floridas law, the Lonestar State this week filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the appeal of a federal courts ruling that Floridas law is unconstitutional.

Despite Texas and Floridas laws being unconstitutional, the concerns regarding social media platforms' control on our public discourse is a critical policy issue. It is vitally important that platforms take action to provide transparency, accountability, and meaningful due process to all impacted speakers and ensure that the enforcement of their content guidelines is fair, unbiased, proportional, and respectful of human rights.

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‘It’s heroic’: Tennessee Williams theater fest goes on despite a pandemic and a hurricane – Cape Cod Times

Posted: at 2:53 am

Censorship is the theme of this years Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival, but the four-day event has also turned out to be about resilience.

Those involved this year have determinedly created art through a pandemic with the many off-Cape artists waiting a year to be able to travel to present their work and some have faced the fears and challenges of a hurricane, too.

The Mahagonny Songspiel, written by Bertolt Brecht with music by Kurt Weill, will be presented with music and puppetry each day of the Sept. 23-26 annual event by members of AllWays Lounge in Exile from New Orleans.

Final rehearsals to bring the show north to Provincetown to celebrate playwright Williams had just begun last month when Hurricane Ida hit Louisiana, according to festival co-founder/curator David Kaplan.

They continued to rehearse, in rehearsal space without electricity and running water, going home to places without electricity and running water, he says. I thought (the show) might have to be canceled … but Dennis (Monn), the director, said no, (readying for the Williams festival) is what is giving them a sense of purpose.

Theyre doing something. Theyre not passively enduring a hurricane. Theyre creating something … and looking forward to coming to Provincetown and showing what theyve got, Kaplan says.

Here, the production had to be moved outside because of COVID-19 concerns as have most of the presentations and the festival is providing a keyboard and drum kit to replace what was destroyed in New Orleans. The theater company has been indefatigable, Kaplan marvels. Its been very inspiring. … Its heroic. They deserve support.

The complex musical score the group will perform is described as Hitlers least favorite collection of songs. Brechts tangos, love ballads and musical commentary are part of a fable of innocence that addresses a morally bankrupt society. The reaction at its 1927 premiere nearly a century ago? Nazi and Communist sympathizers blew whistles to stop it.

As part of telling that history of trying to censor thought, AllWays Lounge will be handing out whistles to the Provincetown audience, too.

Thats just one of numerous creative ways productions in the festival will explore and create conversations about the Tennessee Williams & Censorship theme. Thats the same focus as 2020 when organizers managed to put on a much smaller, outdoor event but the emphasis has changed from Puritans and writer Williams battle with censors.

In 2021, were discussing when, if ever, censorship is appropriate, Kaplan said when he announced the season.

The festival will include four plays by Williams, who spent a few summers in the 1940s in Provincetown and wrote some of his best-known work there, including The Glass Menagerie.

The festival will include Williams 1940 Battle of Angels, the run of which was cut short by Boston censors, presented by Blessed Unrest, a subversive physical theater ensemble from New York City. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Theatre will present Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor?, an unfinished short story by Williams in which a Black screenwriter in 1940s Hollywood has a secret affair with his films white leading lady, a piece never produced because of the interracial relationship.

Back this year will be The Municipal Abattoir, which Kaplan staged last year on a dune as a Hitchcock-inspired thriller. The Philadelphia-based Die-Cast ensemble will explore The Demolition Downtown, a pointedly political short play by Williams in which a suburban family shuts themselves up in their house as explosions rock their countrys capital.

Other shows presented will include the Longing Lasts Longer rock manifesto by Penny Arcade (with a connected interactive workshop) confronting cultural amnesia as a form of censorship. A Sex play from 1926 that got Mae West thrown in jail will be produced by international ensemble The Goat Exchange, during a Tea Dance at The Boatslip Resort and Beach Club.

The Witch is a satire based on a 1616 drama by Thomas Middleton, with an all-female cast from the Outer Cape group Campfire Quorum playing women from the Pilgrim ship Mayflower.

Beyond live performances, there will also be workshops, parties and educational programming, all connected to Williams and the censorship theme. One-time events will be a Tennessees Latest Peep Show burlesque show bump and grind response to censorship by Lefty Lucy who also had to rehearse from a damaged New Orleans home; and a Cut Blanche interactive censoring display of the 1951 film of A Streetcar Named Desire, led by the former festival executive director Jef Hall-Flavin.

Beyond censorship, a pandemic and a hurricane, Kaplan adds the countrys political divide to the challenges that artists involved with the festival and beyond have to face. While some left-leaning people are angry or dismissive these days of people in conservative southern states, Kaplan said its important to think about the artists and others living in those states who dont agree with politicians stands on controversial topics and actions.

It is significant that we have a Tennessee Williams festival in New England, and not just in Mississippi (where Williams was born) and New Orleans (where he spent much of his later years) because he is an American writer, Kaplan says. We dont need to allow politicians and other people to define American identity for us. We can have our artists both dead and alive and future help to identify American identity. … We share this American cultural figure.

In New England, he says, we have an obligation … to recognize and help support those people in the South who are struggling to be heard, and that includes artists.

Noting that a group from Texas Tech University has been part of the Williams festival for years, Kaplan says, No matter how we feel about the governor of Texas, thats not the point. Not everyone in Texas feels that way and we want to encourage the people in Texas with whom we have common interests to come celebrate, and meet each other.

Then he adds with a laugh: And conspire.

Contact Kathi Scrizzi Driscoll at kdriscoll@capecodonline.com. Follow on Twitter: @KathiSDCCT.

What: The 16th annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theater Festival

When: Sept. 23-26

Where: Various venues around town

Tickets and information: twptown.org and 866-789-8366

COVID-19 protocols: Most performances will be outdoors or under tents with open sides. For indoor shows, a vaccination card or negative PCR test is needed for admission. Masks and social distancing required at all shows.

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Heritage Pressure Leads to Amazon’s Reversing Censorship Decision – Heritage.org

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WASHINGTONEarlier this week, The Heritage Foundation was informed that Amazon would not support paid promotion of Heritage Senior Fellow Mike Gonzalezs expos on the Black Lives Matter movement, BLM: The Making of a New Marxist Revolution. Amazon declared promotion of the book no longer complies with our current Creative Acceptance Policies because it contains book/s or content that is not allowed. Content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics is not permitted. In other words, Heritage viewpoints were effectively being censored.

Heritage appealed the decision earlier this week, giving Amazon well beyond its own stated response time before issuing a forceful statement Thursday morning. Amazon subsequently reversed its decision and will allow paid promotion of Gonzalezs book to move forward. Importantly, an Amazon spokesperson told The Daily Signals Fred Lucas that the original decision banning promotion was the result of human error, not an automated decision by a computer or algorithm.

Heritage Foundation President Kay C. James said:

While we appreciate Amazon reversing this egregious decision, this incident is consistent with the trend of Big Tech companies to suppress conservative speech they disagree with. Thats why The Heritage Foundations Center for Technology Policy continues to monitor Big Tech companies and recommend legislative and regulatory solutions to ensure that they are held accountable when they unfairly suppress speech, especially speech that encourages healthy debate on the critical issues that America faces.

Amazons original stated reason for suspending the ad included that it does not allow content that revolves around controversial or highly debated social topics. Using that standard, one of the worlds largest booksellers apparently wouldnt allow ads for the biggest bestseller in historythe Bible.

Kara Frederick, research fellow in Heritages Center for Technology Policy, released the following statement upon learning of Amazons reversal:

This episode is a reminder that while sometimes Big Tech can be pressured to respond in certain cases of wrongdoing, there are so many more instances where those without the resources or large-enough public profile simply have to live with the arbitrary decisions made by these companies. The fact that this was the result of human error further demonstrates the need for Big Tech companies to establish clear, sensible, and consistent rules and policies, and then implement those rules and policies fairly across the board. They also must be willing to publicly admit mistakes when they do occur, whether intentional or not. Big Techs influence over everyday American life continues to grow. Its vital that we establish clear standards for how these companies behave, and mechanisms to hold them accountablewhen they dont.

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Here’s how to beat liberal censorship of ideas – Catholic Culture

Posted: at 2:53 am

By Phil Lawler (bio - articles - email) | Sep 17, 2021

In todays Wall Street Journal, my friend Tom Spence, president of Regnery Publishing (which brought out my book Lost Shepherd), lets loose on Banned Books Week. He explains that this gimmicky promotion caters primarily to those who believe that schoolchildren should have access to anything bound between two covers without the interference of those busybodies we call parents.

Unfortunately, Spence observes, there are books being banned todayalthough the sponsors of Banned Books Week have nothing to say about it. Books that offend against woke attitudes and politically-correct standards are disappearing from bookstores and from the Amazon menu. Authors are cancelled. Lecturers are disinvited.

Such censorship hurts the authors, of course. But it also hurts the rest of us, their potential readers, because we never have a chance to learn what they have to say. We dont even know what we dont know.

The censorship is not confined to written works alone, however. The social-media giants, Facebook and Twitter, are even more blatant in stifling the views that their employees find offensive. How often have you seen a fact-check pasted onto a controversial postand, if you took the time to investigate, discovered that the fact-check was far more misleading than the post it sought to correct.

An urban television news team recently issued an appeal on Facebook, asking for stories about unvaccinated people who had been felled by Covid. That Facebook page was promptly flooded with thousands of replies. But the vast majority of those replies were not giving the reporters what they wanted; instead they were telling stories about friends and relatives who had been harmed by the Covid injections, or had contracted Covid even after being fully vaccinated. Clearly this response was not what the TV news editors expected. Still, isnt it a story nonetheless?

News editorslike publishers and librarians and bookstore owners and social-media baronshave enormous power to sway public opinion. They exercise that power not only by putting their own slant on news stories, but alsofar more ominouslyby censoring the stories they find inconvenient. You cannot be outraged by an injustice, or encouraged by a positive development, if you dont hear about them.

Mistrust of the mass media is widespread in our society today. Many Americans say that they dont believe what they hear from the mainstream media. That skepticism is richly deserved, and for the most part healthy. Still a problem remains. You may not believe what you see in the mainstream media, but what about what you dont see? You dont know what you dont know.

This is why, for more than 30 years now, I have been insisting that discerning readers need to find their own trusted sources of news. If you know that the mainstream media are offering slanted coverage of some stories, and blacking out other stories altogether, you need to find outlets that will provide accurate reporting on the subjects that interest you. Which is I why I established Catholic World News, 25 years ago, and why I want you all to encourage your loyal Catholic friends to discover us.

Phil Lawler has been a Catholic journalist for more than 30 years. He has edited several Catholic magazines and written eight books. Founder of Catholic World News, he is the news director and lead analyst at CatholicCulture.org. See full bio.

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Kano Censorship Board bans films with scenes of abduction, drug addiction – Daily Sun

Posted: at 2:52 am

From Desmond Mgboh, Kano

The Kano State Film Censorship Board has outlawed sales of movies displaying scenes of abduction, drug addiction or theft of GSM phones as part of efforts to check the rising cases of violent crimes in the state.

The Executive Secretary of the Board, Ismaila Naaba Afakallah, disclosed this during a session with the media saying the prohibition became necessary in the face of criminal trends in the state.

Henceforth, we will not allow films displaying kidnappings, drug addiction and GSM phone snatching which has now taken a toll on Kano residents, he stated.

He added that the measure was aimed at curtailing the menace and reducing the possibility of young people taking to these criminal acts mistaking them to be real.

Not every young man has the tenacity of understanding fictitious film actions. Somebody might mistake it as a reality and may go ahead to practice it. Therefore, we must act now before it is too late, he added.

The snatching of mobile phones and other valuables like handbags has been on the rise in Kano. Also rising at an alarming rate is the rate of drug addiction and abuse across gender in the state.

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Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival returns to celebrate works that made the censors sweat – The Boston Globe

Posted: at 2:52 am

I think Tennessee Williams accidentally wrote a love letter to the year 2020, says director Brenna Geffers of Williamss The Demolition Downtown, the short play shes staging outdoors at the Bas Relief in the towns center. Geffers, founder of the Philadelphia-based Die-Cast ensemble, has directed four festival productions over the years, including Pericles in 2017.

The Demolition Downtown is about a fascist takeover and the way many might sort of comfortably slide into that, Geffers says. David [Kaplan] chose the play before the pandemic. But its about a couple afraid to leave their house and talking about what food they have left in the freezer, so it became spooky and, after Jan. 6, it seemed even more relevant.

The rarely staged play was published in Esquire magazine in June 1971 as the escalating war in Vietnam divided the nation. As a companion piece, Kaplan directs an outdoor staging of Williamss dark satire The Municipal Abattoir, a short play that Williams worked on through the 1960s. It centers on a government clerk and a state-run slaughterhouse where good citizens, when summoned, go willingly to be killed.

In both plays, the audience has a voyeuristic experience, says Geffers. They are both funny pieces [about] a world that is absurd yet so familiar that we can do nothing else but laugh at it. Its too terrifying to do anything else.

Williamss plays and their popular screen adaptations were often censored, including his first produced play, Battle of Angels. In its pre-Broadway tryout in Boston in 1940, the Boston City Council took umbrage at the story of a charismatic drifter, Val Xavier, whose arrival upends a Mississippi Delta small town and exposes its racism and religious intolerance. According to the festival program, when Margaret Webster, the plays original director, returned to Boston to watch a performance of the censored version, she wrote that she found a castrated and largely incomprehensible edition of the play dying an inevitable death at the Wilbur Theatre.

Not just that, but a conflagration at the end of the play went so awry on opening night they almost burned down the entire theater. The first two rows of the audience had to flee, says Jessica Burr, founder and artistic director of the New York City ensemble Blessed Unrest, which will stage the Battle of Angels, sans pyrotechnics, at Provincetowns Town Hall.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Battle of Angels never made it to Broadway, although 17 years later a different version with a new title, Orpheus Descending, did open in New York. A third retelling was the 1960 film The Fugitive Kind, starring Williams mainstays Marlon Brando and Anna Magnani.

Burr sees contemporary parallels in the 1939-set Battle of Angels.

We generally think of community as a good thing but in this case theres a dangerous groupthink that can destroy the individual. Its also an impossible love story between people who refuse to compromise. They are surrounded by these terrified, frightened people who have to destroy it to keep the status quo.

Unlike the original production, Burrs Battle of Angels has a multiracial cast led by Michael Gene Jacobs, a Black actor. Burr says her research indicates that Williams likely wanted Val to be played by a Black man. But in 1940 Williams was 23 years old and a nobody. He could not tell the producers what to do.

Williams was obsessed with the Othello story, says Burr. He studied Shakespeare really closely and he studied his Greeks. [Battle of Angels] is a collision between these very Christian ideals of right and wrong and the Greeks sensibility. Before completing the play, Williams wrote a short story called Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? Its a strange piece but it led directly into Battle of Angels, she says.

Audiences can see the connection for themselves as the festival will also present a staged reading of Why Did Desdemona Love the Moor? at Fishermen Hall. Adapted by Thomas Owen Mitchell, it is about a Black screenwriter who has a secret affair with a white movie goddess. Williams abandoned the project after writing 75 manuscript pages, likely because he realized that, in 1940, the subject matter would prevent it from being produced as either a play or a film.

PROVINCETOWN TENNESSEE WILLIAMS FESTIVAL

At various locations in Provincetown, Sept. 23-26. Schedule and ticket information at http://www.twptown.org

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Evolution and dispersal of snakes across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction – Nature.com

Posted: September 20, 2021 at 9:39 am

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Evolution and dispersal of snakes across the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction - Nature.com

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Evolution Now Accepted by Majority of Americans – SciTechDaily

Posted: at 9:39 am

The level of public acceptance of evolution in the United States is now solidly above the halfway mark, according to a new study based on a series of national public opinion surveys conducted over the last 35 years.

From 1985 to 2010, there was a statistical dead heat between acceptance and rejection of evolution, said lead researcher Jon D. Miller of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan. But acceptance then surged, becoming the majority position in 2016.

Examining data over 35 years, the study consistently identified aspects of educationcivic science literacy, taking college courses in science, and having a college degreeas the strongest factors leading to the acceptance of evolution.

Almost twice as many Americans held a college degree in 2018 as in 1988, said co-author Mark Ackerman, a researcher at Michigan Engineering, the U-M School of Information and Michigan Medicine. Its hard to earn a college degree without acquiring at least a little respect for the success of science.

The researchers analyzed a collection of biennial surveys from the National Science Board, several national surveys funded by units of the National Science Foundations, and a series focused on adult civic literacy funded by NASA. Beginning in 1985, these national samples of U.S. adults were asked to agree or disagree with this statement: Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals.

The series of surveys showed that Americans were evenly divided on the question of evolution from 1985 to 2007. According to a 2005 study of the acceptance of evolution in 34 developed nations, led by Miller, only Turkey, at 27%, scored lower than the United States. But over the last decade, until 2019, the percentage of American adults who agreed with this statement increased from 40% to 54%.

The current study consistently identified religious fundamentalism as the strongest factor leading to the rejection of evolution. While their numbers declined slightly in the last decade, approximately 30% of Americans continue to be religious fundamentalists as defined in the study. But even those who scored highest on the scale of religious fundamentalism shifted toward acceptance of evolution, rising from 8% in 1988 to 32% in 2019.

Miller predicted that religious fundamentalism would continue to impede the public acceptance of evolution.

Such beliefs are not only tenacious but also, increasingly, politicized, he said, citing a widening gap between Republican and Democratic acceptance of evolution.

As of 2019, 34% of conservative Republicans accepted evolution compared to 83% of liberal Democrats.

The study is published in the journal Public Understanding of Science.

Reference: Public acceptance of evolution in the United States, 19852020 by Jon D. Miller, Eugenie C. Scott, Mark S. Ackerman, Beln Laspra, Glenn Branch, Carmelo Polino and Jordan S. Huffaker, 16 August 2021, Public Understanding of Science.DOI: 10.1177/09636625211035919

Besides Miller and Ackerman, the authors are Eugenie Scott and Glenn Branch of the National Center for Science Education; Beln Laspra of the University of Oviedo in Spain; and Carmelo Polino of the University of Oviedo and Centre Redes in Argentina; and Jordan Huffaker of U-M.

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Evolution Now Accepted by Majority of Americans - SciTechDaily

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Bill Belichick gave a nearly 10-minute history lesson about the evolution of the long snapper – The Boston Globe

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Whenthe Globes Ben Volin inquired about the importance of having one player on the roster who specializes in long snapping, the Patriots head coach gave an extremely detailed answer that spanned nearly 10 minutes and was over 1,500 words.

Its an interesting conversation, Belichick said. One thats really, I would say, honestly during the course of my coaching career, has kind of traveled that long and winding road from when I came into the league.

Then he gave a history lesson. Heres the full transcript:

Its an interesting conversation. One thats really, I would say, honestly during the course of my coaching career, has kind of traveled that long and winding road from when I came into the league.

First of all, there were no long snappers, but the specialists, the kickers and the punters were frequently position players, and thats where they came from in college as well, so a lot of the good college punters and place kickers also played a position, and then as time evolved, starting with like [Pete] Gogolak and guys like that, you know, they specialized in kicking, and then you had some of the punters that specialized in punting, so players like Danny White and Tom Tupa and guys like that who were very good position players, you know, Gino Cappelletti, that evolved into specialists because of, I would say, the importance of the kicking game the number of plays that the kicking game and opportunities that it provided.

Same thing with returners. There were very few just pure returners. I think long snapping, to me, changed in the mid-80s, and really the key guy in that was [Steve] DeOssie, in my opinion because Steve was the first center that really, truly allowed a spread punt formation against all-out rush. Prior to that, teams would generally pull.

First of all, there wasnt that many gunners, but when teams started using gunners, they would pull one in and kick away from the free guy on the back side, and that was kind of the idea that protection was not to let the snapper block against a nine-man rush with a split player. The return team would have one guy on the gun or the split, and one guy returns, so you got nine guys rushing against essentially the punter who wasnt a blocker or the split guy who wasnt a blocker and the snapper who really wasnt a blocker, so it was nine on eight, and the idea was to block the most dangerous eight and let the ninth guy go and punt away from him, and then when the Cowboys went to spread punt and then the Cardinals followed that pretty quickly, and they kept two gunners split, and the snapper blocked a guy, then that created an eight on eight situation but put a lot of pressure on the snapper to deliver the ball 15 yards deep on the money and still block a good rusher offsetting and the A-gap.

I mean, weve all seen offensive linemen have trouble making that block on a pass play, and so now youre talking about a deep snap and a block, but as players got better at that, that skill became more, I would say, players became more efficient at that, then teams decided to carry a long snapper rather than worry about getting a punt block. Plus, there was also a level of consistency and durability with those players, so if you lose a position player who is also a long snapper, youre looking at some real problems, and that evolved into the punters, for the most part, becoming holders because of the amount of time that they could spend with the kickers versus having a wide receiver or quarterback be the holder, which again, you dont see very much of that anymore. Assuming a punter is, you know, capable and good enough and has good enough hands to be the holder, and so then that kind of whole unit has really evolved into, you know, specified snapper or a specified kicker, a specific punter, and generally the punter as the holder, so the three of those guys could work together all practice because theyre all available.

I know, again, going back to when I first came into league, you worked on field goals, and, I mean, it was maybe five minutes because that was only time the starting center and the starting receiver or backup quarterback or whatever were available to practice that, so, like, is it that hard? Its a pretty hard job. Yeah. Its a pretty hard job. Its not as hard as it used to be because youre not allowed to hit the center, especially on field goals and run them over.

There are some limitations on the punt rush based on what the formation is and so forth, but generally speaking, its a hard block, and I think you see most punt rushes attack the snapper. They loop guys back so the center thinks hes going right, but then he has to come back to the left, or maybe they fake like theyre coming back, but they dont come back, so he not only has to snap, and so then that gets into whether youre a blind snapper and you look at the rush and just snap the ball, or whether youre a look back snapper and snap it, and then after the snap you have to look up and recognize whats happened and make a proper block, but again, its man-to-man blocking. Like that guys got to block somebody or youre a guy short, so it is a hard job, and the accuracy of the placekickers through the years, which has gone up dramatically. Part of thats the surface. Part of thats the not kicking outdoors and so forth. Part of it is the operation between the snapper, the holder and the kicker, which I would say, generally speaking, is at a pretty high level, which it should be in the National Football League.

I think if you go back and look at kicks from back when that wasnt the case, you see balls rolling back and the holder coming out of a stance that catch the ball and the kind of things you see at times in a high school game and that kind of thing. Theres just a much higher level of skill, which there should be, but yeah. I think its a pretty tough position, and nobody knows or cares who the snapper is if there was a bad snap and all of a sudden, thats front-page story. Theres a decent amount of pressure on that player as well, and not just the snap, but also, as I said, to the block and punt protection.

The roster sizes have increased. Its been a lot easier to carry that player just like its a lot easier to carry a true returner, and so in terms of depth and availability, you know, you really dont want to be looking for one of those players in the middle of any time. In the middle of the game or middle of the season, but when you have him as a starting receiver, Lou Groza, a starting tackle, or whoever. Those guys and theyre playing and something happens and not only do you lose a player, but you lose a key specialist as well, so yeah.

I mean, its a great question. There would be so much value in a player that could do a couple of things and save a roster spot, but I would say there are so few of those players available, even at the point where, you know, [Matt] Amendola did a great job last week. Its so rare that you even see a combination punter and place kicker.

Usually, its one or the other, and I think part of that is at one level its, Ill say, relatively easy to put your foot on the ball, but at this level, you know, the difference in kicking mechanics and punting mechanics are so different that its really hard to be good at both, but you know, if a guys got a good leg and hes a good athlete and he can make good contact with a ball, theres a point where, high school, college, that maybe its good enough.

Maybe hes the best guy on the team to do that, but Id say at this level, that will be asking a lot. Now like Jake [Bailey] can punt. Jake can kick-off. Jake can kick field goals. To be at the kind of level you want it to be at, to have the person split their time between the two of those, again, I think is a lot to ask. Im not saying its impossible or unheard of, but its a lot to ask, and thats why you dont see it very much.

Thats a good question. Its really interesting, and Id say if you look at the evolution of those positions since Ive been in the league, but even a little bit before then, because thats really where it started to go was in the late sixties. I think [Pete] Gogolak was the first, or one of the first, where that trend really started to, okay, were just going to keep a guy, and all he does is kick. [Garo] Yepremian and guys like that. Thats all they did. That was a little bit unusual, but you know, gradually that has become the new normal.

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Bill Belichick gave a nearly 10-minute history lesson about the evolution of the long snapper - The Boston Globe

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