Anne Rice: " I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness..."

Here's the full quote from her facebook page:

Signing off with thanks to all who have participated in our discussions of fiction writing today. I want to leave you with this thought: I think we are facing a new era of censorship, in the name of political correctness. There are forces at work in the book world that want to control fiction writing in terms of who "has a right" to write about what. Some even advocate the out and out censorship of older works using words we now deem wholly unacceptable. Some are critical of novels involving rape. Some argue that white novelists have no right to write about people of color; and Christians should not write novels involving Jews or topics involving Jews. I think all this is dangerous. I think we have to stand up for the freedom of fiction writers to write what they want to write, no matter how offensive it might be to some one else. We must stand up for fiction as a place where transgressive behavior and ideas can be explored. We must stand up for freedom in the arts. I think we have to be willing to stand up for the despised. It is always a matter of personal choice whether one buys or reads a book. No one can make you do it. But internet campaigns to destroy authors accused of inappropriate subject matter or attitudes are dangerous to us all. That's my take on it. Ignore what you find offensive. Or talk about it in a substantive way. But don't set out to censor it, or destroy the career of the offending author. Comments welcome. I will see you tomorrow.

Via Reddit... top comments after the jump...

Well, she sure aint wrong... 

In the last thirty years, there has been this constant refrain that political correctness is going to sanitize all media. That's at least thirty years, mind. I'm too young to know if it was being said before that although I strongly suspect it was.
More books are published today than at any point in history. Authors of any and all persuasions are more common. More films and television shows in more diverse settings than at any point in history. We live in the least censored period of human history.
There were more female authors in the twentieth century than in the previous two thousand years. Anne Rice is a hugely successful author who wrote about pretty bisexual vampires in the nineties. I think her rallying cry against censorship is pretty misplaced.
Are there crazies who try to have things censored? Yes. There always have been. Anybody who thinks we live in world that is actually significantly censored is living in a very strange part of the world, though.
There is almost no governmental censorship. All attempts of social censorship inevitably invite counter attempts and the resulting controversy usually bring even more attention to it. Is censorship something we should still be wary of? Of course. If you actually consider what happens in the world (instead of the lunatic fringe groups you find on Reddit or Tumblr or Twitter), though, you're being very foolish or incredibly disingenuous to suggest we are facing "a new era of censorship".
I find it grotesque to watch people stoke their outrage and contempt over imagined slights. I believe in freedom of the arts. I believe that the answer to objectionable art is more art, not less.
Before you complain about the evils of political correctness, though, take a minute. In the eighties, people complained that political correctness scolded them from saying nigger. In the nineties they complained it said they shouldn't say faggot. History is rarely on the side of people who complain about political correctness because it is, at its core, an attempt to avoid saying hurtful things to people.