Seems like the Bush administration is beginning to turn its moral authoritarian eyes domestically, as the pundits had promised back in January. Senator Ted Stevens and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez have both come out in the 24 hours promising to do away with indecency wherever it lives... namely cable and the internet.
Gonzales said yesterday that one of the priorities of the Justice Department would be the prosecution of folks charged in obscenity cases, and that folks using obscenities or displaying offending material, especially on the internet, do not have the protection of the First Amendment.
Just to make sure we all understand this: Because of this entry's title, I could be charged with a Federal crime if Gonzales has his way.
As if that weren't enough to inspire visions of a police state (to which we really are hurtling headlong), let's listen to Republican Senator Ted Stevens:
"Cable is a much greater violator in the indecency area," the Alaska Republican told the National Association of Broadcasters, which represents most local television affiliates. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over-the-air" broadcasters. "There has to be some standard of decency," he said.
You know what pisses me off the most about this truly repugnant notion? Back in the late 80's and early 90's, when the PMRC was on its crusade against profanity in the music industry, anti-censorship folks fought against any sort of intrusion on the part of the government, and by and large they won. But they only won because they said they'd put one of those parental advisory stickers on albums that parents might find objectionable.
Then came the fiasco of the V-chip and TV ratings of the mid 1990s. A right-leaning Congress, fresh off the '94 "revolution" and inspired by the gleaming promise of the Contract With America, fired the first salvo in Pat Buchanan's Culture War by taking broadcast television to task by instituting the asinine V-chip program. America responded with a yawn, and the television industry responded by adding MPAA-like ratings to everything. (Ironically enough, if the Republicans had had their way, their much-ballyhooed public war against President Clinton in 1998 would have been largely V-chipped out of TV newscasts.)
The right was somewhat chastened by the 1998 mid-term elections, when crusaders like Newt Gingrich were resoundingly drubbed out of office, only to be replaced by Tom Delay and Karl Rove's Machine. Since Bush took office, and largely in the name of Fatherland Homeland security, folks like Ashcroft, Delay, Gonzales and Stevens have made the machinations of Newt look like child's play.
So why again does this piss me off? Oh, right... it's this little thing called incrementalism. Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. Right now, it's still safe for responsible adults to penalize-by-avoidance places like WalMart because they offer sanitized versions of records for kiddies while not offering the artists' preferred versions for adults. It's still safe for responsible adults to enjoy things like Comedy Central's Secret Stash. But what Stevens et al want to do is make it much harder (or, more likely, just plain illegal) for responsible adults to pay their cable bill and watch whatever the fuck they want.
The argument against Stevens and folks who believe he's doing the right thing is so shockingly simple, I'm baffled why it hasn't caught on: If you don't like it, turn it off.
Really, just watch something else. That's what I do. If I get the feeling that some value I hold dear to my heart, I just change the channel, or leave the room, or something else that prevents my own personal exposure to that idea. It's my choice and my right to not watch something.
Or maybe I should just assume that all TVs in Alaska don't have power switches (like in Max Headroom! Alaska is 20 minutes into the future), and the batteries for the remote controls come at such a high premium that they're unaffordable to the average Alaskan.
So, in the spirit of offending a captive audience, I offer the lyrics to the Blink 182 smash hit, "Family Reunion":
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, terd, and twat
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, terd, and twat
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, terd, and twat
Shit, piss, fuck, cunt, cocksucker, motherfucker, tits, fart, terd, and twat
I fucked your mom
And I wanna suck my dad
and my mommy too
oh, is this thing on?
God bless America.
0 comments:
Post a Comment