The Chris Moeller Archives

Sex acts in hotel rooms

Salon predicts we're going to see an all-out war in the very near future between "the National Nannys"-- my phrase-- and the broadcast industry. The new FCC commissioner, Kevin J. Martin, has close ties to Religious Right policy directors and the Bush White House. He's vowed to fight for stiffer indecency fines and an expansion of broadcast standards to cable and satellite radio and TV.

It's baffling to me how the FCC could even think of exercising jurisdiction over programming outside the over-the-air spectrum (the courts will never allow it,) but Martin is demanding of media companies, a new "family-friendly" tier of cable programming.
Who will decide what's "family-friendly?" That's my first question. Right now, by the letter of the law, "contemporary community standards" dictate, i.e. the American public and the free market system. My guess, though, is that under the proposed changes, a significantly smaller group of citizens-- perhaps, even smaller than the FCC, itself?-- would be heading the all-new indecency task force. Might it even be the executive members of one or more of the special interest groups already lobbying hard for restrictions in Washington? It's their country, after all. Just ask them.

As the linked article above points out, the Family Research Council is at the forefront of the movement. Their legal director claims he was forced to watch "hardcore pornography" on three separate channels of the television in his hotel room-- only one of which, it seems, was a pay station. That would mean he found hardcore pornography on basic cable? Jesus, I wish! Maybe in Europe?
For all we know, kissing and hand-holding offends this guy. Maybe he's on the staff of Bob Jones University and his channel-surfing produced a depiction of interracial dating.
"I don't have cable just for this reason," the man said, proving the effectiveness of the free market system.

Notice that these groups have also pushed boycotts against shows like "Everwood," because they feature story lines about birth control or abortion. Now we're moving beyond the debate over indecency into a debate about ideas. Political and moral ideas. To them, divergent political and moral ideas. And, herein, lies the ruse. Their movement is not really about protecting kids from smut. We've already perfected technology that does that. It's called the V-chip. It's about sheltering already-sheltered children from opposing ideas-- limiting their capacity for independent thought and discernment so that they'll be more likely to believe in an old man with a long beard who sits in judgement in the clouds.
See, I have ideas, too. Ideas I have a goddamn right to have. And, boy, would I like a cheaper cable package that catered exclusively to those ideas. I could ditch all the empty-headed cable news channels, the money-grubbing preacher channels, and "According to Jim." Then, I could finally afford that long-coveted "Skin-amax" upgrade.

But, alas, it won't happen. Democracy's a bitch.

posted by CM @ 8:06 PM