I'm probably going to be in the minority here but I just don't find celebrities slipping up and using the occassional foul word so objectionable that the network should be fined for it... The media environment has changed dramatically since the court last ruled on this issue in 1978: Viewers and listeners today are exposed to the more freewheeling cable television, Internet, and "shock jocks" on satellite radio.
The issue before the court now is delicately described as the problem of "fleeting expletives" in over-the-air broadcasts, which are still regulated. Television viewers who watch some of the entertainment industry's award shows may be familiar with the phenomenon.
Rock singer Bono uttered an expletive on a live NBC show when accepting a Golden Globe Award in 2003 for best original song. So did Cher after receiving a Billboard Music Award for career achievement on Fox TV a year earlier.
After receiving complaints from angry viewers, the Federal Communications Commission moved to crack down on broadcasters who air "isolated or fleeting expletives" during daytime and early-evening hours.
Look, how delicate are you if you or your kid hears a dumb celebrity utter an unplanned bad word once in a while, and you go crying hysterically to the TV station to register your protest? I mean come on! We live in a populated world where people are allowed to speak freely, within reason. You can't protect your child from life. Use these instances as instructional opportunities about appropriatness, respect for others, decorum, etc. Besides chances are if your kid knows enough to recognize the C-word as uttered by Jane Fonda on the Today Show a few weeks ago, he's hearing it, and worse, at school every day anyway. If your kid is too young to know what he just heard, then why are your shorts all in a bunch in the first place?
Planned, gratuitous obscenities are unacceptable but occassionally, somebody is going to say a bad word when they shouldn't....get over it. No body should be fined by the speech police over it. Is that really the kind of country you want to live in? Today it's speech that some nerdy, dogooders find objectionable. Tomorrow maybe it'll be political ads naming a candidate within 60 days of a general election(already happened--McCain/Feingold). The day after that, it'll be pulling the professional credentials of anybody who questions global warming(hundreds of global warming zealots advocate this already). Censorship is a very slippery slope and one which we must tread only when the situation is egregious enough to warrant it. Janet Jackson's boob-flash, Bono saying the F-word, Jane Fonda saying the C-word.....has any of these things coarsened or in any negative way, altered the lives of anybody? If you say yes, then you are a retard and shouldn't be allowed to watch TV by yourself. Instead you should lie quietly on your bed, surrounded by pillows in case you fall off, and wearing a helmet and elbow pads, listening to the sounds of children playing in the dangerous outdoors.
5 comments:
I completely agree with you Ed. Within reason, people should be allowed to say what they want on television. Not to mention i probably heard every single vulgar term in school long before I heard them on television. Also, before people dog Ed for censoring the words on his blog about censoring, it is his choice as to whether or not he wants to say the terms, but you shouldn't be allowed to dictate what other people can and can't say. Just thought I would mention that.
One of the things that struck me about this blog when I first found it is its lack of profanity. Ed, would you/ have you censored? Just curious.
So, the stupid celebrities have the right to show their boobs or use whatever language - it's free speech. But if parents speak up and let it be known that they won't be watching they deserve ridicule because they are retards who shelter their kids.
Basic profanity of the innocuous, four-letter variety is not censored here. If it gets too sexual, or simply gratuitous, then yes I will delete or edit a comment. My kids read this blog.
What I said was that if you claim that having seen a boob-flash or heard a fleeting expletive dramatically altered in a negative way, the lives of you or your kids, then you are, in my opinion retarded and over-protective.
I will be the last person to denigrate the free market when it comes to communications and entertainment. If you think something is inappropriate, then turn it off and let the sponsors know they you don't like it.
That's the difference in individual censorship, of which I approve, and institutional or governmental censorship, of which I disapprove....in general.
Well said Ed, well said.
I agree about the difference between individual and government censorship - and I'm glad you keep it clean here.
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