Tagged: Censorship

ELAYNE RIGGS: I want to believe

ELAYNE RIGGS: I want to believe

"We’re never gonna beat this if belief is what we’re fighting for." – John Mayer

As Americans gather today to commemorate the signing of the Declaration of Independence 231 years ago, many of us find ourselves in quite a different place than we believe our founders envisioned for this country.  Each day brings more tragic results of the radicals currently in power thumbing their nose continually at Benjamin Franklin’s observation that "Those that would give up essential liberty in pursuit of a little temporary security deserve neither liberty nor security" and frightening the populace into constant submission so they can retain this ill-gotten power.  (Hang on — creating a climate of fear, isn’t that what terrorists try to do?  Guess that means They’re Winning.)  And without the assurance that our government will (or even can) do its job of seeing to the well-being of its citizens, many Americans do what people in their situation have done for centuries — they turn to institutions they believe will care for them, mostly institutions that "answer to a higher authority" in which they believe.

We’ve been talking a lot about perception and belief on ComicMix this past week.  First Mike Gold tackled how people misperceive personal threats to their way of life when no such threats exist.  For the life of me, I cannot imagine how these ideas get into their heads, and neither can anyone in the all-pervasive corporate-sponsored conservative-pandering media.  Then I talked more about subjectivity and how some folks amazingly find the exact "evidence" to support their pet beliefs, rather than the other way around (using actual scientific procedure to observe first and then create a theory based on those observations).  And the capper was John Ostrander’s column about dogma, rigid belief systems (whether religious or no) whose adherents will brook no dissenting opinions.  The danger of dogma is the same as that of any fanaticism — that subjective perceptions are suddenly presented as objective ones, and individual beliefs replace reason and compromise with authoritarian systems such as theocracies.

And it ought to be obvious that theocracies are not Good Things in pluralistic societies because they leave no room for diversity of opinion.

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F*** the FCC, say the courts

F*** the FCC, say the courts

From AP: An appeals court said a new federal policy against accidentally aired profanities on TV and radio was invalid, noting that vulgar language had become so common that even President Bush has been heard using expletives.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday in favor of a Fox Television-led challenge to the policy and returned the case to the Federal Communications Commission to let the agency try to explain how its policy was not "arbitrary and capricious." The court said it doubted the FCC could.The broadcasters had asked the appeals court last year to invalidate the FCC’s conclusion that profanity-laced broadcasts on four shows were indecent, even though no fines were issued. The FCC said the "F-word" in any context "inherently has a sexual connotation" and can be subject to enforcement action.

The appeals court said some of the FCC’s explanations for its new policy, reversing a more lenient policy in place for nearly three decades, were "divorced from reality." The court noted that even President Bush was heard one day telling British Prime Minister Tony Blair that the United Nations needed to "get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this s—."

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin told The Associated Press that the ruling will make it difficult to impose fines for indecency. "Practically, this makes it difficult to go forward on a lot of the cases that are in front of us," he said. An appeal was being considered, he said.

The FCC found its ban was violated by a Dec. 9, 2002, broadcast of the Billboard Music Awards in which singer Cher used the phrase "F— ’em" and a Dec. 10, 2003, Billboard awards show in which reality show star Nicole Richie said, "Have you ever tried to get cow s— out of a Prada purse? It’s not so f—— simple."

In a majority opinion written by Judge Rosemary Pooler, the appeals court questioned whether the FCC’s indecency test could survive First Amendment scrutiny. "We are sympathetic to the networks’ contention that the FCC’s indecency test is undefined, indiscernible, inconsistent and consequently unconstitutionally vague," she wrote.

Fox Broadcasting praised the ruling, saying "government regulation of content serves no purpose other than to chill artistic expression in violation of the First Amendment." It said viewers can decide appropriate viewing content for themselves, using parental control technologies.

The new policy was put in place after a January 2003 NBC broadcast of the Golden Globes awards show, in which U2 lead singer Bono uttered the phrase "f—— brilliant."

FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps said the decision was disappointing to him and millions of parents but "doesn’t change the FCC’s legal obligation to enforce the indecency statute." "So any broadcaster who sees this decision as a green light to send more gratuitous sex and violence into our homes would be making a huge mistake," Copps said. "The FCC has a duty to find a way to breathe life into the laws that protect our kids."

Why do we mention this? Well, we’re all really big First Amendment types over here at ComicMix, and Thursday is the 36th anniversary of Cohen vs. California, the Supreme Court ruling that overturned Paul Cohen’s conviction for wearing a jacket that read "F— the Draft", but mainly it’s a great excuse to run this:

JOHN OSTRANDER: Hurling stones

  • News
  • April 12, 2007

I had a couple of other topics I was going to work on but then I read Mike Gold’s column this week and decided I had enough to say to on it and the subject of his column that I might as well do it in my own. Thanks, Mike, for supplying my column this week!

The question at hand was Don Imus’ racist remarks on his show, categorizing Rutgers University’s women’s basketball team (the majority of whom are black) as “nappy headed hos.” (For short, and because I don’t want to perpetuate the comment by repeating it endlessly, we’ll just reduce it to   “nhh”.)

Imus has since apologized at length, doing the mea culpa circuit that prominent white men do when they get caught putting their feet in their mouths. There have been the chorus of calls for Imus’ resignation or firing and Imus has said he was just trying to be funny and he’s really a nice guy and so on. As I write this, Imus has been suspended by CBS radio for two weeks and MSNBC has dropped the television show. After a ritual flogging on the Rev. Al Sharpton’s radio show, Imus is now scheduled to meet with the women he actually insulted and their families. Nice to know we’re all keeping our priorities straight.

Caveat: I don’t listen to Imus. If I’m listening to radio in the morning it’s generally NPR and I don’t do that very often. So I’m getting a lot of this second hand or worse. I’ve never been into the whole “shock jock” thing so you can take what I have to say with that grain of salt. Also, I’ve had my own brush with hoof in mouth disease in a script where I referred to Asian people as Orientals. As has been driven home to me, Orientals are rugs; people are Asian. So I am not within sin. I’m throwing rocks anyway.

Let’s talk about Imus first. My first reaction on hearing all this was, “What an incredibly stupid thing to say.” Imus has been in the game long enough and he knows the field. He has no internal censor that suggested to him for a half second that referring to African-American women as “nhh” just might get him into trouble? Frankly, I always had the impression that Imus was sharper than that.

And then the cynical Chicagoan side of me kicked in. Maybe Imus’ attitude at the time was “Well, remarks like this sure gets people talking about ya, doesn’t it? Good, bad – does it matter so long as they don’t forget you?” Now people might listen in to hear how contrite you are, or if you’ll do it again, or because they think you should do it again. What’s a shock jock without a controversy? Or maybe he didn’t expect people to get upset – stuff like this has been his stock in trade, right? Isn’t it why people listen? Imus says what a lot of people think – isn’t that the justification? The current brouhaha is just a matter of degree.

I wonder – what would the reaction have been if it was the Rutgers men’s basketball team that lost in the Finals (they didn’t even get that far) and Imus had called them “nh (fill in the blank).” Actually, I’m betting nothing would have happened because Imus would have realized, before he said it, that it was going too far. But these are just female jocks. Who really cares, eh? Let’s call them whores because they lost a freaking basketball game. Maybe if Imus had just stuck with being misogynistic instead of racist, he would have been okay.

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