down with censorship, maybe

I'm not usually a fan of foxnews, but I picked up this tidbit this morning.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,277879,00.html

It's not definitive. But it does at least say in part that the FCC's regulation on 'offensive' language is draconian. Although the actual case seems to be based on flippant usage of offensive language, I can hope it will open the doors to a more coherent, sensible policy of censorship in general.

I love this quote:
"A year later, the FCC said the "F-word" in any context "inherently has a sexual connotation" and can be subject to enforcement action."

Not to sound stupid, but I wasn't aware that every use of the word 'fuck' is a sexual reference. In fact it is usually not used in a sexual connotation since people don't seem to know how to use it literally (I'm not even sure it has a literal use as it is a slang term). Besides that, I wasn't aware that people having sex was that offensive of a subject. Maybe we don't talk about it or shouldn't in front of little kids, but I'm not a parent so I don't care. Still, sex shouldn't be the most taboo subject in the world. I can think of a few dozen things that we do discuss or show on TV that 'offend' me on account of their rank stupidity. Personally, I'd say if people would discuss it, I don't know, perhaps they would be better at it? What a concept.

Continuing on my original point.. "....FCC's indecency test is undefined, indiscernible, inconsistent, and consequently, unconstitutionally vague." This is the big problem with censorship in general. In short the principle of censorship is based on defining what is considered offensive material or speech. But who defines this? In our country, apparently an unelected body of regulatory officials decide and appear to do so at the whim of a minority of rowdy uptight religious people. Not to put too fine a point on it, taking the religious animosity out of the question, I don't particularly care for bureaucrats making any decisions. It's not something they are very skilled or practiced at. Bureaucracy is a system, not a decision generator (that's called a coin flip). I would prefer that someone in a responsive elected office set forth a coherent policy on this. I personally would prefer almost no policy on censorship, but I can be reasonable if a parent or potential parent puts forth a good argument. Instead having government officials decide what passes the 'offensive' test and neatly sidestepping the First Amendment does not make any sense to me whatsoever.

My contention is that these words and actions exist. What we must do as responsible people is learn how and why they do, and perhaps learn better things to do instead. It isn't always necessary to drop f-bombs to get the point across, sometimes it helps though. I often recall a good line from Malcolm X at this point where Baines says "A man curses because he doesn't have the words to say what's on his mind." And I believe this is almost always true, though sometimes these words perfectly capture what is on someone's mind in a universally understood way. Teenagers (and others) seem to want to use such language anyway, so why not show how and when it is used to best effect? That would be a useful practice of regulation. It isn't prudent to pretend that these words and deeds do not exist, but rather that they do but aren't necessarily the best means available.

The final beef with censorship is that the TV, radio, and Internet have a built in parental control. It's called changing the channel. Radios have dials or buttons, TV has a big button on the remote and the net, well.. it doesn't really have anything. I guess you could use filters, but every kid who has grown up around computers knows how to bypass those. There was some talk of putting porn or other similar material into a seperate domain (like .com, .org) called .xxx. But since that would legitimize a multi-billion dollar industry based on sex and thus offend religious uptight people, that got canned. Even though it was designed to protect those religious uptight people from so-called objectionable material. In any other arena, people can make choices and choose to ignore material that they do not want to expose children or themselves to. I still think this is the most sensible form of censorship available. Even if something slips by once in a while, having adult conversations with children shouldn't be something we're adverse to. Maybe if they're treated like adults once in a while, they'll grow up faster and stop acting like spoiled brats who scream in restaurants and shopping centers. Or not.