Friday, February 13, 2004
Won’t Somebody Please Think About The Children
Here’s an easy one:
What do the following things have in common?
Five minute tape delay, Native Hawaiian singers, cleavage covering graphics, fifteen seconds trimmed from a TV cop drama
That’s right, they are all the result of a misguided publicity stunt went awry.
I don’t want to talk about the event or the media onslaught (daily articles from major media outlets every day since) that this thing wrought.
What scares me a little bit (OK, what scares me a lot) is censorship.
I believe our government is at its best when coordinating international trade, or ensuring peace across the globe (to the best of our ability, or when it suits us at least). I believe however our government is at its worst when it is put into a reactionary position, much like the events of nearly two weeks ago have brought forth.
What’s distressing to me in this circumstance is that public opinion is divided squarely into two camps. On one side you have the media and public screaming loudly about morality, decency, and responsibility. On the other side? People like me who believe that what happened was misguided and inappropriate, but really wish the rest of the chorus would let it go, as the moment has passed, it’s over, and I didn’t smell brimstone billowing from below as best I could tell.
And it’s not the calm and rational camp that’s getting the coverage.
I worry that our government, especially in this election year, is going to act in a heavy-handed manner on this “issue.” I believe our Attorney General doesn’t have room in his mind for anyone’s interpretation of truth or morality than his own.
I believe that the public outcry is going to get attention from our government. And we’re not going to be a better place for it.
I don’t believe it’s such a big leap from whatever “titillation” one derived from this incident to the “gross indecency” of a teen making a decision about sex, for instance, on a “Dawson’s Creek” sort of show. And what sort of messages are shows like “The OC,” and “Queer Eye” sending? That it’s OK to be young and promiscuous, and it’s OK to be gay? Is that what we want our children seeing on TV?
And then where do you go? Censoring opinion because it doesn’t correlate with the popular norm?
Look, this only gets dangerous if the government gets involved. If television wants to turn back the clock and become more wholesome and white bread, that’s up to them. Frankly, as the big networks are viewed as part of the public domain, they should feel personally responsible for what they put on their airwaves. But do we need the government to hold them responsible, or do they have an obligation to the greater community to be responsible?
I have a problem with the government feeling the need to legislate morality to any extent. Slap CBS with a fine, sure. But don’t play judge, jury, and executioner with speech in this country just because of an inappropriate moment poorly executed on live TV. I really fear that by making something out of what is essentially next-to-nothing, the government is putting themselves on the crest of a tidal wave of moral decision making that it just should not be a part of.
Side note: Part of what brought this on is my curiosity in seeing LG’s comment to my post below about jobs moving overseas. The first two sentences are there, the rest is replaced by this phrase: “Solution deleted by Haloscan.” Not that I think Haloscan did this because of Janet Jackson, but who are they to censor? I don’t know if that was part of my user agreement, but I’m really quite troubled by that. And I’m terribly curious as to what got deleted…
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