130 Comments

1. Knucklehead:

I think you got that one pegged pretty well, Roger. In this vein, at least slightly, I have to ask thought. What’s a gay guy doing keeping such an eagle eye on ol’ Pamela for? You sure he’s all that gay?

Apr 18, 2005 - 2:18 pm 2. Mary Ann:

Here’s the problem I have with your stand against censoring cable and satellite stations: You’re a smart, sensitive guy who will make good decisions about what your daughter can watch — but what about those kids who aren’t lucky enough to have parents who care about what they watch? Who let their kids plop down in front of anything? Surely you know this happens.

Don’t we (society) have an obligation to protect all kids from exposure to indecent or bad stuff in the public sphere? Or do you not consider cable and satellite part of the public sphere?

Apr 18, 2005 - 2:18 pm 3. Pat Curley:

Yep, I was glad that the FCC was cracking down on over the air radio from the likes of Howard Stern and Opie and Anthony, but cable TV and satellite radio are different animals.

Apr 18, 2005 - 2:21 pm 4. Morgan:

Mary Ann:

I don’t think we do have that obligation. Our obligation is to ensure that parents have access to information about the probable content of programming – that’s why I think that lewd content in a Super Bowl halftime show (and I don’t just mean bared breasts – my family missed that because I had already turned it off) is out of line – who would have anticipated the need to turn the TV off?

After that, though, I think we need to leave it up to parents to make those decisions. I’ll take the risk of some poorly-parented kids over government micromanagement of my child-rearing any day.

Apr 18, 2005 - 2:45 pm 5. syn:

I’m not one to advocate governmental micromanagement of child-rearing and in no way wish government to institute censorship, however it does seem as if we are allowing the Entertainment power players controlling music, television and movies to micromanage society’s child-rearing. We are told that the market dictates what the public will buy as entertainment yet, the entertainment industry is focused on selling to the male 18 to 30 year old market place leaving us with a market filled with bottom-feeding entertainment.

Parents are not left with much choice for their children when the market place is geared primarily towards a specific group who are in an age of what adults consider an experimental time into adulthood.

Rather than putting all the pressure on parents to control what their children see and hear, perhaps the entertainment industry might wish to expand their limited market place for all to enjoy, including older adults and young children, instead of catering entertainment to a limited market place of 18 to 30 year old males.

We cannot consider today’s entertainment industry a free market when the product sold is geared primarily towards one small and specific age group.

Apr 18, 2005 - 3:18 pm 6. Kevin P:

Mary Ann:

There is a huge difference between the free over the air channels and the cable and subscription channels. The cable channels are brought into the house by choice. Parents with children are wise if the carefully vet the material that their children watch and with the free over the air channels a certain amount of restrictions is reasonable.But unless you purchase cable or subscribe to a sattelite station the material can’t come into your house. Plus you are allowed to block any station you do not want your child to view.

I would suggest parents restrict the amount of TV their kids watch and a lot of the material is pure dreck. But the government should not censor material that is freely purchased by individuals, unless you venture into child porn or other illegal activity. I don’t feel sorry for Howard Stern for what he puts over the public airwaves. But if he goes onto Sattelite radio I will contribute to his defense fund if they go after him

Apr 18, 2005 - 3:21 pm 7. R C Dean:

Mary Ann, three things to think about.

First, it won’t be the most sensitive and enlightened people in society carefully sifting and winnowing the airwaves and making thoughtful decisions about what is appropriate for who. It will either be ambitious political appointees or tenured civil servants, making decisions on what all of us will get to see, for reasons that will have more to do with their perceived self-interest than our real interests.

Second, this is a vast and varied country. What is not appropriate for a child may be perfectly appropriate for me. A government regulatory solution will be one-size-fits-all. Maybe you are looking forward to 100 channels where even the Teletubbies aren’t welcome because they may exert a pro-gay influence, but I am not.

Third, if you feel an obligation to help parents improve their parenting skills, then go out and do something about it. Volunteer. Donate. If you don’t feel it is enough of a problem to make any demands on yourself, then I suggest it isn’t enough of a problem to enlist the indiscriminate hand of the state either.

Apr 18, 2005 - 3:21 pm 8. Silicon valley Jim:

Free speech does not mean absolutely unrestricted speech. Libel is not protected by the Constitution’s guarantee of free speech. Nor is copyright infringement (the Constitution gives the federal government explicit power to issue copyrights). Nor is obscenity, although nearly everybody forgets this. The Supreme Court has held repeatedly (for example, in 1964 in Jacobellis v. Ohio) that obscenity is not Constitutionally-protected free speech. Local governments choose not to enforce laws against obscenity, but the laws are constitutional.

The fact that libel, for example, is not Constitutionally-protected free speech constitutes “censoring what we watch. . . in the name of [somebody's] moral values” just as much as the fact that obscenity is not. The belief that libel is wrong is a moral value.

Pointing to a v-chip seems to me to be akin to telling those who live near a factory spewing pollution into the air that they should wear gas masks. We decided in the late 1960s that control was the responsibility of those who produced the air pollution; it seems similarly reasonable to me to put some responsibility for control on those producing pornography.

Apr 18, 2005 - 3:53 pm 9. Kevin P:

Jim:

I have no problem with the restrictions on what goes over the air on free TV. The public made a deal with the networks that for being able to use the public airwaves at no charge we reserved the right to restrict certain activities from going over the publically owned airwaves.Nudity, vulgar language, certain sexual acts. It has at times produced certain hypocrisys but that is always going to happen.

I also agree that many people are naively unaware of the corrosive aspects on society of pornography. What it can do to people is seriously under reported because it is not cool to seem like a “blue nose” and appear to be sexually repressed.

But I do not think the government should be involved in private expression of speech, art, films, or literature. The vulgarity of pornography is the price we pay for free speach. I think it can restrict where and how it can be displayed and sold in public but I do not think it should be able to ban it unless the content shows illegal activities or is produced with minors. I don’t think a porn shop should be allowed to set up next to a school. But I do think it should be allowed to be produced. Not because I respect it, but because I think the banning of it could lead to far worse abuses of power.

Apr 18, 2005 - 4:21 pm 10. David Thomson:

Censorship is intrinsic to human society. We all censor, itís merely a matter of where we draw the line. Run from those who lie to themselves regarding this matter. Such self deluded fools are dangerous.

The government should indeed have the ability to censor what is sent of the public airwaves. However, cable television is about freedom of choice. Full grown adults will decide what is brought into their home. This distinction is of the utmost importance. I am strongly against most censorship of the cable outlets.

Apr 18, 2005 - 4:23 pm 11. Silicon valley Jim:

Kevin P -

I agree with you.

Apr 18, 2005 - 4:33 pm 12. Kevin P:

Roger:

I do think if I ever use speach instead of speech again I should be banned for good.

Apr 18, 2005 - 4:55 pm 13. lindenen:

“However, cable television is about freedom of choice. Full grown adults will decide what is brought into their home. This distinction is of the utmost importance. I am strongly against most censorship of the cable outlets.”

I’m against censoring cable outlets as well; however, I do think some changes need to be made in order to give parents more power to control what their children watch. At this point in time, full grown adults don’t have the power to decide what is brought into their home. There is no freedom of choice. It’s not fair that in order to get the news channels I have to put up with MTV, BET and all sorts of other crap that is a waste of my time and brain cells. We should be able to buy channels a la carte. I also believe each channel should have a rating, so I know what sorts of things will happen on that channel. None of this each program has a separate rating that no one knows what it means and appears once a program. The tv ratings should be the same as movie ratings and those need a good overhaul. I should be able to buy a package of channels that are all one rating. In order to access channels I don’t want my kids to see, I should have to type in a numerical code.

Apr 18, 2005 - 5:08 pm 14. richard mcenroe:

Roger, Pamela’s cool but you have GOT to get the babe from the 7W ad…

Apr 18, 2005 - 5:23 pm 15. Robert Crawford:

Every cable box I’ve ever had was able to put a parental lock on any channel you wanted. I’d entirely support an “a la carte” subscription service, but until that happens, why not take advantage of the tools you already have?

Apr 18, 2005 - 5:46 pm 16. lindenen:

That’s good, Robert, but I’ve never seen one.

Apr 18, 2005 - 5:48 pm 17. Charlie (Colorado):

Don’t we (society) have an obligation to protect all kids from exposure to indecent or bad stuff in the public sphere?

Well, in a word, no.

Not until you can tell me that we’ve got 100 percent agreement on what “indecent of bad stuff” is: agreement that includes coping with Muslims who believe women should always wear chadoors or burkhas, nudists who think wearing clothes leads to sexual deviancy, people who freak out because September Morn is a picture of an underage girl.

Not, to be blunt, until you come up with a way to do it that doesn’t mean one group of people being allowed to gang up on another group and tell them what to read, watch, or think.

Apr 18, 2005 - 5:48 pm 18. lindenen:

“Not until you can tell me that we’ve got 100 percent agreement on what “indecent of bad stuff” is:”

Oh, lordy, if we ran government that way we’d never get anything done. Fortunately in a democracy you just need a majority. What a prescription for do-nothing-ism and failure. I think the Supreme Court already decided what obscenity is: the majority of the people know it when they see it.

“Not, to be blunt, until you come up with a way to do it that doesn’t mean one group of people being allowed to gang up on another group and tell them what to read, watch, or think.”

What does telling other people “what to read, watch or think” have to do with providing a safe environment to nurture children? I don’t care if you read only porn magazines and watch only porn films. You’re entitled to do what you like, but it should be put in a place where kids can’t get to it.

Apr 18, 2005 - 5:57 pm 19. RBMN:

The thin reed of justification for regulating broadcast TV programming is the scarcity of broadcast frequencies–each channel a little local monopoly. Satellite stations and cable stations are more like newspapers. If you don’t order them, they don’t show up at your front door. And you can order anything that someone is willing to deliver. Especially for satellite, with no signal monopoly, there’s no justification for forced “public service.” Their goal, like any newspaper, is to serve the individual customer. If you don’t like the newspapers, buy your own printing press.

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:09 pm 20. Terrye:

I grew up in a time when Laura and Rob Petry could not sleep in the same bed so I probably have a different view of decent and indecent than some other people might have.

As a principle I don’t believe in interfering in people’s lives, but I have to say I know a young woman who works with troubled and abused children and it scary to hear some of the things they say and do.

She is bound by rules of confidentiality and so can not ever give out information but I have heard enough to know that some people are not responsible enough to care for a housecat much less monitor what their kids watch. And the rest of us have to deal with that. She has had children doing things to other children after they watched it on TV with Daddy.

It seems that nothing is simple.

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:10 pm 21. Sandy P:

I got a call from the Dove??? organization today, asking for the lady of the house. Couldn’t tell if it was memorex or live, about the decency standards.

I hung up.

I wonder how they got my number???

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:21 pm 22. Sandy P:

I’ll bet I know how to solve this, TV tax. Can’t afford the tax, can’t watch TV.

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:23 pm 23. Rick Ballard:

Careful, Lindenen, you seem to be supporting some sort of societal duty to protect children. No one of progressive sensibilities has given a damn about protecting children for at least thirty years. See, it’s up to the parents to provide 24/7 protective custody so that those adults who choose to do so may live in their hog pens in perfect individual freedom. Besides, watching trash has no effect on children’s behavior. That’s why no one advertises on kids TV shows.

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:25 pm 24. Rick Ballard:

You too, Terrye? Where were those kids nannies or housekeepers? Didn’t someone at the progressive day care center notice something wrong? You aren’t suggesting that indulgent licentiousness be limited are you? Just to protect some kids whose parents are too poor or stupid to provide adequate child care? Why any caring parent always sends the nanny with the child even when they’re visiting friends, just to make sure that the little prince or princess isn’t exposed to common vulgarity. How else is one to raise a decent child amid all the protected smut?

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:41 pm 25. Fresh Air:

Lindenen–

Although my TV is George Bush I-vintage, it does allow manual selection of channels, i.e. you can block out those you find objectionable. On newer models I believe there is a “parental consent” feature that allows you to code out the crap with a numerical password. Of course, any sentient teenager could figure out how to crack the code in about 30 seconds. (:-o)

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:42 pm 26. WichitaBoy:

I used to decry government censorship of the air waves. I was certain that even if other people couldn’t control what their children watched, I certainly would be able to.

That was before I had little children of my own.

(Yes, I was an arrogant leftist Democrat at the time.)

I was horrified on the day when they came home, still in preschool, using the bad words and telling me about the graphic violence they had witnessed. This despite my draconian efforts to shield them from ever watching television or listening to the radio. They had seen it at the neighbor’s, or in the TV that was on at the grocery store, or at the baby-sitter’s, etc. The scales fell from my eyes; I realized that there was no possible way this sort of thing can be controlled on the household level. Children are being brought up by the whole village, like it or not.

The problem is more complicated than it seems. I support the rights of individuals to do as they please, but some things are necessarily matters for society as a whole to decide. Children cannot possibly be raised in a moral oxygen tent.

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:49 pm 27. lindenen:

“Of course, any sentient teenager could figure out how to crack the code in about 30 seconds.”

Hah! Too true, this is why we should be able to get the channels a la carte as well. I dislike being forced to subsidize so-called music channels where using a woman’s ass crack as a credit card machine is presented to young men all over this country as acceptable treatment of women. You can’t convince me that watching this doesn’t affect how men treat women or affect how women see themselves. If MTV&co were rated appropriately and people could pick and choose channels, then they would have to tone this stuff down or possibly go out of business. The free market at work.

Apr 18, 2005 - 6:49 pm 28. Charlie (Colorado):

The fact that libel, for example, is not Constitutionally-protected free speech constitutes “censoring what we watch. . . in the name of [somebody's] moral values” just as much as the fact that obscenity is not. The belief that libel is wrong is a moral value.

Wow, this is wrong in a myriad, or at least a half-myriad, of ways.

First, we don’t actually censor libelous speech: we just allow the person who has been libelled to sue for damages after the fact. Of course, if the person being libelled is a “public figure” the burden of proof is pretty darn steep, and truth is always an affirmative defense — because the First Amendment states an near-absolute right.

Censoring “obscenity” implies a right to restrict what I can see before the fact, not a right for me to be made whole for something that has harmed me.

Second, the belief that libel is “wrong” may be a moral judgement, but the person libelled doesn’t get an award because it was morally wrong — they get an award for real damage done to something that has real monetary value, ie, their reputation. What’s more, the harm has to have been done by something that falsely harmed their reputation; if someone says “Charlie has three cats”, whatever you may infer about my life (or lack thereof), it’s not actionable libel because I do have three cats.

You show me how someone has been actually harmed in some tangible way because they could turn on the TV and see naked boobies, and I could imagine a suit after the fact. But, frankly, Andrea Dworkin spent her entire life making an argument for the intrinsic harm caused by sexual contant — in fact by penetrative sex of any sort — and she got bupkis.

Apr 18, 2005 - 7:00 pm 29. Charlie (Colorado):

At this point in time, full grown adults don’t have the power to decide what is brought into their home. There is no freedom of choice. It’s not fair that in order to get the news channels I have to put up with MTV, BET and all sorts of other crap that is a waste of my time and brain cells.

Lindenen, last I looked, my cable came equipped not only with a channel selector and an off switch, but I could also restrict any channel I like so it could only be activated with a password. I’d like to have a la cart cable as well, but the fact that you feel MTV is being forced down your throat by the cable companies just means you didn’t bother to read the instructions on your cable box.

Apr 18, 2005 - 7:03 pm 30. Charlie (Colorado):

Oh, lordy, if we ran government that way we’d never get anything done. Fortunately in a democracy you just need a majority.

Luckily, we don’t live in a democracy, but a constitutional republic. You might want to look up the Bill of Rights: it specifically states limits on what the majority can do: establish a church, abrogate contracts, and so on.

Apr 18, 2005 - 7:06 pm 31. Rick Ballard:

Charlie,

What will you say when the court reinterprets the First Amendment to restrict broad or narrow cast distribution of content which has too high a cost wrt negative externalities? The reason that free speech doesn’t apply to shouting Fire! in a crowded theater can logically be extended to cover the damage that Terrye describes. The current expansive interpretation is written on paper, not stone.

Apr 18, 2005 - 7:15 pm 32. lindenen:

“but the fact that you feel MTV is being forced down your throat by the cable companies just means you didn’t bother to read the instructions on your cable box.”

I don’t “feel” MTV is being forced down my throat, it is forced down my throat. I don’t like paying for it. If you want to watch it, then good for you! I really don’t care.

“You show me how someone has been actually harmed in some tangible way because they could turn on the TV and see naked boobies, and I could imagine a suit after the fact.”

I guess this means it’s ok with you if every television show features naked strippers and women who are brutally beaten and raped in the most lurid way possible on every channel. How such an entertainment environment would not harm society is impossible for me to see. But, hey, it’s just breasts and vaginas. More than half the population has them. Not everyone wants all porn all the time and there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t make them Andrea Dworkins. There is a time and a place for everything, but that doesn’t mean we should take children to sex shows or be treated to one every time we turn on the tv.

This is so common sense. I really don’t understand what your problem is. I have no problem with you watching what you want. I just want the ability to control my own media environment. You seem to think you have a right to force me to watch what you want, financially support what you want, and I should have no choice other than turn the tv off or pretend I’m not paying for it. I’m not even advocating we lock up pornographers or anything ridiculous like that, but you’re treating me like I’m Jerry fucking Falwell.

“But, frankly, Andrea Dworkin spent her entire life making an argument for the intrinsic harm caused by sexual contant — in fact by penetrative sex of any sort — and she got bupkis.”

Andrea Dworkin was a nutjob, a misandrist and probably a misogynist as well. It should be obvious to you that some pornography is degrading to people. Not all obviously, but some pornography is.

Apr 18, 2005 - 7:32 pm 33. richard mcenroe:

Actually, Andrea Dworkin got a “pornography is violence towards women” law passed in Canada… that was then used, and I only found this out this week, to my delight, to ban Andrea Dworkin’s books.

Terrye, I was walking home from work one day and found a two-year-old child playing in a puddle in the middle of the street while her mother was, er, “napping” in the apartment. Does that mean we all shouldn’t have front doors?

Rick ó The fact that something can “logically” be extended doesn’t mean it can sensibly be extended… that’s what reductio ad absurdum is all about. After all, by that standard, McCain-Feingold is a logical extension of efforts to prevent hate speech…

Apr 18, 2005 - 7:47 pm 34. lindenen:

“Actually, Andrea Dworkin got a “pornography is violence towards women” law passed in Canada… that was then used, and I only found this out this week, to my delight, to ban Andrea Dworkin’s books.”

That’s hilarious!

Apr 18, 2005 - 8:03 pm 35. Rick Ballard:

Richard,

I don’t believe that reductio ad absurdum applies to a return to a previous standard. The McCain-Feingold example as hate speech doesn’t hold because that really wasn’t the rationale. McCain-Feingold is a new restriction on an “almost absolute” right. It was upheld by this court. Actually, the big hurdle for a restriction is stare decis which will probably keep things as they are regardless of the composition of the new court. The cost of negative externalities can be weighed against any of the enumerated rights and certainly can be used in argument against the extension of those rights. The point is, it’s paper – not stone – and all it takes is five people to decide what the paper means.

Apr 18, 2005 - 8:08 pm 36. Wallace:

The Pamela Anderson BlogAd is fine with me. It’s that tatooed convict doing push-ups that needs to be censored!

Apr 18, 2005 - 9:23 pm 37. charlotte:

I haven’t had cable or dish TV since ‘92. Is there something good on?

This censorship issue is a win-lose proposition, no matter how you look at it. From the inner city to affluent suburbia, kids are watching hardcore porn and violence, and either their parents don’t know it or don’t care. From the inner city to affluent suburbia, virtually no parents use the V chip to block the “good stuff” that the entertainment industry now offers us. We may have grown up on censored, tame fare like The Outer Limits and The Avengers, but now that we’re adults, we know our liberties and rights shouldn’t be encroached upon. From the inner city to affluent suburbia, innocence is lost for our viewing pleasure. Oh, well.

Apr 18, 2005 - 9:31 pm 38. richard mcenroe:

Wallace ó Them ain’t push-ups. Don’t you love your planet?

Rick Ballard ó MacKinnon and Dworkin make my point perfectly. They actually got laws passed that said if any one woman found your work pornographic, you were chargeable. Roger could have gone to jail for the sex therapist in Wild Turkey. Extreme, yes… but it got all the way to the Supreme Court before it was overturned.

If you’re going to legally mandate restrictions on what is allowed on the air, it is incumbent on you to explain what the limit of that authority is, and how you intend to maintain those limits.

Apr 18, 2005 - 9:39 pm 39. WichitaBoy:

Richard,

Sez you.

Are you seriously advocating that we should have no limits?

If one of my neighbors decides to bare her breasts on her front lawn while the kids come home from school, is that ok? And if so, what if he is a man playing with himself in front of the kiddies? And you claim it is my burden to explain why this is wrong?

And yet the impact of such a person would be only upon a few, whereas the same action on television has an impact upon millions of kids.

We have always had and always will have community limits. It’s a fantasy to believe otherwise. Moreover, those limits have remained remarkably constant throughout human history. It is thus highly unlikely that they are entirely arbitrary.

Apr 18, 2005 - 10:13 pm 40. Kevin P:

Roger:

I think we are losing the private and public distinction. Free TV is partially owned,the airwaves, by the public and thus an agreed set of standards should be allowed and is not censorship. Cable and satellite are private and are invited into the home so the more strict free expression rights should be listened to. I am a conservitive Christian so my opinion of much of what passes for entertainment is not very high but I firmly believe in the right of people to decide for themselves what they watch. Strict government controll of expression often turns it gaze towards political and religous ideas and thought and I do not want to give them that kind of hammer. I don’t approve of strip clubs but I don’t want to ban them. But I also don’t think they have the right to ply their trade on the street corner or in the public parks. I think there can be a balance between what is allowed in private and what is allowed in public. I think there can be a balance in things that are privately owned and should be left alone(this does not include child porn) and what is held in common and should be subject to majority rule and certain restrictions.

Apr 18, 2005 - 10:27 pm 41. Rick Ballard:

Richard,

It is not up to me to define a limit except as a voting member of society. I hire legislators to make law, executives to enforce the law and to appoint judges to interpret the law. All those involved will eventually respond to the will of the people. When the Warren Court did their hocus pocus with the Fourth and Fifth Amendment it took twenty years before the people were able to get three strikes enacted to counterbalance the increased societal costs. Something similiar will happen wrt the broad and narrow cast transmission of crap that imposes high societal costs. I don’t know if it will come via taxes or via reinterpretation but no society lets sewage run down the street forever.

If you think about it, it’s a bit funny that the astroturfing practiced by the big progressive foundations to control political speech through McCain-Feingold may have cracked open the door for controlling programming content. They may turn out to be like the three striker who will never know that the Warren Court closed the door on him forever. In the name of a just and progressive society, to be sure.

Apr 18, 2005 - 10:57 pm 42. Jim Rockford:

Sadly, most on air broadcasts and cable shows are lacking in V-chip info because they are left out in repeats or syndications, so the TV sets equipped with V-chip technology (post 1999) don’t block them. Some folks might not be happy with Friends at 5 pm re-runs talk of threesomes or Buffy falling in love with her rapist, particularly when they are not home yet to monitor TV use by their kids. Both shows appeal to kids, neither has the descriptions that can parents can use to block them out if they want.

Likely, syndicators are using the opportunity to avoid v-chip blockage for higher ratings (by deliberately leaving out content descriptions that might get them blocked), some of these shows are doubtless targeted to kids. The solution is regulatory, fining folks big time for not including v-chip descriptions. However that requires cracking down on folks who might employ you later as a lobbyist, which is why it hasn’t happened.

Apr 18, 2005 - 11:05 pm 43. FutureTense:

I used to feel the way that Roger and several others in this comment thread feel about free speech. I was an absolutist to the core (barring the usual exceptions — libel, “fire” in a theater, etc.).

But in recent years I have witnessed an explosion of some of the most debased and exploitative programming in history. And at the same time, I have seen how many (though not all) parents, for a basketful of reasons (the rise in single-parent homes, the increase in two-income households, the steady drip-drip of declining standards, “progressive” theories of child-rearing), have virtually given up on supervising their children.

The last straw for me was when I went to see “Kill Bill Vol. II” in the theater, a hard-R movie if there ever was one. And sitting right in front of me was a child who couldn’t have been a day over 5 years of age, sitting next to an older man — his dad? I thought, whoever he is, he ought to be brought up on charges for child abuse.

But I thought most of all about that poor child. I doubt it was the only graphically violent film he’s been exposed to. I wondered what a constant diet of such fare at such a young age does to a child. What sort of adult will he grow up into? When he’s 18 and rapes my wife or shoots my son, who do I sue? Will I at least get an apology from his parents for not doing their job?

As has been pointed out above, anybody who believes that films and TV shows don’t affect behavior ought to tell the ad agencies. Why do you think they call it “programming”?

Usually I wince when I hear people argue policy “for the sake of the children.” But in this case I don’t think it’s about the children; it’s about what kind of society are we creating.

When I was a kid, my parents could plop me down in front of a TV set all day long, without worrying about me flipping to some ultra-violent or sexually graphic show. You can argue that parents ought to take more responsiblity, but it’s clear that fight is lost. Demanding that parents to use the V-chip to police their children’s viewing habits is a red herring; most adults can’t even program a VCR. And in most households, the most tech-savvy person is the kid we’re trying to block out.

So long as there are substantial numbers of parents who refuse to take the responsibility we hand them, we must take responsibility as a society. And it’s not only the kids who suffer. It could be you or one you love.

Apr 18, 2005 - 11:43 pm 44. Buddy Larsen:

What’s going to be uproariously funny is when today’s ten year olds, already veterans of whatever anybody at school can find on the net or airwaves, begin to hold some political power, say a couple decades hence, and simply plop a little phrase on the end of the !st Amendment “Oh, yes, almost forgot, no pornography.”

Why will they do this? Because porn–the hard-hydraulics/graphic XXX variety (not the comic adult bawdy) is saturating the mkt now and besides being simply too blatantly disrespectful of the ancient delight of the boy-meets-girl game, it’ll get unhip.

Harley’s stock has started downward–despite good sales–I think because every Casper Milquetoast started ridin’ and dressin’ Harley. I shoulda shorted the stuff, it was a no-brainer a year ago; if slightly naughty fun isn’t even slightly naughty, then it’s suddenly sorta silly.

Bluenoses? We ain’t seen NUTHIN’ yet. Once folks evolve out from under the horror of being accused of bluenosery, they’ll kill the porn industry on issues of health, exploitation, and general ickiness. As has been said, everything is merely ink on paper. Someday someone will put together a class-action on behalf of 10,000 victimized porn actors, and (*poof*) there’ll go the industry. And very soon, we’ll all be glad, and wondering what the big deal had ever been. Filmed orgiastic adults where 10 year olds can watch? Hell, NO, what in the world are you THINKING?

Backing XXX on freedom grounds smacks of Leonard Bernstein’s Manhattan soirees for the Black Panther Party back in the silly sixties. Going goofy trying too hard to be hip.

Apr 19, 2005 - 1:09 am 45. Buddy Larsen:

And the second-rate parenting that some say is the only issue; wonder how many second-rate parents are second-rate because they’ve signed on to the same idea that protects the extreme-vice industries? “So I’m a lousy parent, what’s wrong with THAT?” Porn is simply subversive, anyone who can’t see it is trapped in the abstract over the practical. Some call it bluenose, others call it cultural/utilitarian.

Apr 19, 2005 - 1:23 am 46. Buddy Larsen:

Sorry, goofed up the italics. Too much porn, probably.

Apr 19, 2005 - 1:25 am 47. ambisinistral:

“Can’t we puh-leeze do something for the children”

Well, since this is a blog on that internet thingy… Far more porn and nasty stuff is delivered by the internet than MTV. Far more. If you really want to cut back kids exposure to it, this is the medium to attack. Anybody care to expose themselves to fines or worse because some elistist doesn’t like your posts?

At any rate, restricting my adult behavior will not solve the problem of bad parenting. It isn’t about the kids, although they do make a convenient red herring. Censorship is about what you choose to restrict me, or any other adult, from seeing.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:11 am 48. Buddy Larsen:

Speaking for myself, I can guarantee you you’re wrong, ambisinistral. I absolutely don’t want to tell anyone what to do with their private lives. This is really dedundant, as the same thing has been batted back and forth forty times above, but, unless the child is in a bubble, the porn is in the public square. These killers and beasts in the news–almost invariably pornheads. Stuff’s bad news, man. Warp the kids in haste, regret it as a society in leisure.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:37 am 49. Buddy Larsen:

Playboy is not gonna hurt kids much…but the hard-core hydraulics were much better kept behind a higher counter.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:41 am 50. Charlie (Colorado):

What does telling other people “what to read, watch or think” have to do with providing a safe environment to nurture children? I don’t care if you read only porn magazines and watch only porn films. You’re entitled to do what you like, but it should be put in a place where kids can’t get to it.

Name one.

At least name one that will prevent kids from getting to it if their parents aren’t taking steps to set limits.

But then that’s not the issue, is it? If it were, we wouldn’t be talking about regulating the content of the cable channels, we’d be talking about educating parents how to set the damn V-chip. As long as we’re talking about the government regulating “indecency”, we’re talking about limiting what can be transmitted.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:46 am 51. Morgan:

I will support a ban on the broadcast of men wearing tights without a cup, but that’s not really for my children’s benefit.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:54 am 52. Charlie (Colorado):

The last straw for me was when I went to see “Kill Bill Vol. II” in the theater, a hard-R movie if there ever was one. And sitting right in front of me was a child who couldn’t have been a day over 5 years of age, sitting next to an older man — his dad? I thought, whoever he is, he ought to be brought up on charges for child abuse.

And so your solution is what? Keep the rest of us from seeing Kill Bill so someone can’t make choices for their children you don’t agree with?

What are you going to say when Hilary “it takes a village” Clinton decides that Mel Gibson’s Passion shouldn’t be shown because kids might see it?

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:54 am 53. Charlie (Colorado):

I guess this means it’s ok with you if every television show features naked strippers and women who are brutally beaten and raped in the most lurid way possible on every channel. How such an entertainment environment would not harm society is impossible for me to see.

Pratice makes perfect.

Travel is good, too. Most of Europe, Japan, much of Asia, find things acceptable that would curl most people’s hair over here. Look into hentai art (google for it and you’ll find tons). And it’s not a new thing, either: Hiroshige did octopus-cunnilingus tentacle hentai woodblocks.

As weird as Japan can be, they seem to manage to keep it together.

“Forgive him Theodotus: he is a barbarian and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature” —

Caesar and Cleopatra, George Bernard Shaw

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:02 am 54. Buddy Larsen:

You’re missing the point, Charlie. Kids are going to find their way to the fruit, but they should find a sign on it saying “forbidden”…not “help yourself, who cares?”

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:14 am 55. Rick Ballard:

Charlie,

Excellent point on focusing on training the parents. Of course, training costs money and they’re being trained because of the pernicious effect of material that is already rated, so it’s obvious that any programming not rated “G” should bear the training cost. Hmm, why aren’t all the pernicious costs associated with the rating system assigned to the product? Why don’t we start with the cost of a 14 year olds lifelong reproductive health that’s been destroyed by STD’s? Tough to figure that out by myself, but if I could sit with 11 other citizens and levy a penalty against MTV, I bet we could come up with a nice round figure.

And Charlie, I don’t give the teeniest, tiniest damn about the road to perdition taken by societies for which I don’t bear the cost. I just want a portion of the bill paid here by providers and users. You don’t mind paying the distributed costs of having sewage removed from your house, why would you object to paying the actual cost of sewage that’s delivered?

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:26 am 56. Buddy Larsen:

The argument that the existance of any custom anywhere is proof that it is benign for the human animal, means that New Guinea headhunting would be perfectly ok on Fifth avenue. Laws against it are infringements of the freedoms of any Headhunters who may be about.

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:27 am 57. ambisinistral:

OK… I’ll try this again. This isn’t about the kids. The kids are just a convenient device because debating censoring adult choices doesn’t fly in the US.

Problem is — this is all about choices adult make. This is about regulating Cable and Satellite TV. Unless you’ve given junior his own credit card, Cable and Satellite TV are products you have to buy before they can be on your boob tube turning your ankle-biters into drooling sex addicts.

If you think MTV is that pernicious, and you can’t figure out your TV manual (BTW, password protectong your spouse’s favorite TV channel is always guaranteed to get an interesting reaction), then don’t buy the cable package.

If you really thought it was soooo damaging to kids that is exactly what you would do. In fact, if you really believed that it, would be appalling for you to have a cable package.

Kids are exposed to things outside of the home in every generation — it is called growing up. The parents behavior and choices still have the largest influence of all on them. Censoring adults to correct the faults of trailor-trash parenting doesn’t solve anything.

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:29 am 58. Buddy Larsen:

That 14 yr old with STDs may have the best parents in the world; she may’ve just been unable to cope with some of the 14 yr old boys around, guys who were friends a year ago but got into some XXX somewhere, and decided that girls are just meat, and went for her in a way that worked.

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:33 am 59. Buddy Larsen:

And, sure, she’s not dead, antibiotics ought to do some good…but that formerly-accessible ordinary everyday dream little girls used to have, the wedding and hero husband and all that romance that really is the center point of life, is most likely gone, beyond her jaded, ironic, too-old, too-young imagination. And for what? Porn industry profits? So libertarians have plenty of masturbatory freedom-of-choice?

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:38 am 60. charlotte:

Charlie,

Wish I had time to provide some links, but the Japanese ARE experiencing some fall-out with their kids (girls murdering classmates, higher rape stats, etc.) due to various reasons, surely, but their parents are citing the extra violent and sexually twisted anime and games the kids are hooked on these days. Parental concerns can be universal, and travel has taught me that. (Clearly, though, I go to the wrong museums or don’t look hard enough. Missed that octopus porn completely!)

Ambisinistral, do you really think Bush and his killjoy cabal are feigning concern for children just to keep adults like you from seeing anything they want? Is everything about us- our libertarian principles, our libertine options, our liberating self-absorpton and our liberal paranoia- and concern for our children only a ‘convenient red herring’??

Perhaps there are better options than blanket banning of the really graphic and gross, but responsible adults need to admit and address the real-life consequences to our children as a result of easily accessible porn and gore on the TV and Internet. And just saying V-chips can be used and that there are a lot of trailer-trash type parents out there who don’t use ‘em or monitor their kids is not a serious answer. It’s a pass. Funny that some of the same people who bridle at decency standards and tell us to use our V-chips, are the same ones who would roll their eyes or feel outright hostility toward uptight Puritans who might mount a national campaign to get parents to use them.

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:42 am 61. Buddy Larsen:

V chips are great, but kids communicate, Mr. Dirty knows that salting the problem with ‘feel-good’ devices is no answer. Make V chip-useage mandatory, jail parents whose kids get into XXX, THEN you’re getting somewhere. Meantime, notice the epidemic of pedophilia–much of it violently murderous? Reckon there’s any connection to presenting marginals–sociopaths and borderlines, with all the dope and porn they want, in an ‘anything goes’ society? Wouldn’t a tad more cultural ‘frown’ go a long way toward re-bottling that genie?

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:48 am 62. Morgan:

Buddy:

So we should censor the content of cable channels in order to reduce the risk to third parties that results when parents fail to monitor their own children’s behavior?

Should the government get the kids out of bed and bring them to school, too? After all, if their parents don’t do that (and some won’t, we all know that), there is an increased risk that the kids will grow up to be criminals.

And what about breakfast? If my kid doesn’t eat a balanced breakfast, haven’t I indirectly increased the risk that he will lead a life of crime?

I’m afraid we’ll need to ban guns, too. Some parents just can’t seem to keep ‘em locked up.

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:59 am 63. Buddy Larsen:

Besides, why does one person’s freedom to have maximum porn availability trump another person’s freedom to not have it in the public square? That sort of skewed thinking logically concludes with no laws at all, none whatsoever. Every law interferes with someone’s pleasure–that is WHY it EXISTS. Some pleasures require ‘victims’, and are thus ‘outlawed’.

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:00 am 64. richard mcenroe:

Wichita Boy ó Actually, a strict libertarian (which I assuredly ain’t) would say that’s exactly right; what she does inside her own property line is her business. I don’t go to that extreme, especially if, as you suggest, the solicitation of children is involved.

But this reminds me of the crusade by the bluenoses to remove magazines like Playboy, Penthouse and Hustler from Army post exchanges. Apparently it is OK for me to see the inside of a man’s skull after his brain has been blown out of it, but not to look at a woman’s breasts.

I take the greatest exception to the argument that parents can’t be expected to keep all this material away from their kids. The parents in my family and the parents at my job all do a hell of a job at it. I don’t understand parents who will give their kid a $600 computer and won’t bother to learn how to set the parental contol filters or spend a $30 on CyberPatrol or NetNanny. And I don’t see why I should be obliged to pick up their slack. I don’t wave Hustler Humor outside grade schools, how about they stay the hell out of my living room?

FutureTense ó By your standards, we should ban any future performances of Shakespeare’s Cardenio, or The Second Maiden’s Tragedy (I mean really, that necrophilic subtext) or the original Roman version of Titus Andronicus (all that gratuitous violence). As for Medea… *shudder*

The biggest argument against your point, to me, came when the LA Weekly did a feature with a convicted and admitted child molester. You know what movie he claims was his childhood inspiration that predisposed him to pedophilia. Benji… the scene where the comical burglar ties the kid up.

You’re asking us to assume accountability for an infinitely variable range of personal choices and vices. It doesn’t work. It never did. The British invested the Lord Chamberlain’s office with the power of censorship to curb the excesses of the Restoration comic playwrights… yet by the time of prim, proper, decent Victorian England there were more brothels in London than in any time in that city’s history before or since.

As to “training the parents” ó where were the churches when they were growing up? Where were the school civics classes? Where were their parents?

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:02 am 65. ambisinistral:

charlotte,

No, thinking regulating TV is going to compensate for bad parenting is a pass.

I’m a fan of B Movies. There was a genre, popular in the late forties and earliy fifties, which featured young girls being lured into lives of debauchery ’cause they accidently swallowed a mouthful of booze some libertine gave them. Looking back at them, they are hilariously lurid tripe.

I bring them up because the hypothetical 14 year old girl (clutching a teddy bear no doubt) mentioned above, being ravaged by her boyfriend after he watched a few too many hours of MTV, sure did remind me of those silly movies.

This isn’t sensible discussion about what choices adults should be allowed to make. Instead it is little more than ridiculous purple prose trotted out to push an agenda. What next, Blanche does her dance while some pothead bangs on a piano?

Cable TV is a product that is bought. Buy it, or don’t buy it, but don’t pretend censoring a boobie or a swear word here and there is going to make the drunk down the road a model father. It won’t.

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:03 am 66. Buddy Larsen:

Morgan, your position sounds moderate, but the implications are extreme. Look, when I was in junior high, in the 60s, a pic of a pair of jugs in National Geographic would be passed around the guys until the page fell apart. If stronger stuff had been wired into the house, we’d've gotten it, believe me. the problem is the ubiquity of the avalanch. If it was just a few HBOs, fine, it’s easy for harried parents to know they have to be careful with this or that. But there’s just too much. To be sure, with 4 kids, put all half dozen computers in the kitchen. And, to keep the kiddies away from others less careful, move to Utah. Then what? I’ll tell you what, just give up and tell the kids it’s a jungle, and try not to judge humanity by humans.

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:13 am 67. Buddy Larsen:

At least this thread is bringing out the comedy writer in all you pornheads!

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:18 am 68. Silicon valley Jim:

First, we don’t actually censor libelous speech: we just allow the person who has been libelled to sue for damages after the fact.>/i>

Untrue. Courts can and have blocked publication of libellous material.

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:27 am 69. Kyda Sylvester:

Any parent who thinks he can shield his child effectively from an increasingly coarse popular culture is naive. And given the savvy of today’s kids, technology can only do so much (it was a 10 year old who showed me how to un-child proof a lighter). I once spent about a year doing intake at a county mental health facility. I’ve seen the many horrors visited on children and the horrifying things children are capable of doing. Some of these children are congenitally mentally defective (”bad seed” thesis anyone?). But most are products of their environments. We all bear the costs and the burdens of responsibility.

When it comes to censorship, I am libertarian. You want to spend your life producing filth or wallowing in it, knock yourself out. But then, I also believe that we as individuals, and therefore we as a society, have a duty to protect those among us who are incapable of protecting themselves: children, the elderly, the physically/mentally infirm or disabled, animals (everyone else is on his own, however).

So what should my positon on this issue be? Which of the above is the higher value?

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:29 am 70. Buddy Larsen:

Kyda, when you find an answer for that question, please let me know, okay?

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:46 am 71. Silicon valley Jim:

Oops. Hit the “post” button before I was through.

Second, the belief that libel is “wrong” may be a moral judgement, but the person libelled doesn’t get an award because it was morally wrong — they get an award for real damage done to something that has real monetary value, ie, their reputation.

Libel wasn’t the only thing that I mentioned. I also mentioned copyright infringement. A copyright holder has the right to block publication of a work on which he holds the copyright; he need not show monetary damage.

What follows is not a response to any individual poster, but a more general observation: There seems to be a feeling in the blogosphere that the writings of, say, Ayn Rand or the Cato Institute are equivalent to the US Constitution. The men who drafted, debated, and adopted the Constitution in 1787, e.g., Hamilton, Madison, Washington, Franklin, and Gouverneur Morris, the last of whom did most of the actual writing, were neither objectivists nor libertarians. Alexander Hamilton, who was both a delegate to the Constitutional Convention and one of the authors (along with Madison and John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) of the Federalist Papers urging the citizens of New York to ratify the new Constitution, was a believer in a strong, centralized federal government. Jefferson wasn’t, but he was not part of the Constitutional debate, because he was our envoy to France at the time. The Constitution might have been different had he been part of the debate.

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:49 am 72. Rick Ballard:

Kyda,

If the courts and legislatures are capable of evaluating and assigning costs to the pernicious product tobacco and imposing those costs on the producers and consumers, why shy shouldn’t the true costs of MTV be born by its producers and consumers rather than by society as a whole?

What libertarian principle is compromised by having people pay the full cost of a product that they are free to consume?

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:57 am 73. Buddy Larsen:

Rick, if i’ve never complimented your ability to narrow an issue to a briefable point, let me do so now.

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:01 am 74. charlotte:

Wouldn’t a tad more cultural ‘frown’ go a long way toward re-bottling that genie?

Which brings up that racy show from the olden days and how the the censors made sure we didn’t get to view Eden’s erogenous belly button. We’re come a long way since then, haven’t we?

Ambisinistral, just because way-back-when standards of licentious behavior and what causes it may seem ridiculous to us now doesn’t mean that our hard-core fare today isn’t regulation worthy in some ways. And who on this thread is talking about ‘just a booby or swear word here and there’? Personally, I don’t care what you watch or surf on the net, only that access to the strong ‘adult’ stuff be restricted to adults, somehow. A tough trick re cable and the Internet, to be sure. Smart people like you should be giving out possible suggestions, instead of a reactionary cry of censorship.

Cable TV may be a bought product, and one which I gave up when my kid turned four and started switching channels on her own, but it’s a ubiquitous product and one that is used irresponsibly by far too many parents. Were parents only affected by their own choices, then fine, maybe. But their children, our kids’ peers, and our next generation are watching and learning some really sick stuff in the comfort of their own homes. Social Services doesn’t often investigate this kind of child abuse, even though it constitutes parental ‘neglect’, because it’s just all too common. Yawn

Morgan, there are truancy laws, and if the vast majority of gun owners didn’t safely stow their guns and bullets and most of our kids were playing with them and having accidents, then I’d guess we’d fairly quickly ban morons from possessing guns. But that’s not happening.

We’re an interesting generation that didn’t grow up with explicit, in-your-face smut and guts on the TV and net, but one that is fairly sanguine about our crop of kids accessing and being influenced by it. Is this all about our adult liberties, or are we taking liberties with those toward whom we should show more at-large adult responsibility?

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:08 am 75. Buddy Larsen:

Amen, Charlotte. Nobody wants draconian government cencorship. But, those old B movies that are laughably lurid now, today’s kids won’t have anything lurid to laugh at; there IS no more lurid, we might as well drop the word from the lexicon. Who knows where this crossed Rubicon will lead? Could be a re-Victorianization of manners, could be a dissolution of the meaning of the culture. Or, could be nothing, could be the Harley effect, too cool for the room goes straight to too silly not to chortle. But, why worry, we don’t have to place a bet, that’s already been done. Someday, though, some historian is going to say (rightly or wrongly) that the Boomers so expanded their childhoods, there wasn’t much room for their children’s.

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:25 am 76. Rick Ballard:

Kyda,

I almost forgot – did you know that your Times letter was featured on another blog?

WARNING – The linked blog is conservative – viewing may cause adjustments in thought processes.

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:40 am 77. ambisinistral:

True costs of MTV? Ay Carumba, now we have social engineering from the right as well as the left? well, they are a corporation and must be Eeeevil and worth milking I guess.

Anyhoo… I’m doomed. After all, I did contribute to the decline of Western civilization by ordering the basic cable package from RoadRunner. $44.95 a month of pure electronic demon rum. Eeeesh… how can I ever face myself in the mirror?

Come on folks, you’re buttering the bread a little thick here. Yea, there is a lot of trash in popular culture — always has been and always will be. Put the effort into raising your kids and MTV isn’t going to turn them into lunatics.

I can tell you what my word for selling freedoms down the road for the “common good” (as defined by the elites natch) is…

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:43 am 78. Buddy Larsen:

Whoa, ambisinistral-the-spelling-problem, If I’m a socialist, and you’re a moral relativist, then how can we be both be so disagreeable?

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:53 am 79. Rick Ballard:

Ambi,

In many jurisdictions one pays a fee to exercise one’s Second Amendment rights. Philosophically, what is the difference in assigning a fee for the exercise of First Amendment rights wrt to content that is already subject to review and classification? Why should I be burdened by identifiable costs associated with an unwanted product?

The standards already exist and they exist because a determination has been made that the product in question may have a deleterious effect on individuals judged unfit by reason of age to make appropriate decisions. Why should society in general uniformly absorb the costs of the deleterious effects? Why shouldn’t the producers and consumers of the product pay the costs for its use?

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:02 am 80. Kyda Sylvester:

Rick–Do you assume that I find that the courts and legislatures acted properly regarding tobacco?

To answer your question, it violates no libertarian principle. As a matter of fact, it enforces libertarian principle. If you can find a way for the producers and consumers to bear the societal costs of the swill they produce and consume, I’d be thrilled. But it’s hardly that simple unless you intend to say “the cost you must bear is prohibition”. But please rest assured, even if there were a principle violated, my questions are largely rhetorical; I already know the higher value.

(On my way out, but I hope this most interesting discussion continues through the day.)

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:06 am 81. jerry:

This discussion demonstrates how as a nation we have lost our understanding of the Constitution,

The “press clause” of the First Amendment is a commitment to protect political, not artistic, expression. Most Founding Fathers would have no problem with censoring pornography because they did not view it as political speech.

Since the Warren Court, the Supremes have continuously revised the First Amendment to the point that the original intent of the Amendment has been inverted. The Courts have given pornographers blanket protection while allowing Congress to

“… abridge the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.” through the McCain-Feingold Act.

The intent of the First Ammendment was to open up political debate to all commers, not protect the rights of “artists” to put on display any and all human vices.

So does this mean that I favor restricting content on Cable TV? Nope, but not because I wish to protect artistic expression. If we set the precedent where the Feds can censor cable entertainment, some time in the future another John McCain, if not this one, will use it to bludgeon news programming he doesn’t like.

I am also disappointed at the pejorative term “bluenose.” It conjures up, at least in Roger’s mind, some small town Philistine. I am sure are gracious host would consider both me and my wife one because of my views on the public [but not private] display of sexuality despite the fact that we are both, urban (Chicago natives), well educated [both PhDs) and fairly tolerant of peoples private lives.

The intent of the First Ammendment was to open up political debate to all commers, not protect the rights of "artists" to put on display any and all human vices.

So does this mean that I favor resticting content on Cable TV? Nope, but not because I wish to protect artistic expression. If we set the precedent where the Feds can censor cable entertainment, some time in the future another John McCain, if not this one, will use it to bludgeon news programming he doesn't like.

I am also disapointed at the pejoritive term "bluenose." It conjures up, at least in Roger's mind, some small town Philestine. I am sure are gracious host would consider both me and my wife one because of my views on the public [but not private] display of sexuality despite the fact that we are both, urban (Chicago natives), well educated [both Ph.Ds) and fairly tolerant of peoples private lives.

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:06 am 82. jerry:

looks like I appended rather then replaced. The second reading is the correct one despite the lack of subject and verb agreement in the last paragraph

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:09 am 83. ambisinistral:

charlotte,

The reason I brought up the old B movies wasn’t because values have changed. I brought them up because in retrospect they are shown to be nothing more nonsensical pot boilers that did nothing to illuminate the very real social problems of the forties and fifties.

You have to be careful that an argument you’re making actually addresses a real problem, else your solution will likely do more harm than good. The arguments in this thread have often started, “Of course censoring adults is bad, but… ” The dreaded “but” word, didn’t we have a thread in here about the dagers of that in a debate?

If censoring adults is bad, then it takes more than the 2005 version of “Reefer Madness” to start the censoring. You’ve kindly complimented me and suggested I provide an answer. I’ve tried my best to do that again and again — parents raise children, not TVs. If bad parenting is an issue all the mucking about with TV programs will accomplish nothing but eventually engineering another purile BBC. And the bad parents will still be bad parents.

We are a liberal democracy (and please don’t call me a Libertarian folks). As such the Commons are subservient to Individual Liberties. IMHO, setting up elites to ever more minutely regulate individuals for the good of the Commons is not a healthy path in the long run. One must have faith in people to be a liberal democrat. That takes us to the old notion smothered by Political Correctness — tolerance.

Proohibition in the US has led to problems time and time again. The wide spectrum of our opinions has always been a strength. Be wary of appeals to emotion in how and what you fix.

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:14 am 84. ambisinistral:

Buddy,

Hehehe. I speak from experience… it is pretty embarassing mispelling your own screen name. And I belive it is: you’re the socialist and I’m the pornographer.

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:18 am 85. ambisinistral:

Rick,

There is a world of difference between licensing individuals and shaking down corporations.

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:20 am 86. Buddy Larsen:

Exactly. Who are the bluenoses? Those that say the ship of state ought to have guardrails to keep the weak from falling into the sea, or those that say no, on the grounds that guardrails make it more difficult for them to go swimming? Why are the guardrails more oppressive than the danger? Because they may soon be rebuilt higher, camel-nose-under-tentflap style? Okay, so how many drownings do we need to register before we’re willing to take the chance?

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:20 am 87. Rick Ballard:

“Do you assume that I find that the courts and legislatures acted properly regarding tobacco?”

Absolutely not. Nor do I. Just pointing out that the magic of progressive thought has provided the means to achieve ends that the little bitty progressive minds hadn’t contemplated.

For those interested in following what passed for jurisprudence in the Supremes long descent into madness, here are the appropriate cases. Try and pick the point on the muddy slope where societal footing was actually lost.

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:27 am 88. Buddy Larsen:

And it’s not just the drownings, it’s the effort that must be made to keep the weak from even venturing out onto the guardrail-less deck…is that not oppressive? Can the cost of making it a little easier for swimmers to swim be seen as the effort needed to to keep the weak away from the sea and/or the drownings otherwise? How much higher does that relative cost climb when the ratio is adjusted for the fact that even with reasonable guardrails, the swimmers can still swim (albeit at slightly more “whatcha got behind the counter?” effort)?

(Pardon the dumb-simple analogy, but the visuals ain’t that bad)

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:36 am 89. charlotte:

ambisinistral,

Have you ever worked or volunteered in an inner-city grade school? I mentored “at risk” children for several years, and I can tell you that trying to raise my child well did nothing for these other kids whose parents don’t try, don’t know how, and who are suspicious of bourgeois mores, anyway. These kids’ constant companion after school and late night is TV, nasty and bloody TV, by their own accounts, and their crude attitudes and aggressive behavior reflect it. Their sexual identities are malformed by the mesmerizing medium of TV (and video) at an age when our children are still reading Wind in the Willows and Watership Down.

Our society tries to protect the children whose poor and ignorant and also affluent and can’t-be-bothered parents fail to keep them from certain and very specific harmful practices and influences. We keep drugs, alcohol consumption by minors, and sexual activity with underaged kids illegal. Some of us think that restricting ‘adult’ entertainment to just adults with restricted access would be in the best interests of all children and not an unreasonable adjustment to make on our part. We need better ideas than “parents need to raise their children and not TV” (d’oh), and also that there is a V-chip (nobody uses). And please know that those of us who are concerned about this issue aren’t necessarily busy-body, illiberal prudes, I promise!

… the Boomers so expanded their childhoods, there wasn’t much room for their children’s. That’s it, Buddy, perfectly said.

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:36 am 90. Buddy Larsen:

Mindgame: Quantify the freedom lost by the current circumstance. We already understand the freedom gained by it. What’s the net/net?

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:40 am 91. Buddy Larsen:

Thanks, Charlotte…but Ambi will object to such purple prose.

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:45 am 92. charlotte:

Should I start writing those books with bare-chested men and cleavage on the front?

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:52 am 93. Rick Ballard:

“As such the Commons are subservient to Individual Liberties.”

Until overgrazing necessitates putting up a fence.

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:00 am 94. charlotte:

Oh, you mean your ‘purple prose’. Well, yes, your observations tend to be so revealing and thorough, as to leave nothing to the imagination.

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:02 am 95. Buddy Larsen:

Exactly…this isn’t a question of kind as much as degree. Volume makes its own statement.

Charlotte, was this posted here, sometime back? Don’t quit navigating before you encounter “Scottie McMullet”!

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:06 am 96. Buddy Larsen:

Shucks, M’am, ah’d never insult yore prose! In fact, if you DO write one a them bodice-rippers, I’ll buy it!

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:10 am 97. ambisinistral:

charlotte,

Yes, I’ve taught science in an after school program for poor, primarily black, children. Middle school aged. One thing I learned, be very careful in complimenting the girls on their intelligence in front of their peers. Very sad to see them disappear rather than face the dreaded braniac label.

Your story is what I’m driving at. Cause and effect is easy to mix up. The TV set is not the cause of those kids problems — the atrocious parenting, and frequent lack of any sort of reasonable father figure, is largest problem. You could toss their TV sets into the dumpster and there would still be massive problems with those children because of the parenting. Even before the advent of TV, slums were not pleasant places.

Yes, we try to protect the young and vulnerable, but within reasonable limits. Everybody in our society gets rights. We torture and twist the equality of those rights, sometimes for good reason and sometimes only for good intentions.

What I’m trying to say is removing an adults access to information, even information we might consider trivial or disgusting is a serious step to take. Prohibition, or restriction of a right, is always a serious step.

Because I don’t believe that changing TV programming will correct bad parenting, I find the issue of bad parenting attached to the issue of adult censorship to be a sort of a smokescreen pushed to rationalize censorship. If you want to talk censorship, talk censorship — but don’t try to obscure it with emotional appeals about children in ghettos. Two different issues entirely.

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:12 am 98. Buddy Larsen:

…and keep it under lock and key of COURSE (*sweating*…almost uttered heresy in presence of AmbiTorquemada….)!

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:13 am 99. Steven Mitchell:

Most of you, if you knew a bit about my view, would probably consider me a social conservative and perhaps even a “bluenose”. I’m not a gay marriage supporter, or even civil unions, for example–though I do think it ought to be easier, generically, to set up “household” agreements that made taxes, insurance, and other legal things easier to manage. If something like that provided defacto civil unions for gays, I don’t really care. It’s a free country. I certainly think “community standards” ought to have some say about what gets put out in public, in that community.

Yet, I don’t see any reason for the proposed restriction. Oh, I see some symptoms that it is trying to address. I just don’t think the proposed restriction will help any. And “out in public” immediately becomes a problem with anything broadcast or “pulled”, such as internet content. For community standards to have any meaning, we are pretty much limited to county/city level.

As with the “prayer in school” and other issues, I think the real solution is to reduce the public sphere, not increase it. If there wasn’t a public school monopoly trying to educate my goods on “modern” morality while pretending not to; and if the local government wasn’t preaching wacko ecology; etc.–then I’d be happy enough thinking that my kids were getting a good education in the world. They’d be equipped to handle whatever came from outside the community. That’s the only kind of help that will do anything for that single mother trying to raise her kids right.

Breaking the public school monopoly would probably do more for “morality” or “values” or “ethics” or however you want to focus on it–than anything directed at particular content. Porn is like viruses. You don’t want your kids wallowing in it, but anyone is deluding themselves if they think they can make it go away. I want my kids, when they are grown, to have a few antibodies.

PS. In their opinion that old Warner Brothers cartoons are culturally superior to modern dreck, nothing confirms my kid’s opinions like considered exposure to said dreck.

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:35 am 100. Buddy Larsen:

Ambi, the point I think you’re missing–among your number of very good ones–is that of legitimization.

The best parent in the world has only the choice of telling kids that in order to be happy they must respect society, even though society’s message wrt kids’ intense body/identity question–”there is no such thing as vice”–is wrong. Maxed missage, if one ever there was.

Because after about 10 or so, kids are hypocrisy-bloodhounds, wanton behavior can’t be right for a 17 yr old but wrong for a 16 yr old. It makes no sense to kids–heck it makes no sense to you.

Your position argues against regulation, but what is THAT, the “immoral for thee but not for me”, if not the sort of naked-ass emperor regulation that best creates scofflaw attitudes in the young?

The message kids get from ubiquitous porn vs parents complaining about it, can be nothing much more or less than “whatever”.

You know, resignation in the face of the incomprehensible. This is really sort of an existential question, in the long run.

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:53 am 101. charlotte:

They were all too funny, Buddy, but “Gimme My Shirt Back” is a good genre description, don’t you think? I hope you didn’t like that haircut, for your kids’ sake and all.

Ambisinistral, I’m sorry I can’t answer you other than to say I don’t know where I said that adults should be restricted from all the good stuff; I thought I proposed restricting it to adults. I’ve got guys working here, am distracted with decisions to make, and really shouldn’t be thinking about porn just now. What if one of them takes off his shirt?

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:55 am 102. Buddy Larsen:

Oh, i hate that…bad enuff to re-read yourself once. Second Steven Mitchell, BTW.

Apr 19, 2005 - 11:59 am 103. Buddy Larsen:

The true answer has to be attitudinal, on the part of the adults of the country, sez me, sailing off into the blue blue sky.

Apr 19, 2005 - 12:06 pm 104. Buddy Larsen:

Charlotte, shame on you, chasing the fellers around the office! (laff) Now to see if i can get this to post *one* time….

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:11 pm 105. Charlie (Colorado):

If the courts and legislatures are capable of evaluating and assigning costs to the pernicious product tobacco and imposing those costs on the producers and consumers,….

Rick, if you’re seriously suggesting that you think the courts etc can do this, I’ve got a movie deal I want to get you into.

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:29 pm 106. JB:

This is much ado about nothing.

“I think there ought to be a standard. On the other hand, I fully understand that … the final decision is a parent turning off the TV.”

“A White House spokesman said Mr Bush was only backing a proposed law which failed to clear Congress last year.

The failed law, which called for increased fines for broadcasters, would have only applied to network TV.”

Doesn’t sound like a bluenose to me, sorry.

Call me naive, but this is being blown out of proportion.

Read the original article BfT links to and tell me otherwise.

Sorry, this too conveniently plays into Bush The Biblethumper stereotype.

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:30 pm 107. Charlie (Colorado):

What will you say when the court reinterprets the First Amendment to restrict broad or narrow cast distribution of content which has too high a cost wrt negative externalities?

Well, pretty much what I’m saying now, why?

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:30 pm 108. Charlie (Colorado):

I was horrified on the day when they came home, still in preschool, using the bad words and telling me about the graphic violence they had witnessed. This despite my draconian efforts to shield them from ever watching television or listening to the radio. They had seen it at the neighbor’s, or in the TV that was on at the grocery store, or at the baby-sitter’s, etc. The scales fell from my eyes; I realized that there was no possible way this sort of thing can be controlled on the household level. Children are being brought up by the whole village, like it or not.

You know what’s even worse? In just a few years, they’re going to be exposed to all that stuff and you won’t be able to do a damned thing about it, they’ll be adults.

But then, my folks and my grandparents swore like sailors (with some justification, I’ve got a Navy family), and I’ve somehow managed to learn when to keep a civil tongue. I wonder how that happened?

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:33 pm 109. Charlie (Colorado):

I guess this means it’s ok with you if every television show features naked strippers and women who are brutally beaten and raped in the most lurid way possible on every channel.

Whoa, step right up, ladies and gentlemen, and see the one and only, original, walking talking Straw Man!

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:36 pm 110. Charlie (Colorado):

Untrue. Courts can and have blocked publication of libellous material.

Uh, I don’t think so. You’re gonna need a citation on this one. God knows I’m not a lawyer, but I remember reading something on Volokh (I think) that covered this very point.

Now, the courts have prevented publication of derogatory material based on things like copyright law.

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:38 pm 111. Charlie (Colorado):

The “press clause” of the First Amendment is a commitment to protect political, not artistic, expression. Most Founding Fathers would have no problem with censoring pornography because they did not view it as political speech.

Jerry, the problem with that argument — which is hardly an original one, I’m afraid — is that every time you try to figure out what constitutes “artistic” vs “political” expression, you fall over a sorites (the “bald man” paradox): what is political is artistic (Tom Paine wrote brilliant prose, which is part of why he was so influential), and what is artistic is often political (Lysistrata? Or the Comsymp propaganda in Robin Hood that the Art Eckstein mentioned [do we have to do a hat tip when we're referencing a link from this very blog?]). And how much political content do you have to have?

Was Deep Throat a political statement because it rejected the current legally-supported restrictions on women’s behavior?

Isn’t all porn a political statement against an argument for suppression?

Apr 19, 2005 - 5:49 pm 112. Charlie (Colorado):

You’re missing the point, Charlie. Kids are going to find their way to the fruit, but they should find a sign on it saying “forbidden”…not “help yourself, who cares?”

Why?

And who are you to tell me what my (hypothetical) kids should think is forbidden?

(I’m quite serious on that second, by the way: my folks got me a subscription to Playboy for my eighth or ninth birthday, but warned me not to let too many people know lest they think we were Communists. I personally don’t think porn does much, if anything, to kids except clear up some little details that the birds and the bees don’t quite get.)

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:00 pm 113. Charlie (Colorado):

Besides, why does one person’s freedom to have maximum porn availability trump another person’s freedom to not have it in the public square?

Um, Buddy, what we’re talking about is more like one person’s right to have porn available trumping the right of someone else to barge into the porn store and burn the books.

If thine channel offends thee, turn it off!

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:03 pm 114. Charlie (Colorado):

I swear I saw someone ask this and I can’t find it now. Whoever it was, if you haven’t figured out how to lock channels on your cable box, let me know the make and model and I’ll bet we can figure it out.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:05 pm 115. Buddy Larsen:

Well, not much to say there, fer sher, Charlie. A parent-given subscription to Playboy at 8 yrs old sort of opens a language problem between you and the mainstream. No wonder you always think everything’s so hunky-dory that we shouldn’ decry what our own senses tell us we’re bothered by.

But, this is a blog, not a Suprme Court brief, so en arguendo, I’d say that you’ve pretty much taken the outside perimeter and done nothing for us pore dumb sheep in the fold.

But your argument is no different than the ones you deride as not serious due to being ‘old’ or ’straw’: “Experience is the best teacher, there’s no sense in postponing what has to come anyway, sink or swim, the fittest survive”–jungle rule, in other words.

And you’re right, jungle rule is the truth, nature is red in tooth, etc.

However, there is this silly Norman Rockwell, Saturday Evening Post, Leave it to Beaver childhood that, I can tell you from my life experience, and a thousand conversations, that people brought up in that fantasy world love looking back at it, are charmed by it throughout their lives, and laterly appreciate greatly whatever it took from the adult circle to keep that little bubble over ‘em for the first dozen or so years.

Mock us for a buncha Louisiana Crackers, but don’t tell me it ain’t so.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:26 pm 116. Buddy Larsen:

As far as turning the TV off, hell, that’s a GREAT idea…thanks!

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:29 pm 117. Buddy Larsen:

But on the ‘what is art’ question, you’re right of course, even the Supremes could do little there…I’m not up on the history, but isn’t that the question that gave us the ‘community standards’ language? But, I’m not after repression, I’m after a little 50s STYLE, man! You know, like the reason you wear clothing when you go downtown. Like we send photos of the family’s faces, not their rectums.

Apr 19, 2005 - 6:37 pm 118. charlotte:

Ha! For some reason, baboons come to mind.

Charlie, what magazine was left for you to stash under the mattress so Mom wouldn’t see it? Isn’t that half the fun of it?

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:19 pm 119. John Moore ( Useful Fools ):

It is clear that society has been sliding down a grubby slope since the ’50s. The freedoms gained resulted in a degradation of values, exaggerated in the entertainment media.

Charlie’s Playboy at 8 isn’t porn by today’s standards. And today, we not only have raw sexual images, but just as bad (I suspect), we have every possible hedonistic life style portrayed in our mass culture as desirable. Watch TV comedies and see how many “normal” by ’50s standards families you will find. Good luck. See how much casual sex there is, and then tell me that this has no causative effect on divorce rates and illegitimacy.

We are, to use Moynihan’s phrase, defining deviancy down to almost nothing. Everyone is horrified at the homosexual statutory rape scandal (yes, that’s the right name for it) in the Catholic Church, and yet sex without consequences or conditions is the norm in our entertainment.

Earlier Japan was mentioned. How many people here are aware of the way Japanese women are normally treated by men? It isn’t pretty, which is why there is now a significant segment of Japanese women who refuse to ever marry; which is why I have a Japanese sister-in-law. Yes, Japan has some raunchy stuff, and Japan has some real problems in gender relations.

The problem isn’t *just* porn, it’s the whole putrid, stinking hdeonistic, libertine (mistaken for libertarian) mess. It may be un-PC to say so, but a lot of that stuff, or perhaps the whole corpus itself appears to actually be harmful, not just offensive to us “blue noses.” TV is powerful – the Shakespeare straw-men above are trivial in comparison, which is why they don’t damage little kids.

I don’t have a solution. The problem is vast. But perhaps we should recognize that some of the restrictions of the ’50s might have been a good idea, and also recognize that neither the Constitution nor the First Amendment have changed even one letter or comma in the interim!

Ultimately, the problem is values, and especially public values. This is why there is a “family values” movement – it is a reaction to the “if it feels good, do more of it” value set pushed on our society by Hollywood and modern academia, and people of my (60s) narcissistic generation.

As an annoying side note to ward off a straw-man or two, please don’t bring up hypocritical family values folks and then use that to bash the movement. It’s dumb.

It is a Libertarian value to let people debauch themselves as much as they want. But when those same people go out into the world, do we want them around our kids? Actions have consequences, and private debauchery may have very negative public results. AIDS, anyone?

One technical point: the satellites broadcast over public airwaves just like broadcast TV, and cable is carried over public right-of-ways. The decency distinction is tied to the pay vs. free aspect, not the method of transmission.

Apr 19, 2005 - 7:56 pm 120. Buddy Larsen:

John, that’s the letter I’ve been trying to write. It ain’t the porn so much as the porn signal. Thanks, Charlotte, for the zest, baboon is the perfect image; nothing wrong with baboons, but, do you want your daughter marrying one?

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:07 pm 121. ambisinistral:

For guys who pride themselves in spelling, you sure do throw words, like “hardcore porn” for example, around with wild abandon. Half of the overblown posts in this thread make cable TV sound like a 24 hour a day “Debbie does Dallas” film fest.

We are talking about cable packages here, right? Get basic cable with some premium channels and at most you get some R rated movies. Dump the Premium channels and most of the R stuff goes with it.

Back to Leave it to Beaver ’cause you can’t control your kids? Friends as hardcore porn cause they have risque banter? MTV needs to be taxed for some unspecified crime against humanity? And you wonder why anti-censorship folks view extremist huffing and puffing with alarm. Does the word hyperbole ring a bell?

Well, I for one am glad you could tear yourselves away from TV long enough to report how degenrate every last minute of every last broadcast is.

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:45 pm 122. Buddy Larsen:

“Does the word hyperbole ring a bell?”

Apr 19, 2005 - 8:57 pm 123. ambisinistral:

Buddy,

No, I’m well into the realm of lampoonery now.

Sorry. Tried to discuss censorship, but it seems the litany of a generation run amuck under the influence of rampant pornography on TV is more to folks’ taste.

Ah well, was a most entertaining thread anyways.

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:19 pm 124. charlotte:

ambisinistral,

I apologize for not making my points very clearly. Most of us enjoy a lot of the same programming you do and, Charlie, no one said anything about barging into those ‘adult’ shops and burning their books (they have books?) Anyway, from what I read, the uproar over the administration’s proposals re pay TV seems more overwrought than any of our tangential concerns about too many children accessing inappropriate programming on an explicit channel imported into their homes.

Buddy, my girl’s beau seems to be very nice and smart, and he doesn’t flash his backside for attention, as far as I know (but Moms are always the last to know). I think there is a little pic of him in Esquire this month, which I haven’t seen.

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:49 pm 125. Buddy Larsen:

yeh, it was good to air our differences, much as those hardcore porn actors do, har de har har! We’re probably not that far apart…just depends on what irons are in what fire, and when. I’m looking at STDs, teen pregs, messed up youngsters who messed up by following their elders’ lead, toward ‘freedom’. And just wondering what we–all of us–as a culture, as a society, give them in return for their misery. And you’re looking at removal of rights, government thumb on all aspects of life, encroachment, etcetera. I hate your horror just as much as I’m sure you hate mine. And we both see the only possible good answer as a redemption of personal responsibility. So, nite, and, enjoyed it (sorta). BTW the ’spelling’ remark was not snark, it was a chuckle over how hard it is for *me* to spell your handle. I’d never cheap shot anybody’s spelling out of the blue like that, it’d have to be a mutual joke. well, toodles.

Apr 19, 2005 - 9:56 pm 126. Buddy Larsen:

Charlotte, Esquire, really? I’ve been on their cover often…I sit on a stack of magazines whenever my back hurts. (kidding) Wot you said up there, about ‘tangents’, that’s right, we’ve all been at different focal lengths. Ha, reminds of a bad joke, about the two ladies gone to the photographer. He’s fiddling with the camera, and first gal whispers to her pal “What’s taking him so long?” Second gal answers “Oh, he’s got to focus first.” First gal, alarmed, sez “What, both of us?”

(argh…g’nite!)

Apr 19, 2005 - 10:14 pm 127. Buddy Larsen:

Apologies for not-nice joke. After being a thread bluenose, I just had to bust out and be a Wild and Crazy Guy.

Apr 20, 2005 - 10:20 am 128. charlotte:

Well, no apologies needed if you explain that park ranger ‘dumb model’ joke in your link. Your joke was pretty funny, but I have a friend who is a dumb dumb model’s mom who had to read it three times to get it, even after reading that long thread on obscenity and profanity. Sad, really

Apr 20, 2005 - 10:39 am 129. Buddy Larsen:

hmm…I don’t get it either…I just did the link because those characters were so funny…always trying too hard. But the joke for me was the concept…I’m laughing right now…funny guys.

Apr 20, 2005 - 10:57 am 130. Buddy Larsen:

…and yep, I have a dumb friend like that, too!

Apr 20, 2005 - 11:02 am

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