Hello Morality!

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

http://www.sundayherald.com/45957

 

 

 

 

 

Right-wing moralists launch censor war

 

 

America’s freedom of speech is under attack. Mickey Mouse and Private Ryan had better watch out, says Ros Davidson in Los Angeles

 

 

WHAT do Tom Hanks, sex researcher Alfred Kinsey, U2’s Bono, Janet Jackson’s boobs and Mickey Mouse have in common? They’re all targets in an attack on American popular culture, which is accelerating following George Bush’s re-election.

 

E-mail complaints from angry right-wing viewers are flooding federal regulators this weekend following the unedited broadcast on Remembrance Day of the film Saving Private Ryan.

 

In fact, one third of the local TV stations affiliated with national network ABC, owned by Disney, refused to air the critically acclaimed second world war blockbuster because it contains swear words. The Oscar-winning film about D-Day, directed by Steven Spielberg, also includes graphic, realistic violence.

 

The 66 stations, from Boston to Detroit and Honolulu, said they feared sanctions from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for airing “profanity” during prime evening hours. That was despite the fact that ABC had promised to cover any fine by the commission, whose members are appointed by its president.

 

“ABC crossed the line by airing at least 20 ‘f’ words and 12 ‘s’ words during prime-time viewing hours!,” says the evangelical group American Family Association, which claims it has 2.3 million members and is one of the groups leading the revamped charge against “immorality”. “We believe ABC should have aired their salute to heroes without violating broadcast decency laws,” it said.

 

Each TV station could face a fine of £18,000 if found to have aired “indecent” material. Under long-standing guide lines, profanity is banned from 6am to 10pm on America’s publicly owned broadcast channels, but not on cable channels.

 

“It would clearly have been our preference to run the movie,” says Ray Cole, president of Citadel Communications, which owns three of the stations. “We think it is a patriotic, artistic tribute to our fighting forces.”

 

Senator John McCain, a one-time POW in Vietnam, introduced Saving Private Ryan on Thursday. A maverick Republican and a former presidential candidate, he spent much of Thursday trying to stem the desertions. The film is nowhere near indecent, he says angrily.

 

Initially, only 20 stations were expected to opt out. The 1998 movie has been shown twice before on ABC, to some complaints from viewers but without TV stations baling.

 

Previously, regulators have permitted some programmes with swearing to be aired when the language is justified artistically by the context. According to an agreement between Spielberg and the television network ABC, the film could not be edited for artistic reasons.

 

Thursday’s widespread reaction worries cultural observers because of America’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and because ownership of TV and radio outlets has become dramatically consolidated in recent years.

 

“It’s self-censorship,” says BJ Bullert, a communications scholar at the University of Washington. “There’s a climate of intimidation, especially in response to the election. It’s a new kind of cold war, and it comes from the top, from George Bush and Karl Rove.”

 

The national mood is different now, and not just because of the election results. “Moral values” were cited by 22% of Americans as the top issue in the November 2 vote, according to pollsters.

 

In September, regulators fined CBS £299,000 for the live broadcast in January in which singer Janet Jackson’s breast was bared briefly during half-time at the Super Bowl . Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” prompted accusations of immorality from conservative activists, some viewers, members of Congress and commentators.

 

Rove, Bush’s top political adviser, says: “I think people are concerned about the coarseness of our culture, about what they see on TV and in movies.”

 

Former Richard Nixon speechwriter William Safire, a columnist with The New York Times, describes it as the “social political event of the past year”. Conservative Christian groups, including the American Family Association, are also rallying against the new film Kinsey, released this weekend to critical acclaim, and starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.

 

The ideas in the film, directed by Oscar-winner Bill Condon who also made Gods And Monsters, promote pre-marital sex, which leads to abortion and Aids, claims the group Catholic Exchange.

 

Kinsey is a gripping and “brutally honest, uncompromising and non-judgemental” look at the controversial university researcher who revolutionised cultural attitudes towards sex in the 1940s and 1950s, said a CNN reviewer.

 

Robert Knight, of the curiously named Concerned Women for America, told Associated Press recently that Kinsey was akin to the notorious Nazi pseudo- scientist Dr Josef Mengele.

 

Knight backtracked on the comparison on Friday, but his reaction indicates the seriousness of America’s culture wars.

 

The American Family Association also calls for a general boycott of Disney, because the company has encouraged gays to visit its theme parks, and of food giant Procter & Gamble for hiring gays.

 

Two months after the Janet Jackson incident, which also involved singer Justin Timberlake, NBC ran up against the FCC. Rock star Bono, from the band U2, said “f***” during the live broadcast of the Golden Globe Awards.

 

Recalled less often, say critics of the culture wars, is the record fine of £652,000 for Rupert Murdoch’s Fox network for the heterosexual reality programme, Married By America. At issue were prime-time scenes in which “party-goers lick whipped cream from strippers’ bodies” and two female strippers spanked a man on all fours wearing only his underwear, said the commission complaint.

 

The silence over Fox’s fine, from those who tout “moral values”, is hypocritical, says a column by Frank Rich in today’s New York Times. Fox News has become controversial for its right-wing commentary and popularity in “red” or pro-Bush America.

 

Another indication of the red culture scare is the action of one of the US’s newly elected politicians, Tom Coburn, a senator from Oklahoma, says Rich. As a state-elected politician, he attacked NBC in 1997 for encouraging “irresponsible sexual behaviour” and for taking “network TV to an all-time low with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity”. His anger was prompted by the prime-time airing of another Spielberg film, Schindler’s List, about the Holocaust.

 

14 November 2004

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Welcome to several topics from last week. Why not actually add some of your own insight instead of just posting long winded articles that suck?

[Highland 0]

The hypocracy of the religious "moral majority" never ceases to infuriate me.

[Guest SP-1]

The hypocracy of the religious "moral majority" never ceases to infuriate me.

I'm not making an accusation here but I'm just wondering what hypocricy you speak of in this instance.

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Just let them pointless bash religious people, it's not worth the effort.

[Slayer 0]

I know it isn't entirely a religious thing, as 1) The WoI has been, for the most part, a bipartisan issue politics-wise and 2) Europe is fairly religious and they're pretty lenient with what they allow.

 

Really, it's a stupid uptight American thing, and that is where I get offended...

[Guest Salacious Crumb]

Well the stupidity of this article is it's trying to lay the blame soley on the feet of one groupd of people. It completely ignores the PC thugs who hate religious people that go after this stuff even harder than religious people. Also quoting Frank Rich is a fucking joke.

[NoCalMike 0]

Considering people have the option NOT to watch it, I don't understand the effort to write in and complain about the movie.

[AndrewTS 0]

2) Europe is fairly religious

[Slayer 0]

It's rather hard to respond to a smilie, Andy

[Highland 0]

The hypocracy of the religious "moral majority" never ceases to infuriate me.

I'm not making an accusation here but I'm just wondering what hypocricy you speak of in this instance.

The hypocracy of those not content in running their own lives, but that of others that do not coincide with their strict beliefs (I hold over-zealous PCers in equal contempt, both have a desire to limit the freedoms of others, in particular freedom of expression). They hide their bigotry and ignorance behind a religion and an assumption that their views while in the minority are supported by a "silent majority" thus giving them a far greater sphere of influence than they are warranted.

Edited November 17, 2004 by Highland

[Highland 0]

Another indication of the red culture scare is the action of one of the US’s newly elected politicians, Tom Coburn, a senator from Oklahoma, says Rich. As a state-elected politician, he attacked NBC in 1997 for encouraging “irresponsible sexual behaviour” and for taking “network TV to an all-time low with full-frontal nudity, violence and profanity”. His anger was prompted by the prime-time airing of another Spielberg film, Schindler’s List, about the Holocaust.

 

This anti-semite and Holocaust denier was elected?

[2GOLD 0]

I've met quite a few non-religious people who get SHOCKED by the notion of cursing and a naked body on TV. And I've seen quite a few religious people who just go, "it's a naked person...what's the big f'n deal?"

 

So it's not just the right wingers or even the religious. If anything, it's uptight parents. It's funny, cursing on tv is bad but you can bet money that those same parents have cursed at their husbands/wives or hell even their kid.

 

This isn't right wing or left wing, it's the overprotective wing. Who are very much like the PTA wing. I gave up on some parents when I heard they banned Huck Finn from some schools and refuse to show "To kill a Mockingbird". A movie I watched in sixth grade, complete with the cursing.

 

Don't try to toss this on the back of the right wingers. We have overprotective assholes on both sides. And we have overprotective assholes in the no party side.

[Slayer 0]

The Stupid American Wing

[2GOLD 0]

The Stupid American Wing

 

Knew I could count on someone to make it simple. Thank you Slayer.

[Special K 0]

Because the Gores were never in favor of censorship. Oh no no no.

[El Psycho Diablo 0]

So the violence isn't bad..but the swearing is?

 

Okay..

 

Gotta love inconsistent parents.

 

These are likely the same people that buy their kids the latest GTA game without so much as looking at it..and then try to sue later because it's "indecent.."

[Guest Cerebus]

Keep the blood nix the prostitutes?

[Guest MikeSC]

"It’s self-censorship,” says BJ Bullert, a communications scholar at the University of Washington. “There’s a climate of intimidation, especially in response to the election. It’s a new kind of cold war, and it comes from the top, from George Bush and Karl Rove.”

And censoring the movie helps Bush...how?

Former Richard Nixon speechwriter William Safire, a columnist with The New York Times, describes it as the “social political event of the past year”. Conservative Christian groups, including the American Family Association, are also rallying against the new film Kinsey, released this weekend to critical acclaim, and starring Liam Neeson and Laura Linney.

 

The ideas in the film, directed by Oscar-winner Bill Condon who also made Gods And Monsters, promote pre-marital sex, which leads to abortion and Aids, claims the group Catholic Exchange.

 

Kinsey is a gripping and “brutally honest, uncompromising and non-judgemental” look at the controversial university researcher who revolutionised cultural attitudes towards sex in the 1940s and 1950s, said a CNN reviewer.

Someone CLEARLY has never done any reading on the report. A report where pedophiles were PAID for their stories, where they vastly oversampled male prison inmates to skew the results towards more homosexuals than actually exist, a report where they have a large number of female college students and single women in an era where NEITHER was terribly common --- The Kinsey Report is a joke and any film that attempts to portray it as anything REMOTELY scientific is wrong and fucking absurd.

 

The British media should do the world a favor and stick to the inbred yokels who populate Buckingham Palace. They don't know shit outside of their own borders.

-=Mike

[theintensifier 0]

Jesus christ, cases like this make me hate living in the US. People are just so stupid, it's called the Power button, push it, problem solved.

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

There's a line in the South Park movie that sums this up perfectly. It went something like "Violence in movies is OK as long as there's not any naughty language..."

[theintensifier 0]

Pretty much kkk. It's 2004, not the 1960's, people seriously need to lighten up.

 

Hell, I was at Wal Mart the other day, and I was looking for some video games to buy. This mom comes walking up to me, and asks me what a good game is. I tell her GTA: San Andreas. I ask her how old her son is, she says 13. I'm like "he might be a little too young for that game..." She said "it's just a video game..". The funny thing is, she looks like the kind of person that would blame the game if her son did anything bad.

[Styles 0]

A 13 year old kid walked up to me today and asked me if it was ok to play violent video games....

 

I've failed again, haven't I, kkktookmybabyaway?

[Jobber of the Week 0]

There's a line in the South Park movie that sums this up perfectly. It went something like "Violence in movies is OK as long as there's not any naughty language..."

Wait a second, you mean you managed to sit through the South Park movie without exploding in rage about how it's destroying America's core beliefs and destroying young minds?

 

Did you not feel the stinging buzz from your RepubliCard? It was GOP Control saying "Abort! Abort! We must not lose our moral compass!"

 

 

 

(kidding, duh)

[CheesalaIsGood 0]

I've met quite a few non-religious people who get SHOCKED by the notion of cursing and a naked body on TV. And I've seen quite a few religious people who just go, "it's a naked person...what's the big f'n deal?"

 

So it's not just the right wingers or even the religious. If anything, it's uptight parents. It's funny, cursing on tv is bad but you can bet money that those same parents have cursed at their husbands/wives or hell even their kid.

 

This isn't right wing or left wing, it's the overprotective wing. Who are very much like the PTA wing. I gave up on some parents when I heard they banned Huck Finn from some schools and refuse to show "To kill a Mockingbird". A movie I watched in sixth grade, complete with the cursing.

 

Don't try to toss this on the back of the right wingers. We have overprotective assholes on both sides. And we have overprotective assholes in the no party side.

Indeed. Well said.

[The Czech Republic 0]

2) Europe is fairly religious and they're pretty lenient with what they allow.

As I understand, Europeans attend fewer church services than Americans. And my namesake nation has atheists as its majority, according to a missionary I know.

[Slayer 0]

2) Europe is fairly religious and they're pretty lenient with what they allow.

As I understand, Europeans attend fewer church services than Americans.

Well, I was referring moreso to quantity more than quality.