Title and summary (above) reflect the extremely libertarian opinions
of Senior Unlimited Nudes (SUN) of San Francisco.
[http://pages.prodigy.net/seniornude ]
.....

And below, you'll find opinions by two
BETTER-INFORMED observers of the FCC --

columnist Frank Rich

and blogger Jeff Jarvis.
...................................................



THE GREAT INDECENCY HOAX

by Frank Rich

[ excerpt from NYTimes.com,
© 2004 NYT ]

28 November 2004

[........]
Ever since 22 percent of the country's voters said on Nov. 2
that they cared most about "moral values,"
opportunistic ayatollahs on the right have been working overtime
to inflate this nonmandate into a landslide
by ginning up cultural controversies that might induce censorship
by a compliant F.C.C.; and, failing that, self-censorship
by TV networks.
Seizing on a single overhyped poll result,
they exaggerate their clout, hoping to grab power over the culture.

The mainstream press [....] is too cowed to
challenge the likes of the American Family Association.
So are politicians of both parties.

It took a British publication, THE ECONOMIST, to point out that
the percentage of American voters citing
moral and ethical values as their prime concern
is actually down
from 2000 (35 percent)
and 1996 (40 percent).

[ Please visit

http://www.economist.com/ ]


To see how the hucksters of the right work their scam,
there could be no more illustrative example than the
"Monday Night Football" episode in which Ms. Sheridan
leaped into the arms of the Philadelphia Eagles wide
receiver Terrell Owens [.......].

Rush Limbaugh, taking a break from the legal deliberations
of his drug rap and third divorce, set the hysterical tone.
"I was stunned!" he told his listeners. "I literally could
not believe what I had seen. ... At various places on the
Net you can see the video of this, and she's buck naked,
folks. I mean when they dropped the towel she's naked.
You see enough of her back and rear end to know that she was
naked. There's no frontal nudity in the thing, but I mean
you don't need that. ...I mean, there are some guys with
their kids that sit down to watch 'Monday Night Football.' "


Yes, there are - some, anyway - but you wonder how many of
them were as upset as Mr. Limbaugh, whose imagination led
him to mistake a lower back for a rear end. (He also said
that the Sheridan-Owens encounter reminded him of the Kobe
Bryant case; let's not even go there.)

The evidence suggests that Mr. Limbaugh's prurient mind is
the exception, not the rule.
Though seen nationwide, and as early as 6 p.m. on the West Coast,
the spot initially caused so little stir that the next morning only two
newspapers in the country, both in Philadelphia, reported
on it.
ABC's switchboards were not swamped by shocked
viewers on Monday night. A spokesman for ABC Sports told
The Philadelphia Inquirer that he hadn't received a single
phone call or e-mail in the immediate aftermath of the
broadcast.

Even the stunned Mr. Limbaugh, curiously enough,
didn't get around to mounting his own diatribe until Wednesday.
Mr. Owens's agent, David Joseph, says that the flood of
complaints at his office and Mr. Owens's Web site also
didn't start until more than 24 hours after the incident -
late Tuesday and early Wednesday.
Were any of these complainants actual victims (or even viewers) of
"Monday Night Football" or were they just a mob assembled
after the fact by "family" groups, emboldened by their triumph in
smiting "Saving Private Ryan" from 66 ABC stations the week
before?
Though the F.C.C. said on Wednesday that it had
received 50,000 complaints about the N.F.L. affair,
it couldn't determine how many of them were duplicates -
the kind generated by e-mail campaigns run by political
organizations posting form letters ready to be clicked into
cyberspace ad infinitum by anyone who has an index finger
and two seconds of idle time.

Like the Janet Jackson video before it, the new N.F.L. sex
tape was now being rebroadcast around the clock so we could
revel incessantly in the shock of it all.
"People were so outraged they had to see it 10 times,"
joked Aaron Brown of CNN [....].
And yet when I spoke to an F.C.C. enforcement
spokesman after more than two days of such replays, the
agency had not yet received a single complaint about the
spot's constant recycling on other TV shows, among them the
highly rated talk show "The View," where Ms. Sheridan's
bare back had been merrily paraded at the child-friendly
hour of 11 a.m. [.....]

The F.C.C. and the family values crusaders alike are
cooking their numbers.
The first empirical evidence was provided this month
by Jeff Jarvis, a former TV Guide critic turned blogger. [*]
He had the ingenious idea of filing
a Freedom of Information Act request to see the actual
viewer complaints that drove the F.C.C. to threaten Fox and
its affiliates with the largest indecency fine to date -
$1.2 million for the sins of a now-defunct reality program
called "Married by America."
Though the F.C.C. had cited 159 public complaints in its legal case
against Fox, the documents obtained by Mr. Jarvis showed that
there were actually only 90 complaints, written by 23 individuals.
Of those 23, all but 2 were identical repetitions of a form
letter posted by the Parents Television Council. In other
words, the total of actual, discrete complaints about
"Married by America" was 3.

Such letter-writing factories as the American Family
Association's OneMillionMoms.com also exaggerate their
clout in intimidating advertisers. [.......]


But perhaps the most revealing barometer of the real state
of play in American culture in 2004 is "Desperate
Housewives" itself. Conceived by Marc Cherry, who is
described by Newsweek as a "somewhat conservative, gay
Republican," it is a campy, well-made soap opera presenting
suburban American family life as a fugue of dysfunction,
malice and sex. [....].


"Desperate Housewives" is hardly a blue-state phenomenon.
A hit everywhere, it is even a bigger hit in Oklahoma City
than it is in Los Angeles, bigger in Kansas City than it is
in New York. [.......]

...............
For the rest of this esay by Frank Rich, please visit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/28/arts/28rich.html?ex=1102841701&ei=1&en=9dd15c60e7676c29

--------------------------
Copyright © 2004 The New York Times Company
....................................
* For more on Jeff Jarvis, please see:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Here's a taste of his blog, on 3 Dec. 2004,
about our nation's censor-in-chief:



Fisking our National Nanny
: Michael Powell, our censor-in-chief, writes an op-ed in today's New York Times defending himself -- and that's good news, for he clearly feels the need to defend his outrageous, unconstitutional, and above all hypocritical behavior against the heat of true public outrage that is beginning to rise in defense of our First Amendment.

But his attitude is horribly condescending, like a Continental airline clerk who abides a customer's righteous anger over bad service and eight-hour delays and lies on a microphone and then, with pursed lips, says, "Are you done now, sir?" You want to just slap him. Powell's self-defense begins:

Time to take a deep breath.
--Don't tell me what to do, Powell. Oh, that's right, you relish telling us all what to do. Well, when it comes to free speech, this is not a time for any damned deep breath. This is a time to shout with outrage at your censorship. How presumptuous that you would start by telling us to take a deep breath. But it's just like you.

The high pitch at which many are discussing the enforcement of rules against indecency on television and radio is enough to pop an eardrum.
--And for good reason. You supposedly listen to the outrage of the public, well start hearing outrage from the other side, the side you don't want to hear.

It is no surprise that those who make a handsome living by selling saucy fare rant the loudest - it drives up the ratings.
--How dare you? There are plenty of citizens out here who are ranting loudly against your actions and it's because we believe in the First Amendment and the Constitution -- as you once did. How dare you impugn the motives and message of good citizens in such a way? You prove just how deaf you really are, Powell.

The news media further fan the flames, obsessed with "culture war" stories that slot Americans into blue-state and red-state camps.
-- Well, yes, the media fan those flames of politics. But that's not the flame at issue. The flame I'm worried about is the match you put to the Constitution.

Overheated words, however, obscure what should be an important debate over two American values that are, at times, in tension. As one deeply suspicious of government involvement in the regulation of content, I understand and often agree with those who stand up for the cherished value of free speech. But as a parent, I respect the desire of the American people for a minimum level of decency on the public airwaves - particularly where their children are concerned. The often unenviable task of striking a balance between these two competing values falls to the Federal Communications Commission.
-- You often agree with those who stand up for free speech? Prove it, Powell.

Broadcasters have always had the responsibility of making decisions about what programs are appropriate. The majority have done well. In the history of broadcast television, there have been only four indecency fines.
--You have levied far more fines than that but you have used the blackmail power of the FCC to bring those to settlement. Another of your lies.

Yet when certain broadcasters trade responsible restraint for torrid sensationalism in the relentless race for ratings, it should come as no surprise that escalating calls for the government to enforce indecency laws aggressively are the result.
-- Here is your big lie, Powell. You know damned well that these alleged "escalating calls" are the Xeroxes of the few. Milllions upon millions watch and listen the shows you censor. Yet, as I proved, only three prigs like you bothered to write letters complaining about a show that you found to be the most indecent in history, since you brought the biggest fine in history against it.

[........... ]
[et cetera, at length ]
..................
PS 1:
For previous postings about nudophobia and breastphobia, please see:


http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/09/1697160.php (30 September 2004)

.....

http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/10/1697972.php ( 5 October 2004)

......

http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/11/1704993.php (12 November 2004 )

......................

PS 2:
And a question:
Does the FCC chairman seek publicity because he's planning to run for elective office?
Please post YOUR comments!
.....................................

PS 3: And, if you can tear yourself away from the screen,
here are some events happening this weekend,
Dec. 3 - 4 - 5:

CAL-SF: Music collective documentary:
Friday, Dec. 3, see Spreading Propaganda, a documentary about Entartete Kunst,
a politically minded electronic music collective.
8 p.m., Artists' Television Access, 992 Valencia, S.F. $5. (415) 824-3890,
http://www.atasite.org
.............................................

CAL-SF: Domestic partner laws:
Saturday, Dec. 4, learn about the legal repercussions of AB 205, the California Domestic Partner Rights and Responsibilities Act of 2003, in terms of community property, children, taxes, and dissolution of the partnership, at a question-and-answer session sponsored by Bay Area Lawyers for Individual Freedom. 11 a.m.-1 p.m., San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market, S.F. $3 suggested donation. (415) 865-5555.
.........
[Note by SUN: If AB 205 terms are too heavy for you, consider "DP lite" --
as offered by the City and County of SF, to couples of any gender.]
................................................................

CAL, northern: Crafts Fair in Berko:
Saturday, Dec. 4, enjoy organic goods and handcrafted gifts at the Berkeley Farmers Market's 12th annual Holiday Crafts Fair, a benefit for the Ecology Center in Berkeley. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., Martin Luther King Jr. Civic Center Park, corners of Center and MLK Jr. Way, Berk. Free admission. (510) 548-3333, http://www.ecologycenter.org
.....................................................

CAL, northern: Restore our seashore
Saturday, Dec. 4, take a trip up to Point Reyes [Marin County?] and help the Coastal Habitat Restoration remove interloping weeds, which threaten the ecology of the seashore and the survival of creatures like the snowy plover. Bring rain gear, warm clothes, lunch, and water. 10 a.m., Point Reyes National Seashore Visitor Center, Point Reyes. (415) 464-5223
...........................................................................

CAL, SF: Toys for kids with AIDS:
Saturday, Dec. 4, donate toys for children with AIDS in Asia and Africa at an event held by Maitri, an in-residence program for people living with AIDS. This year Maitri sends toys to Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Thailand. 1:30-3:30 p.m., Maitri, 401 Duboce, S.F. Suggested $15 value for toys. (415) 558-3003,
http://www.maitrisf.org
.............

CAL-SF: Alternative gardening
Saturday, Dec. 4, learn how to turn your kitchen scraps into nutrients for your garden at a composting class.
Workshop offered by Garden for the Environment
and Haight Ashbury Neighborhood Council.
10 a.m.-noon,
Garden for the Environment,
Seventh Ave. at Lawton, S.F.
Dec. 4 workshop is free.
(415) 731-5627
..........................................................


**CAL-SF: Saturday 4 Dec. 2004, door at 8:30, show at 9 pm:
PanTease: The 848 Burlesque Revue.
Featuring
Big Burlesque,
Burlesque-esque,
The Diamond Daggers,
Harlem Shake
and 848's own No Knockers Burlesque.
$12-$20.
At 848 Divisadero at McAllister in SF.
Reserve: 415-922-2385.
[This might be the last public event at 848?]
............

CAL: Dec. 5: SF, Cable 29: "Outlook" [queer news], first Sunday, 5pm.
.....

CAL-SF: Sunday 5 Dec,
7:30 pm signup, show 8 pm:
K'vetsh queer spoken word event.
Features plus open mic.
Hosted by Lynn Breedlove and Tara Jepsen. Open mic sign-up at 7:30, one piece of 5 minutes or less. $1-$3 donation.
Sadie's Flying Elephant bar, 491 Potrero (on the corner of Mariposa) the first Sunday of every month.
...........

CAL-SF: 5 Dec.(Sunday) + ongoing: The Bicycle Coalition needs you
San Francisco Bicycle Coalition needs volunteer crossing guards during the evening rush hour at the intersection of Fell and Masonic Streets, SF. Help protect pedestrians and cyclists at this dangerous intersection.
Also, volunteers are needed Dec. 5 for Winterfest, the yearly gala put on by SFBC, to assist with the auction, park bikes, check in attendees, and more.
To volunteer as a crossing guard, e-mail Michael Cobb at mishamean [at] hotmail.com
To volunteer for Winterfest, e-mail Lisa Ruth Elliott at lisaruth [at] sfbike.org [-SFBG]
.........
###