Sunday Roundup
This week, five-and-a-half years after the momentary televised flash of a pierced celebrity nipple, the FCC decided to push for further investigation of what it called the "graphic and shocking, albeit brief, exposure of Janet Jackson's bare right breast to a nationwide audience composed of millions" during the 2004 Super Bowl. Talk about perverted priorities. The agency is facing enormous challenges: bridging America's vast digital divide, ensuring that the Internet remains open, fighting the ongoing consolidation of media ownership, and figuring out just how bonkers Glenn Beck really is. But, instead, it feels the need to reassert "its power to regulate fleeting nudity." Wasn't this kind of nonsense supposed to stop when Bush's culture warriors left the building? Surely, the FCC can find something better to do with our tax dollars than offer us stale breast and circuses.
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Ariana, This post was brief but oh SO accurate. Apparently, the upper echelon of the FCC must be survivors of the Salem Witch Trials or the Spanish Inquisition. To think that anyone nowadays other than a dinosaur would find obscenity in a human nipple is just absurd. These characters need to retire, or get back into their time machine and head back to the dark ages before they waste anymore of our tax dollars.
Spot on, Ariana.
If memory serves me well, Themis, the Goddess of Divine Justice is often depicted with one breast exposed.
(Caution: Adult Content Below.)
Link: http://www.4bronze.com/Themis.jpg
Perhaps as a lesson to many who would see shame, obscenity and ugliness in the feminine human form?
As for me, I have seen many a woman’s breast and think them the most marvelous examples of design, form and function, true Masterwork of perfection.
You know, thinking about it, God, in his search for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, did not seem the least bit taken aback by their former nudity. Not nearly as shamed as they were with their newly found knowledge. To the story, the tree from which they had eaten contained both GOOD and EVEL. Who knows, perchance they had only chose fruit of the EXTREME FAR RIGHT of the tree?
Just a thought.
All the best.
Knute
Three words for Arianna: I LOVE YOU. You're one of the few ´truetellers' around... This also goes for all your "this is not capitalism" and ¨Corporations and lobbyists are ruining this country¨. posts and interviews. I enjoy them and hope people in DC pay attention to what you say...
as usual, arianna is so right! seriously FCC??? you're trying to rehash 5y/o wounds with janet jackson & nipple gate? the USA ranks 20th in internet access for its citizens, and we invented the internet!!! get with it FCC and get the country high speed internet access!
What is wrong with those people!!? That occurance is ancient!
The americo public perhaps should remember, if they've thot of it at all, that the mammalian human breast exists to nourish infants... corpos have pornographized the breast for Big Bucks money having conned, a mostly infantile male population, into drooling over something from which they should've long been weened, you think? Probably, tho, the bigger overall living symbol is the desire for loving warmth, a deep feeling of security and encompassing love. Ain't never going to receive that from a corpo even tho "corpo" means "body".
Actually, the FCC should be cracking down even more, and Congress should give the FCC power to regulate and censor cable TV, too. The decision by our government to force the elimination of analog broadcasting has left many viewers in rural areas with no access to free over the air broadcasts. Cable TV is the programming source for most Americans, and it should be subject to the same regulation as broadcast TV. Congress should tell cable networks that they must adhere to the same standards and practices that governed broadcast TV in 1965.
The primary function of the Federal Communications Corporation is to regulate signals that are shared over the air. This is a necessary function of our government or we would have total anarchy and chaos among those wishing to broadcast and receive transmissions of any kind. The inclusion of public decency standards was and is incidental to this primary mission. In any case, the only signals that can be regulated for content in this way without violating constitutional law are those that are broadcast and can be received passively by equipment commonly installed in the home. Since there is no longer any kind of common equipment that passively receives the same signals throughout the country, regulating content is not only more difficult, it is not appropriate. I don't receive ANY media over the airwaves and pay for everything that comes in through the cable. Therefore, our government has no right to regulate this content any more than they have a right to tell you which web-pages are acceptable to look at.
I completely agree with Arianna. This is old news and in line with the right to speedy due process has been lingering for too a long time. We have too many serious problems at the present time to go back in history looking for more. That also goes for the Guantanamo and CIA investigations into water boarding. We don't have time for witch hunts to try to score political points and or to make the other party look bad. If infractions occur in the future, then by all means go after them, but make sure you give the accused a speedy trial.
Fairness in Media - killed by Repubs and now the Dems are too damn chicken to reinstate it (or are being paid well NOT to).
Just wait until after the Republican Supreme Court rules that corporate money is a 'first amendment right"........
It's like Ancient Rome's bread and circuses - without the bread. Keepthe masses distracted and maybe they won't rise up and kill you.
The question is, how we do, the citizens of the United States make it clear that we need regulation of hate speak throughout all the media venues.
The English language is robust enough for any opinion, liberal, conservative, GOP, DNC. We do not have to fall back on the specter of fear or hate to convince other people. That is bullying, harassment, exploitation and that is wrong.
If people are using fear and hate to convince other people that their opinion is right, they are obviously wrong. And just as the lies the Congressmen and Senators of the GOP told during August were not stopped and that led in to an uncivil outburst toward the President, if we do not use the FCC to curtail hate speak on the airwaves we will have a real uncivil end of the year. We have to be the grown-up in the room and say ‘enough is enough’.
Very silly indeed. Why don't they go after the Fox news who told the weatherman to "keep *ucking that chicken"?
I don't think the culture warriors left when Bush did. Instead they seem intent on obstructing for the next four years. You have people peddling hate and division on TV on a daily basis under the guise of news and yet they focus on a flash of a woman's breast several years ago.
So true, Arianna....these puritan, moral police force types are so sick. When will they complete this part of their obsession and get on with life, living and health? Fear of God....Fear of Sex......Fear of Sin....Fear of Death and Fear of Living, all preventing them and others from getting on with the importat responsibilites and essential matters affecting all of our inhabitants and caring about our mother earth. I guess we can assume that these zealots, with partially developed consciousness, do not see the big picture. Their conduct and beheavors indicate a very unbalanced human being who have nothing on their 'mind' but SEX. Excellent overview of these character disordered, right wing extremest group, for sure.
Thank you for your great contributions in helping Americans awaken to that true spirit and spark within all of us--these rigid crazy's just don't realize that the Big Pharmas, Big Private Insurance Co's., Big Private Hospitals and related Big Banks don't care about us/you--we are only a comodity.
Humanity is One.
Great article Arianna. Television's inventor wanted it to be used for the betterment of humankind. He was conned by a corporation, RCA, into believing it would be used that way. Obviously, his intention has been ignored and perverted, in the name of the god Profit, and has had exactly the opposite effect on our nation and our society. Perhaps that's why the name of this inventor of perhaps the most significant invention of our era is not even taught in schools.
Additionally, We the People OWN the airwaves, and the FCC is supposed to be OUR representative and watchdog. Sadly, they are nothing but lapdogs for the media, and our society suffers greatly for it.
You're kidding, right? This hogwash again? I don't get it. The FCC should be clamping down on Monopolies (like the reversal of the 1984 break-up of AT&T), clamping down on abuses of power, and other such important things. It should not be the prude police. They worry about the breast when two channels away we get Tony Soprano (not knocking Tony, it was a great show!). Again, we are decades behind TV in the rest of the world. Heck, 20 years ago in Europe, there was a game show where the only way you earned real points was to STRIP. Egon Balder was the host and it was called Tutti-Frutti. Look it up if you don't believe me.
Please, FCC....don't revisit the inane.
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