Remember all those really funny Super Bowl commercials this year?
Me neither.
This is just the most recent illustration in a series of instances where the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has effectively bullied television stations to censor themselves.
Since the night Justin Timberlake showed everyone where Janet Jackson hides her ninja throwing stars (weapons that she uses, obviously, to kill innocent children who refuse to be corrupted by her tempting hip gyrations), the FCC has made it very clear it will not tolerate any form of spontanudity.
Last May in his commencement speech at the University of Pennsylvania, Bono, U2 lead singer and tireless advocate of African debt relief, comforted the crowd by saying, "I'd just like to say to the parents, your children are safe, your country is safe, the FCC has taught me a lesson and the only four letter word I'm going to use today is P-E-N-N."
Phew! One time is enough. We don't care if you're a rock-star or how you do it in Europe. Keep your foul tongue on a leash here in God's country, okay?
This is America, and we say and do what we want -- that is, that we don't want people to be able to say or do what they want if they choose to express it in a way that will turn our daughters into young mothers and our sons into ghansta' rappers, Democrats, worshippers of Satan, or any other number of things we find in general to be veering from our accepted set of values -- which are, thank Yahweh/Brahma/Allah/chemical chance, universal.
Is it not the concern that our children will be corrupted by this sexuality and vulgarity which makes us want to censor everything? As the Rev. Louis P. Sheldon puts it in The Conservative Voice, "the American people have the right to be free from unwanted nudity and vulgar language on free television -- especially when children are watching a family event like the Super Bowl."
With all do respect, I think that Americans have the right to teach their children right from wrong and to turn off the "f-ing" TV if they don't like what they see.
Fortunately, the "f-word" will never be the catalyst for moral degeneration. No children were corrupted when Bono said it, nor when the FCC initially defended his right to say it.
The poor, innocent children were corrupted when the FCC withdrew its first comment -- obviously having been so blinded first-off by their disgust that they didn't realize they were appalled -- and said that Bono's comments were, according to Chairman Michael Powell, "reprehensible."
Bono, why don't you go back to your rock-star-with-a-cause stuff and save the African children, because you've already done enough damage to our youth.
Just as a comparison, let's look abroad. I know foreigners aren't Americans and statistics from their countries will distort the truth, but bear with me.
In Britain -- a country with similar moral precepts -- the word (pronounced "fook" or "fooking") is not a rarity in the dialogue of sitcoms and soap operas, yet their divorce rate is almost half that of the US according to the US Census Bureau. I choose divorce because it is often used to gage moral degradation, not for my personal values.
Looking at Europe on the whole, even France -- that moral abyss -- has a far lower divorce rate. This is a country where they show Showgirls, uncut and uncensored, on primetime network t�l�vision and whose boulevards are lined with billboards of Heidi Klum or Laetitia Costa posing completely nude and uncovered.
Don't like using divorce as an argument? How about schooling? In the Netherlands -- with legal marijuana, mushrooms and prostitution -- fourth graders graduate (as in England) with better proficiency in mathmatics, according to the National Center of Education Statistics (NCES) here in the US, as do their eighth graders.
Furthermore, they too have less than half divorce rate of the US.
Yet, here in the "Land of the Free," we have television channels like Fox going back to blur-out the cartoon butt of a character on "Family Guy" before re-running it, because they're worried that the FCC will issue a $1 million fine.
Finally, I'm not saying that we should abolish regulations, nor that there should be nudity and cussing on television. I wish only to say that this is starting to get ridiculous. The implication one makes when he supports the type of restrictions the FCC is imposing is that he will resign his children's moral instruction to the government.
Children learn by example. They're going to see private parts and hear cuss words. It's all a matter of whether or not we're going to teach our kids right from wrong and not let Fox, CNN, CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, and the FCC do it for us.
