I Still Want My @#$%&! MTV!

Hey Congress, leave cable and satellite alone

Nick Gillespie from the December 2005 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

Make no mistake about it: We live in an age of unparalleled free expression, where even the most marginal of us have more power than all the pharoahs of ancient Egypt (or something like that) to say what we want, live how we want, and be who we want. Yet despite that terrible, terrible freedom—or perhaps because of it—there is a battle being waged to restrict and restrain precisely that expression. That's what was being debated on Tuesday in the Senate—and it's what being debated in Federal Election Commission rulings on whether blogs constitute political donations and more (alas, not yet a settled issue, despite some recent victories). It was the core issue some years back in The Communications Decency Act, a Clinton-era initiative that would have effectively applied broadcast-style content controls to the Internet (thankfully, it was overturned by the Supreme Court in 1997, thus saving the Web from becoming as boring as Good Morning America). Ironically, the battle for free expression is like the hunt for "indecency"—it must be fought always and everywhere, on the beaches of The O.C., in the streets of pilloried video game Grand Theft Auto, and in the ether of the Internet—anywhere a censor might train his eye.

Back in the early days of cable, MTV—then, as now, a channel that enrages the few viewers it doesn't bore to tears—ran a memorable ad campaign in which rock stars demanded, "I want my MTV!" If the continuing popularity of cable and satellite is any indication—chock full of the "coarse programming" Martin, Stevens, et al. decry, cable now pulls a bigger prime-time audience than broadcast TV—we as a nation still want our MTV, and our Comedy Central, and our HBO, and an unprecedented proliferation of kids-only channels ranging from Noggin to Sprout to seemingly endless Disney and Sesame Street outlets. With Stevens threatening to pass legislation on the issue in 2006, this is as good a time to tell your congressmen and senators to fuck off—while you still can without enduring a fine for indecency.

Reason Editor-in-Chief Nick Gillespie is the editor of Choice: The Best of Reason .

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