Get a Life, Please

Jeff Taylor | December 6, 2004

Need a hobby? A purpose, a goal, a distraction? Join the Parents Television Council and you too can swamp the FCC with 99.8 percent of all indecency complaints about broadcasts.

Sorry, actually making a living at bitching is restricted to top PTC honchos. Your results may vary, satisfaction not guaranteed, erections lasting more than four hours require immediate medical attention.

Comments

|12.6.04 @ 7:26PM|#

I was thinking about this earlier today. Should we all start writing the FCC every time a tv program doesn't offend us? I know it would be a lot of stamps, but maybe you could get some kind of bulk mail deal.

I always assumed everyone who didn't write in was implicitly approving of the program, but I guess the FCC changed that rule without really telling people?

Brad Reed|12.6.04 @ 7:39PM|#

Once again- I say we form a broad coalition to write the FCC every time O'Reilly does something obnoxious. Hell, if we could just get the numbers the PTC folks have, we'd have him off the air in weeks...

|12.6.04 @ 7:53PM|#

L. Brent Bozell - what a friging jerk off.

Embrace the State Brent! (pats head) Good Social Conservative.

|12.6.04 @ 8:08PM|#

Should we all start writing the FCC every time a tv program doesn't offend us?

Disingenous as some of the things Michael Powell said in the NYT last week were, he's right about this: The FCC's statutory obligations are asymmetrical. They have to investigate complaints of indecency. The rest of us writing in and claiming that something was not indecent or offensive triggers no such obligation, and has no effect on the FCC's obligations to investigate the complaints. (Letters testifying to a broadcaster's general good citizenship do have some counterbalancing effect against any action to revoke the broadcaster's license; but that punishment is never actually imposed anyways. Such letters don't mitigate against fines, which are actually imposed.)

Indecency complaints have a statute mandated effect. Anti-complaints have no effect. (That said, the finding that something is indecent, and the size of the fines imposed, are FCC decisions, not Congressional ones.)

|12.6.04 @ 9:09PM|#

True enough, Jacob...thus the Howard Stern campaign to rat out Oprah for her rim-job discussion.

|12.6.04 @ 9:36PM|#

thoreau,
If the PTC and ACLU were to touch each other, would the matter disappear into pure energy?

|12.6.04 @ 9:40PM|#

"erections lasting more than four hours require immediate medical attention."

In a perfect world, who might someone call to "kill time"/ suck the poison out, before the doctor makes his house call?

|12.6.04 @ 10:07PM|#

Mo-

The PTC is a spin-1/2 particle: No matter how you look at them they're always spinning. The ACLU is a spin-1 particle: From some perspectives they aren't spinning. They can't annihilate, but they can scatter off each other.

|12.6.04 @ 10:23PM|#

Oh, I should point out that O'Reilly is a pion, because he's in a no-spin zone.

Thank-you, I'm here all week! Don't forget to tip your waitress!

John Tabin|12.6.04 @ 10:32PM|#

All television sets should be fitted with buttons that can replace offending material with a competitor's content, or eliminate sound and images entirely.

Additionally, to relieve the burden on parents worried about what sort of material their children might be exposed to, laws requiring every household to contain a TV should be repealed.

|12.6.04 @ 10:56PM|#

Jeff Jarvis did a great job of skewering Bozell and his ilk. It's about friggin' time:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_12_04.html#008594

|12.6.04 @ 11:10PM|#

There are laws requiring every household to have a TV?

|12.6.04 @ 11:30PM|#

Bruce, there's this concept you may wish to look into called a "joke" which is a humorous message not intended to be taken seriously or literally. Not every joke is clearly marked as such; eagle-eyed readers simply have to be on the lookout for such content.

Warren|12.7.04 @ 1:53AM|#

thoreau,
That's definitely the funniest thing you've ever posted.

Re: Adam @ 9:09
Tell me more about Oprah's rim job discussion.

|12.7.04 @ 6:32AM|#

I particularly enjoyed this little exchange:

'It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio,' said Jonathan Rintels, president and executive director of the Center for Creative Voices in Media, an artists advocacy group.
[...]
'I wish we had that much power,' said Lara Mahaney, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles-based group.

I bet you do, honey. I bet you wish it with all your pure little heart...

David|12.7.04 @ 8:10AM|#

"We delivered on that promise," Bozell said"

Gee thanks Mr. Bozell. Thanks from helping to protect people from that searing few seconds of "indecency" that could result in the time it takes them to grab the remote and change the channel. And for the rest of us who aren't concerned about "indecency," or God forbid, even like it, thanks for helping the government protect us from ourselves.

|12.7.04 @ 8:49AM|#

You folks just don't understand! Even if they turn the TV off, the obscenity is still streaming through their bodies at the speed of light!

Maybe it's time to break out the tinfoil beanies.

|12.7.04 @ 9:51AM|#

Perhaps we should write to complain about the indecencey(sp?) of the 700 Club?

|12.7.04 @ 10:34AM|#

O'Reilly runs the vibration-zone (it may not be spinning, but that AA battery on the "Factor Gear" vibrator is getting low!). Anyway, to get a full rundown of the Oprah!-porn, see www.howardstern.com

Powell is either incompetent not to know his complaints were all from one source, or (more likely) he's dishonest to keep that fact from the congress. There are NO other choices.
Not Daniel

|12.7.04 @ 10:37AM|#

Warren, here's a Jarvis post on Stern & Oprah:

http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_03_19.html#006604

|12.7.04 @ 12:38PM|#

erections lasting more than four hours require immediate medical attention.

A myth perpetrated by overweight female doctors.