Indecency, Not Violence, Offends on TV (Caution: Nude Turtle Action Below)
S.T. Karnicks slaps down the FCC's recent yammerings about TV violence and the kids. He notes:
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission's claims that excessive television violence require it to trample the Bill of Rights are contradicted by the commission's own records, a new study says.
As Broadcasting and Cable reports, "violence did not even make the list of top programming complaints to the commission, which did include complaints about indecency/profanity and obscenity, as well as in two catch-all categories for general criticisms."
As I noted in my earlier piece on the FCC mentioned above, the public is much more concerned about indecency on television than violence in the medium.
While this a nice demonstration of the FCC's general inanity and lack of coherent thought, it doesn't really get away with the larger issue of their basic control over what many of us watch and hear. After all, it won't be long before the complaint about the the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles isn't that they jazz our kids up to fight (as one commissioner ominously avers). It's that they're not wearing pants. (which means that maybe Jackson Pollock ought to join the crew).