I am appalled that Senator Breaux (who is a Democrat from Louisiana, for crying out loud, and someone I thought was one of the decent guys) had offered an amendment trying to spread the FCC's ability to fine for indecency as mentioned in this article. How close are we coming to the mindset of the book banning era in this country? Didn't we ever learn anything from the McCarthyism?
I was 12 years old the summer of the Watergate hearings. For reasons I have never been able to explain, I sat glued to the TV, watching the hearings, watching as one by one, higher and higher up the ladder, the men were indicted and convicted. The presidency was crumbling out from underneath the country, and no one could do anything to erase the damage. By the time I was a senior and had to do my senior thesis for American history, I chose to do one on "The Rise and Fall of Richard Nixon." There were books - so many from even prior to Watergate which had warned of the dangers.
The danger is this: when the government starts deciding that you aren't bright enough to know the facts and make choices for yourself, so they'll form committees and decide for you? You are already in prison. Your rights are worthless, because rights without power, rights without choice... are nothing.
That was an era when the hubris of the government was so entrenched that it was natural for the leaders to think, "It's okay for me to do this thing which furthers my cause, because ultimately, I know what's best for everyone."
We are back there again. Freedoms are eroding right in front of us, and there is no co-ordinated out-cry. There are a few sites which are trying to make some noise, but I don't know if it's going to be enough.
The Patriot Act. Patriot II, which didn't get passed, but the fact that it existed is scary as hell. The FCC going bonkers. When the whole Janet Jackson thing happened, I thought it was a stupid ploy -- I was more annoyed at the fact that Timberlake tried to pass it off as a malfunction rather than a choice... because malfunction implies that he meant to grab at her clothing and rip it off, just not quite like that. I couldn't have cared less that an actual breast showed up on TV -- I cared about the way it was done -- with some sense of violence / S & M / objectification, communicating to women and girls everywhere that ripping a woman's clothes off is a sexy entertainment type of thing, even if it might be embarrassing to her. I wish Janet Jackson would have said, "You know, we thought it would be okay, and maybe we made a choice the rest of the country didn't like, but it was a choice... so that it showed she was choosing what to do with her body. I am totally okay with the fact that the people who didn't like it could scream to the hills and then choose to never watch either of those performers if that's what they wanted to do to show their dislike; but I do not think it's okay for someone else, some government committee, to go all whoopass on every single communications outlet and start regulating what we can and cannot see or hear. Who is it that gets to decide? And how will their politics, their religion, their own fear of preserving their jobs affect that? And more importantly, who voted for that committee? What? What's that you say? No one voted for them? They're appointed?
Well, how's that for biased self-interest? Sure, that's who I want deciding what is okay for me to see and hear. Not.
So what are we going to do, all of us here on the internet? Sit by and wait until they come for us, too? Will we have done something in time?
I don't know the answer. Maybe it's as crazy as making sure that every weblog has the word "fuck" in the title somewhere, so google goes fuck-crazy for a few weeks. Maybe it's as crazy as us writing to the writers of all the shows, asking them to put a fuck here or there, (or a breast here or there), whatever -- because seriously, if everyone defies them, they cannot win.
We cannot sit idly by. The bell is tolling.
Posted by toni at March 28, 2004 08:48 PM