While Spelling is a :wally let’s also pit the cowards at PBS who pulled this show. I think the real issue here isn’t money, it’s fear. The stations that pulled Saving Private Ryan were not publicly funded, remember. They were scared. Yes, the F-CC did eventually say it was okay, but the message obviously came through. The most effective censorship is self-censorship, after all.
Oh, lordy, more semantic parsing. “Oh, my, no, this isn’t censorship, it isn’t censorship unless jackbooted thugs alight from black helicopters and smash your printing press!” Piffle, drivel, and rot.
I am a First Amendment absolutist and an information enthusiast. To this little black duck, anything that hinders the flow of information is a bad thing, it has to be justified, and my standards are rigid and severe. Any personal decision to hinder such flow to oneself or one’s children is acceptable, of course, though I personally regard such a hindrance on one’s children as short-sighted and, well, stupid.
So far as I’m concerned, any such hindrance applied from a position of power, especially governmental power, is censorship. You may apply any term to it you wish, just be aware that when I say censorship, that’s what I mean.
Your attempt to correct/redefine my semantic usage is noted, and rejected.
Methinks ArrMatey has himself a new dueling code now! 
“chilling effect”? quack
I agree with you, elucidator , but think that there is much to what was posted just prior to you–this is fear and Spellings is engendering it.
Much better to make the stations self-censor–takes the onus off the ones who are driving the censorship in the first place.
Related note:
Can anyone imagine a show like Laugh In being aired now? Or even MASH? Satiric comedy that skewers TPTB is almost unheard of (Daily show excepted). And now they target kiddy shows? What is next?
50 bucks for Grade B? Sheesh, you got ripped.
50 bucks is about what you pay for Fancy Grade. A gallon of Grade B shouldn’t cost more than $35 or so, and you can find it cheaper if you look.
Fancy Grade is not something to be wasted on someone who actually likes Grade B.
(Actually, there is a whole new grading nomenclature, and Fancy is called something else. Screw 'em, I’ll stick with the traditional designation, thank you very much.)
Isn’t Sue Ellen’s mom a single mom, too? I don’t remember seeing her dad around anywhere.
We watch Arthur every morning, and ummm…we don’t even have kids.
It’s our favorite ‘wake up in the morning and get ready for work’ show.
E
I don’t know where you’ve been, eleanorigby, but children’s programming has always been a concern for moralists of every stripe.
Also, there’s lots of satiric programming that skewers the powers that be. Off the top of my head, I’m thinking of the Chappelle Show, South Park, Family Guy and to a gentler degree the Simpsons.
Quite so. Children under 17 were not permitted in the Globe Theater for the first run of Macbeth, due to concern for content: too much Saxon violence.
Well, exactly!
It wasn’t too gentle in the early days of the Simpsons!
Note also that at least three of the above were never intended to be “kid’s shows.”
Bravo for Bricker.
Utter bullshit. You have just defined censorship as the refusal of the government to fund something. Your definition is so overly broad as to have no meaning at all.
Frankly, I don’t care what the little tykes see. But I have to wonder what the results of a poll would be among parents if they wanted this program to air. I serioulsy doubt it would get the nod from anywhere near 50% of them.
Mmm – I could see your point, John, if I hadn’t seen apparently-not-ironic arguments from some people (on other boards) that refusing to pay tax dollars for religious displays constituted government censorship of religion.
I think you’re right anyway – but just to suggest to you that it’s not a liberal-vs.-conservative issue nor one so easily dismissed as your “utter bullshit” suggests.
You really think people have that much objection to maple syrup production? :eek:
Seriously, the only way you’d get much objection among parents is if someone runs a “scare” campaign emphasizing that there’s that passing reference to the two mothers, which constitutes promotion and endorsement of homosexuality yada yada.
Most parents wouldn’t, I think, notice – and of those who did, the majority would say that how it was handled was a tasteful way to gloss over something controversial that kids don’t need to be concerned with.
Of course, I am bereft to fall afoul of the illustrious John Mace. I humbly remind that I define the term for myself, making no pretence to define it for him. So long as he knows what I mean by the term, our communication remains. After all, whatever else is a word for?
And, no, the issue is not whether or not the government will or will not fund something, but the selectivity of that funding, and the use of the power of that funding. The government had already decided to fund PBS, for whatever its reasons. But in this instance, a government official uses the power of her position to express disapproval of a viewpoint, and, as much as possible, withold that viewpoint from the public. Does anyone seriously doubt that is the thrust of this particular excercise?
This is bad enough. But in so doing, she declares that the lifestyles and choices of the women involved are somehow unworthy of acceptance, an acceptance we offer another couple without so much as a thought. And what dread crime have they committed? Are they scoundrels? Thieves? Have they made babies and evaded their reponsibility as parents? If so, I see no evidence of it. Quite the opposite. They are entirely normal and responsible people, save for a peculiarity of sexual orientation.
Clearly, they are to be witheld from public view because this self-appointed guardian of our sexual mores regards them as unfit. As if the purity of our little ones will be sullied by the very mention of their existence! By what right does she do this? Did I elect her to perform these functions, if so, I don’t recall. I would not elect anyone for such a role, not even a person of such clear eminence as yourself.
Surely you agree this is wrong, John? If the government agrees to fund programming, and then attempts to use that power to stifle an unpopular viewpoint, in what way is that significantly different from censorship? And in what way would that difference be worthy of our attention, other than a trivial semantic argument?
Your definition is too far removed from the mainstream definition. Go ahead and keep using it, but you’ll have to remind us everytime someone raises an objection. I’m not about to start an elucidator dictionary, and I doubt many others are either.
And how exactly can the government direct it’s funds without being selective? Every decesion to fund one thing is a decision not to fund countless others.
Normal? I don’t know what’s “normal” and what’s not. And it’s not a matter of acceptance, it’s a matter of appropriateness on children’s programing. We’re a prudish nation, and like it or not, our public policy is going to be informed by that prudishness. I don’t like it any more than you do, but we live in a deomcracy. And although I don’t know for sure, I strongly suspect that this programming would not survive either a popular vote in the nation or one in Congress. Do you think otherwise? With that in mind, why should we be surprised that this administration official does what she thinks is representative of the desires of the majority of the people. It’s not like there is some longstanding tradition of showing gay couples on children’s programming, and she’s defining some new, radical policy of not showing them.
Because we can’t fund all programming up for bid to PBS. Frankly, I think ANY government funding of PBS is wrong. But if we’re going to do it, we have to recognize that some programming will be rejected. Trust me, I have no problems with lesbians on TV. I have no problems with strip-shows on TV, yet I think we can safely say that PBS isn’t going to get government funding to show striptease artists in action, especially on a children’s show. You seem to feel that censorsip begins when government refuses to fund something that doesn’t offend you personally. If the government were set up to serve you and you alone, then you’d be right.
I think this is a stupid policy, and I don’t support it. But I do understand it, and I do understand where Spellings is coming from on this. I don’t expect the rest of the country to fund programming taylored to MY tastes and MY sense of what is appropriate viewing material for children.
And so we combine the syrup from lots of different sugar maple trees and boil it down into syrup… But you’ve got to keep stirring it while it boils so it’s doesn’t burn.
Gee, that looks interesting! So where’s the stirrer?
Oh that’s old fashioned. We use these now. It really gets the syrup stirred up! Let’s turn it on! “BZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ” Now let’s whip it around in the hot, wet syrup. You really need to get it down into the syrup for the best results.
“BZZZZZRRRRUURRRZZZZZRRRUURRRRZZZRRRRBBBBUUUZZZZ”
Gosh! That’s an interesting looking stirrer. Why is it making a sound like angry bees?
Because it’s full of happy bees Buster. And bees love maple syrup!
Niether here nor there. PBS was already funded. I don’t have the particulars in front of me, but I think we can both readily agree that it is unlikely that there was any proviso in it about lesbians. Since the funding was already done, that point is moot. Its isn’t about selecting to fund a particular program, its about restraining the airing of a program already produced. And by dint of that, restraining any other such dire threats to the public morality. God save us all if we ever had a TV show of gay guys advising straight men on how to dress and stuff…
Of course it is! Overlooking the obvious, that acceptance and appropriatness are damn near the same thing, there is nothing anywhere that suggests the little buggers are going to be exposed to any hot girl-on-girl action
(Have you ever seen little kids watch a porno movie? By accident, I did. They were interested for about 10 seconds. Critical reaction: “Ewwwwwww!” “Thats how they make babies!” “Really? Do you get Nickleodeon?” “Yeah, its 47…”)
We are? You got the right word there, John? Do you by chance by “hypocritical”? No matter, just wanted to keep my Mace Lexicon updated.
You seem bent (snicker…) on dragging this discussion onto some libertarian platform about public funding. But the funding is not the issue, nor is the selectivity of funding of any moment at all. The funding was already done, PBS is funded, the show was produced, and this Spellings bint seeks to restrict the expression of a point of view, and to use her authority as a government figure to do it. I say its spinach, and I say to Hell with it!
Doesn’t matter. Unless the government is in breech of contract, it is free to withdraw or add funding at will. If it IS in breech of contract, then that is an entierly different matter, and not what I think we’re discussing in this thread.
Are you contending that the censorship is a matter only of the program that was already produced? If so, would it be censorship if the government made it clear that it would not fund any similar programs in the future?
As for QEFTSG, that’s a privately funded, cable channel airing an adult program at night. A matter entirely irrelevant to this discussion.
Also doesn’t matter. What matters is what most of the parents in the country want, not what you want or what I want or even what the kids want.
Your typo completely obscured the meaning of the second sentence. I don’t have any response.
Hey, you asked me what I thought so I told you. If it offends you, we can strike from the recond the one sentence in my post that had a libertarian idea in it.
Again, if it’s a contractual issue, then I agree, and the producers of the show should sue for damages. But I doubt that is the issue. We’re talking about whether or not it is RIGHT for the government to fund childrens programming, like this one, which contains a lesbian couple. I submit that it is only RIGHT for the government to fund programming that is acceptable to the majority of parents in the country. There isn’t an objective standard here-- we’re talking about a democratic decision, and the only RIGHT decision is what the people want.
If it’s not right for the government to fund such programming, then there is nothing wrong about correcting an error that has already been made (providing, of course, that no contractual obligations are ignored).
I’ll freely admit that we’re going to have a tough time taking the pulse of the nation on this. Still, I think we can make a pretty good guess, even if we no longer have the services of Carnak the Magnificent to fall back on.
Now, will this lead to a lowest common denominator situation for PBS children’s programming? You bet it will. That’s democracy in action. (I won’t talk about alternatives to PBS programming, as that would entail touching on a libertarian idea.)
I appreciate the restraint. Gotta wonder, what with all the belly-aching I hear on the sacred boards about the left-leaning nature of the SDMB, has it occured to anybody else that the one political philosophy represented here far out of proportion to its relative demographics is libertarianism?
And hey, I’m a parent! Done rather a bang-up job, thank you very much. Truth be told, it was mostly the luck of the draw, I got dealt a good kid, and all I had to do was feed him and not go out of my way to fuck him up.
But there is nothing whatever wrong with being a lesbian parent, and we should not accept any such contention. It ain’t so! It just ain’t so!
Now, if this pickle-up-her-butt harridan wants to make an issue of it, I say bring it on! Lets talk it out, lets have the justification for setting up a particular sexual morality as being public policy. Let them offer their proof, if they have such, that children exposed to same-sex parenting are somehow depraved by that exposure. In my personal experience, children raised by same sex couples are just precisely the same scabby-kneed, snot-sleeved rug rats as all the rest.
Lets drag it out in the light and have a good look!