Actually, the story which you appear to have ignored pointed out that the number of actual complaints across the entire U.S. was in the neighborhood of 350 per year–350 complaints for over 290,000,000 people watching or listening to multiple shows in hundreds of venues. When the puritans organized a group for the specific purpose of manufacturing complaints, they were able to pump out 240,000 additional complaints in one year and have increased that number annually. As the defendants in one case demonstrated, after a claim by the FCC that there were 159 complaints against one show, the FCC was only able to produce 90 of them in court (indicating to me that the current crop of FCC folks are willing to pump up numbers to rationalize their own behavior), and that those 90 complaints originated from only 23 people (with an unknown, but I suspect 100% participation by the PTC group), of whom only one claimed to have actually seen the show.
So rather than defending some “silent majority” of people who really want to eliminate “bad things” we have the government responding to invented outrage (and then exaggerating their own numbers) by a tiny group of people who are only taking the word of some organizer that there was anything at which to be offended. The actual viewing audience does not appear to have been offended, at all.
And the result of this horrendous “attack” upon decency is that networks and stations are being fined (or are choosing to interrupt programs with that stupid beep) for simply broadcasting people talking–even the President of the U.S. And the censorship is not limited to “gratuitous” entertainment, but is being applied to legitimate news stories.
Lenny Bruce was a prophet and James Branch Cabell was a martyr to the philistines.
You know, I have to wonder if there aren’t TVs that do that. Either that, are these people are too stupid to understand how to work the channel changer or off button.
It would be cool if the FCC could dissolve their Comstockery department and instead have their employees simply be TV tech support, teaching the public how to use the channel changer and v-chip on their TV sets.
I’m all for keeping entertainment where it’s most liekly to be seen by an appropriate audience. But is there really anyone tuning in to a Pink Floyd concert who doesn’t know that the line “Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit” is coming up? Certainly if parents are watching this with their kids, it’s with the knowledge that the kids are going to hear the word.
I’m not getting the outrage. What time was the concert aired at? Because in the Ken Burns example given in the column linked by JELLYBLUE, they could have avoided the issue by airing the documentary at a later time but don’t want to: “One option to skirt the FCC restrictions would be to air The War at 10 pm/ET, but Burns’ films have always aired earlier to reach more viewers.” Yeah, it would reach more viewers – because that’s when kids are watching. That’s the problem.
Time restrictions for what is appropriate are nothing new, and societal standards continue to evolve. Heck, you now hear “ass” on broadcast TV, and you’d never have heard that in the '70s or '80s. And almost since TV began, we put the more adult shows and presentations on at a later time, after the kiddies have gone to bed. But there seems to be some sort of “authenticity” argument that things aren’t as real or impactful unless they contain the unvarnished profanity of the original. In general, I don’t buy it. What, Money is such a seminal song, and the word “bullshit” so integral to its artistic worth, that the entire song is ruined if that one word is bleeped?
This is PBS, not HBO or Showtime. Home of much of quality children’s television, and a pretty safe bet for parents who want to watch, say, concerts with their kids instead of Friends or Deadwood. If the Pink Floyd experience is ruined by meeting minimum obscenity standards, then it shouldn’t be on PBS. But then, someone at PBS and someone in the Pink Floyd camp obviously disagrees with the OP on the need for complete authenticity in every respect, because the concert was aired, bleep and all. I mean, what if Pink Floyd had a great song that included the word “cunt”? Is PBS obliged to leave that in too? Is the FCC over the line on artistic integrity and freedom of speech if that one is bleeped out? It’s not an issue of PBS being “unaffected by public opinion” – which they clearly are not – but even if they were, that does not exempt them from general societal standards.
What is acceptable to us as a society depends on what is said, and where, and when. PBS was afraid that the word “bullshit,” on their station, and that time of day (whatever time of day it was) would be unacceptable. And they might have been right. You’d like to hear the song Money with the word “bullshit” in it; well, maybe your neighbor watching it with a 3 year old and a 5 year old would prefer that word is taken out. Why is your opinion and wishes more important than his?
And I think the talk about who is actually complaining to the FCC is a red herring. I was pretty underwhelmed by Janet’s tit and could absolutely see why people watching the Superbowl with their kids would be pissed. I didn’t call the FCC about it, though.
To me, there ar two larger questions. The first is: How do we decide what are appropriate standards for things like language and sexual content for broadcast TV? The weight of this thread seems to be that the standards are too strict, but I’m not sure I agree in the absence of some idea how you guys would propose the standards be arrived at. The second, and IMO more important is that I do believe broadcasters need more guidance from the FCC to determine what is okay, and when. But if PBS, one of the most family-oriented stations out there, can’t air your Very Important Documentary without the phrase “goat-felching fuck-nugget,” then maybe you need to find a different broadcast venue.
I don’t think this follows. One thing PBS tries to do with its concerts is to reach a larger audience with a type of music that may be unfamiliar to its viewers. I think it’s a huge leap to assume that everyone tuning in are such hard-core Pink Floyd fans that they know the song Money well enough to know it contains the word “bullshit.”
Riiiiiight. I believe that like I believe a 900 foot Jesus appeared to a certain TV evangelist: Not at all.
Yeah, I can see some kid arguing with their parents, “But moooom, those old white guys were singing it on PBS! It has to be okay for me to say it!” :rolleyes:
Thank you for dragging the race card into a totally unrelated discussion. I thought only flaming liberals were supposed to do that.
Um, wow. I think we’ve found your problem: An utter lack of blow jobs in your life. You’re, of course, totally ignoring the responiblity of parents in this matter. You know, to sit down and explain things to their kids.
Let’s see, if I have a choice between kids being educated (in any matter) about sex and kids being educated (again, in any matter) about violence, racist ideals, mass genocide, or child abuse (to name but a few of the horrors that this world has to offer), I’ll take them hearing about blow jobs every time. Besides, despite the number of rich, white kids listening to gangsta rap talking about pimping and gunning people down, there hasn’t been an increase in preppy gang related murders. Perhaps, just perhaps, kids are smart enough to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and that because their parents were willing to exercise a little personal responsibility and talk to their kids about such things, that’s why they’re not doing these things.
Well, obviously he knows more about being rich and successful than I do. Carlin has made a career out of semantic humor and the effect of language upon us, not merely chest thumping, like Limbaugh has.
Not so fast there, bub.
Any then I’ll expect that you’ll admit it’s entirely possible for people to come up with the idea that promescuity ain’t such a bad thing on their own, without listening to lots of rap and/or explicit music? Or are you’re going to claim that we’d be living in a perfect society if it weren’t for this “nasty” entertainment?
There’s also millions of people who vote Republican because they’re laboring under the mistaken impression that the GOP stands for smaller government and fiscal responsibility and they disagree with the GOPs efforts to legislate personal morality. I’m not sure how many gay Republicans there are, but I can assure you that they don’t vote Republican because they’re opposed to gay marriage. They vote Republican because they believe in smaller government (a small government would be a nice thing, since it would stay the hell out of people’s bedrooms and worry more about taking care of things that matter: Terrorism, environment, and the like).
You really don’t care if some tiny group of people - in this case, one single organization - is subverting the democratic process and making decisions that ought to be the domain of the public?
That’s my main problem here. Obviously there’s a rational purpose to regulating the airwaves to some extent. On my own time I might enjoy hardcore pornography featuring bad language, Satan-worship, incitements to violence, advocating of genocide, calls for the destruction of the United States, and a special guest appearance by Carrot Top, but it seems pretty obvious to me that such things shouldn’t be broadcast over the airwaves, which are public property, and should be put to some use benefiting the public as a whole. I certainly want Janet Jackson to keep her bejeweled tit in her shirt from now on.
But the trouble is that, quite obviously, different people want different things from the public airwaves, and different people have different standards for what constitutes inappropriate material. Decisions about what sort of material is appropriate and what isn’t, at what time of day, in what medium, are complicated. I have a very fundamental commitment to democracy; in a case like this, in particular, when the obvious goal is to try to set standards that are acceptable to most people, such decisions need to be made democratically. And, as has been demonstrated here quite clearly (in contrast to the lies put forth by the Theocratic Right and folks like our own Starving Artist), these decisions are not being made in a way that’s representative of the opinions and needs of the majority of United States citizens.
That troubles me greatly. Decisions about how property that is owned by the entire public - the portion of the radio spectrum dedicated to television broadcasts - and about matters that are important to all of us should be made by the public as a whole. When the process is driven by complaints to the FCC, and particularly by the apparently tiny number of complaints that actually happen, it leads to these important decisions being made only by the terminally outraged. These people who are offended by everything they see should not be the sole voice in making a decision that affects all of us. Those of us who care about our democracy and about the democratic process that sustains it ought to be incredibly pissed off that a tiny, unrepresentative group is making these decisions on our behalf with no direct oversight from the public. If you care about our democracy, Jodi, you should recognize how troubling it is to see decisions like this made in an anti-democratic process.
Well, you’d have a point, if it weren’t for the fact that every classic rock station in the country has Money on heavy rotation, so it’s pretty likely that 90% (at least) of the people who tuned into watch the concert had heard the song before.
However, “unaccaptable” in this case does not mean “offensive,” “prurient,” or otherwise harmful to the audience. It means “subject to excessive fines from a bureacracy that is (willingly) being driven by the whims of one loud protest group.”
How would your solution of keeping such language off the airwaves do so? Do you know for certain that Big Sis was listening to the radio? If she decided to buy a CD and expose Little Sis to inappropriate music - which may well have been what you actually witnessed - what would you do? Radio or CD, what you saw was Big Sis exposing Little Sis to completely inappropriate material. Why is Big Sis being so irresponsible? If Big Sis isn’t capable of caring for Little Sis without exposing her to inappropriate material, why are her parents entrusting Little Sis to Big Sis’s care? Why in the world is Big Sis apparently completely incapable of making any sort of judgment about what’s appropriate for children? I certainly wouldn’t have done such a thing at that age. Perhaps this complete inability to monitor and control one’s own behavior is a problem peculiar to the Right, as I wouldn’t have acted as irresponsible as Big Sis and her parents when I was sixteen. (Wait, I can’t even remember anymore which parts of this story were just the product of your own fevered imagination - was there a sixteen-year-old girl? Did she actually have a little sister?)
At any rate, how does regulating the airwaves prevent what you saw? There’s no evidence that the airwaves were the problem in this case (particularly since every pop music radio station I’ve ever run across bleeps material like what you describe.) Are you recommending that further steps be taken because of Little Sis and all her little friends who are constantly being exposed to inappropriate material? In the story you describe with such abject horror, the only real solution would be to ban the objectionable material entirely. Since Big Sis was most likely listening to a CD, she obviously managed to get a hold of it despite the voluntary retail restrictions on sales of such music to minors (probably one of her older friends, huh?). We already have rules restricting the sale of such music to minors, and they didn’t work in this case. What’s the next step to prevent what you’re describing? Can you think of anything short of banning such material entirely?
Do you honestly wish to defend this? The argument you’ve made entails actual out-and-out censorship of material sold privately in the name of preserving “decency” - because, as we’ve seen, nothing short of that would actually prevent the situation you’ve described. Is that really what you’re advocating? Some little kid gets exposed to something that’s not age-appropriate - is that such a threat to society that everyone’s right to such material needs to be taken away?
Because Tuckerfan’s solution is suddenly sounding a lot more realistic. Maybe, rather than banning certain things that some people don’t like, it might be more appropriate for Mom and Dad to have a talk with Big Sis about what’s appropriate for Little Sis to hear. Since that’s the only actual solution to the problem that fits within the confines of the Constitution - given that, as we’ve seen, restrictions on broadcasts don’t fix the problem - perhaps it deserves a second look?
Being a good parent is difficult, and it requires a lot of effort. I understand that a lot of parents on the Theocratic Right feel that they are completely incapable of doing it and thus need the government to step in and help them. Frankly, I agree with them - most likely there are a lot of bad parents out there that depend on the government rather than actual parenting in order to preserve their children’s innocence about sucking the dicks of big black guys wearing ridiculous amounts of jewelry. But since we’re talking about incompetent parents and trying to fix that by encouraging Big Government to intervene in their lives, perhaps a better solution would be free public parenting classes. It would directly act on the problem Starving Artist describes, and it wouldn’t result in more restrictions to our First Amendment rights. (It’s interesting to note that, based upon the people making these complaints, almost all these completely incapable parents are conservative Christians. I’m not sure what broader implications this has.) But I don’t think the fact that the country is full of bad parents (by Starving Artist’s own argument) means that the government should clamp down on free expression. Since the current new restrictions manage to create a great deal of difficulty for broadcasters and for the public, and since they quite clearly don’t solve the problem that is offered up as a justification for their existence, there’s no rational defense for them.
We seem to have lost the concept of moderation in this country. Bullshit is not a horribly offensive word–I don’t believe that it would cause outrage anywhere-not even in a nunnery.
There are shades of gray and degrees of offense–the devil is in trying to find them. Some may not be offended by cunt, a word that deeply offends me. Others take umbrage over bastard, a word that I use in casual conversation.
How to reconcile? The answer is NOT to heavily fine the slightest of transgressions–I never cared one hoot about Janet Jackson’s nipple ( I do wonder if her reaction had been different, if it would have become such a big deal, though); I have yet to meet any RL person, under say 65 who did.
I heartily dislike word police and the like. The conservatives seem to think that they know best for us all, and not only is that not true, it rankles. If Big Sis were singing to Lil Sis about blowjobs etc–time to talk to Big Sis, big time.
Get a grip–Beaver and Wally are dead–and they never really existed. This harkening back to some golden age of American values is so bizarre–and it’s bullshit.
The thing that gets me about this is clear that there’s tons of grey area about what’s acceptable for children and what isn’t; we pretty much have consensus that young children shouldn’t, for instance, be exposed to pornography. I’m right there with not wanting seven-year-olds exposed to blatantly misogynistic music or TV shows with adult themes. I’m definitely of the opinion that things like that need to be restricted to appropriate places and times. My problem is that the restrictions suddenly are becoming so severe that they’re burdensome to the media and to the public that depends upon it. Those restrictions should restrict things that we can mostly agree that youngsters need to be protected from. Hearing one “bullshit” in a Pink Floyd concert or hearing a verbatim broadcast of the president’s accidentally-recorded remarks is not going to scar a child for life, and the idea that it’s appropriate to punish such legitimate speech is deeply troubling to me. These restrictions serve a useful purpose - but it’s ridiculous to allow some tiny group of offenderati to set the rules, regardless of what the rest of us think. And they demonstrate their hypocrisy when trying to defend the restriction that PBS apparently bowed to - it couldn’t be more obvious that hearing the word “bullshit” once in a song is not going to scar a child; these restrictions should only affect things that are likely to actually cause problems, not any speech that might upset one dustcunted schoolmarm (thanks for that one, Uvula Donor!) who spends the rest of her time protesting the naked statues at the local art museum.
You believe all sorts of idiotic crap that isn’t true, so I don’t see why you wouldn’t believe something else that is.
Like it or not, or whether it tests your perception of your own intelligence to discover that someone outperformed you in the Henry Miller Reading Sweepstakes, the simple fact of the matter is that it’s true. I didn’t read them all in one sitting, but I did in fact read them. As a result, I’ve been a huge Miller fan for most of my life. He easily ranks among the top five of my favorite writers.
Now, if you call me a liar again I’m afraid we’re not gonna be able to chit-chat.
You really just have no intellectual integrity at all, do you?
But you don’t have that choice, for one thing; and this argument is a specious strawman besides.
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
Perhaps, just perhaps, kids are smart enough to tell the difference between fantasy and reality, and that because their parents were willing to exercise a little personal responsibility and talk to their kids about such things, that’s why they’re not doing these things.
[QUOTE=Tuckerfan]
Now you really are tripping off into liberal fantasyland!
I’m sure that in the scenario I mentioned above little 7-year-old sister is gonna go ask daddy why girls suck dicks and he’s gonna sit her down for a heartwarming little chat about the vagaries of sex. Not to mention the much greater liklihood that her big sister will tell her not to mention it to her parents. Further, most of the kids who listen this crap never discuss it in detail with their parents in the first place, and the sad fact is that there are parents all over this country and in every type of neighborhood who are not exercising “a little ‘parental responsibility’”. Some don’t know how; some don’t give a shit; some are rarely around; and others are wrongheaded dolts like you.
Well, apart from the fact that Carlin hasn’t been funny since AM-FM, you clearly claimed that as a wealthy and successful performer, Carlin was better able to determine what was best than I was. Therefore, it’s therefore inescapable (by your logic) that since Limbaugh is an even more wealthy and successful performer, he’s in an even better position than either you or Carlin to know what is best.
So I repeat: “hoist”, “petard”? Schmuck?
Certainly! It has always been thus. However, in the case of children who are too young to be able to cope with the consequences, or whose parents don’t want them thinking about sucking dick at such a tender age, it not only fosters but encourages the idea that such is acceptable. it’s one thing to come up with the idea on one’s own as opposed to having it foist upon them by virtue of its having become integrated into every facet of one’s social life.
Of course not, but just what does this have to do with the price of tea in China? Is it your argument that unless society will be ‘perfect’ otherwise, there is no point in trying to do things in such a way as to make it better?
Yes, there are also millions of people who vote Republican for a variety of reasons, and many of those you mention (erroneously, for the most part I’ll add) are undoubtedly among the ‘fed-up’ masses I spoke of before. This refutes what I said how?
Nor is this my contention. But you allow bullshit, and the next thing you know, someone’s gonna be evangelizing for ‘cunt’ or ‘motherfucker’ or “suck my dick”. It’s that ol’ slippery-slope thing, don’t cha know? I’ve seen this pattern time and again over my life and the dialog goes pretty much like this:
Liberal: “Permit A, you fusty, out-of-it, repressive old schoolmarm!”
Conservative: "If you allow A, B will happen.
Liberal: "No, it won’t…you bigot/racist/sexist/uptight/anal/asshole/whatever!
Conservative: “Yes it will, here’s why.”
Liberal: “You’re full of shit!”
Conservative: “I’m telling you, if A happens, B will happen!”
Liberal: “No, it WON’T!”
Time passes. A happens; B happens.
Conservative: “See, I told you so.”
Liberal: "So what? We’re better off, you bigot/racist/sexist/uptight/anal/asshole/whatever.
I’ve seen this happen time and time again and it is what has brought us to the point we’re at today and many people are rightly getting fed up with it, hence the uproar over Janet Jackson’s ‘tit’ – a rather minor transgression for sure but it gave the outraged masses a rallying point, and you see the consequences today via the FCC enforcement that some of you are in such a dither about.
With regard to your suggestion above that perhaps Big Sis was listening to a CD, this is most certainly the case. However, much of my position here relates to the consequences that virtually unfettered permissiveness has wraught upon this society over the last several decades, not just what is broadcast publicly.
And now, having devoted an hour or so to posting to Tuckerfan and now you, Excalibre, offline life requires my attention. You raise other points I’d like to address but I don’t have the time right now. I’ll come back to them later if I can.
One of my favorite instances of censorship was a radio broadcast of a Who concert in the ‘70s. The word “fucking” was cut from “Doctor Jimmy” (“Her fella’s gonna kill me? Oh, fucking will he!”). Not just bleeped; they actually cut out the word, screwing up the beat of the song. Later in the show, “My Generation” contained the line "Not tryin’ to cause no f-f-f-fucking big sensation," which was aired intact. The difference? The first was the song’s regular lyric as it appears on the lyric sheet, so somebody knew in advance it had to be chopped, while the second was an ad lib.
Ahh. So you don’t have a problem with “bullshit”. You have a problem with “cunt”. I don’t think the word “cunt” should be on primetime TV either, except maybe in very unusual circumstances. (Whatever the president is recorded as saying, the news stations shouldn’t have any fear of getting in trouble for reporting. So far, he hasn’t lapsed quite so far into vulgarity.)
So let’s make sure not to permit the word “cunt” to be freely used on the airwaves. Easy-peasy, problem solved.
I can only conclude that your point here is that conservatives are prone to the use of ridiculously fallacious reasoning. I’ve noticed the same thing; I’m glad you’re beginning to wake up to that. Meanwhile, the suggestions you’re making about the style of conduct that liberals engage in have already been proven false by the content of this very thread.
Except for the fact that, given all the evidence already cited, it’s not the “masses” who are outraged. It’s a tiny group of people who are filled with the irrational conviction that the world is falling apart and it’s somehow related to hearing naughty words on TV.
So, in other words, Big Sis was being irresponsible. How do you imagine you’d fix this? You can invent imaginary social forces all you like, but the bottom line is that what you’re suggesting wouldn’t in any way prevent the hypothetical you offered up. You’re arguing, what? Big Sis heard the phrase “bullshit” on TV a couple times, and it warped her so thoroughly that she felt compelled to teach Little Sis all about sucking dicks?
This would be more convincing if some of you could offer up some reasonable explanation. What problems exist that are going to be solved by bleeping out the word “bullshit” on TV?
One of the basic rules our government has traditionally operated under is that it shouldn’t restrict people’s liberties unless there’s some rational basis for doing so - there has to be some specific purpose to a restriction, and that purpose has to be met by that restriction. The only purpose you’ve offered up is a problem posed in an imaginary story about two sisters - and that problem won’t be fixed by increasing restrictions on the airwaves! All you’re able to offer up is empty buzzwords about “permissiveness” and basically suggesting that society is going to hell in a handbasket because of naughty words on TV. Try to think through this logically. What problems will be solved by these new restrictions? What will be accomplished by this? All you’ve come up with so far is that familiar vague sense of unease that the Theocratic Right has been feeling about society since time immemorial. Do you really believe those slogans you’re reproducing here? Can you try to come up with some logical reasoning for the FCC’s actions? Something that’s not couched in that vague, unmeasurable feeling that the world is falling apart because of miniskirts and bad words?
Let’s hope you come up with something a bit better the next go-round, eh?
And yet, you don’t seem to share any of Miller’s anti-censorship views.
Gonna put me on your “Ignore” list? Or are you simply making empty statements again?
And you’re dodging the issue.
Actually, if I don’t have that choice, than you don’t have the choice to block children from hearing things that you consider to be offensive, so the best thing to do is make sure you’ve armed your child with the knowledge of how to be able to deal with such things.
Now, I disagree with Dobson on a great many things, but in this one, I say he’s dead on. Don’t hide it, and don’t wait for them to come to you on the matter. A little more of that personal responibility that I was talking about.
In your opinion, in my opinion, Carlin didn’t stop being funny until his Life is Worth Losing, though even that did manage to elicit a chuckle from me every now and then.
Actually, in the case of Carlin, I’d say his wealth has nothing to do with him being smarter than you, and I was making a funny.
Got a cite for that statement that Limbaugh’s wealthier? And considering that Carlin’s been going for more years than Limbaugh, I’m not sure how you can say he’s more successful.
And I repeat, not so fast, there, bub.
So, rare than have parents exercise a little personal responsibility, you’d prefer the State to be everyone’s nanny? You’d like the State to decide what’s safe for children to see and hear? If you don’t trust the parents to be able to decide what it is that children should see and hear, then how do you trust the State to believe that the parents are capable of making any decision on their own?
How do you define “better”? By my definition, a better society is one in which people don’t have to worry about going hungry, don’t have to worry that the water coming from their tap is going to poison them, don’t have to worry that some nutjob with a mistaken ideology is going to try to kill them, where I don’t have to worry about government agents showing up in my bedroom, and one in which the government trusts me and allows freedom of speech, even I don’t happen to like what’s being said.
Well, for one thing, other than your comments, I haven’t seen anything about people being “fed up” in any large numbers with the “permissive” ways of this society. As tomndebb pointed out so well above, the number of complaints to the FCC is vanishly small and 99% of them are from a single group. So, unless you can provide evidence that folks are turning to the political party which has lately been involved in sex scandals, corruption scandals, expanding the government and invading our personal lives en masse because they think that it’s somehow morally superior, I’d like to see them.
But…but…what about “motherfucker” and “suck my dick”?
Curious you would zero in on cunt. Actually, I kind of like the word, cunt; I think it’s kind of cute.
However, I wouldn’t want my 7-year-old daughter using it…nor would I want her learning about sucking dicks.
With regard to your allegation the Big Sis was being irresponsible, how could this be when she has absolutely no reason to think there’s anything wrong it, other than perhaps in her outdated parents’ minds. Everything about the culture in which she lives these days is saturated with it.
And regarding the alleged fact that liberal behavior in this thread puts the lie to my little conservative/liberal dialogfest, I was referring to the nature of the national dialog over the last few decades (as I thought I’d made clear), and the behavior of people in this thread has nothing to do with it. Nice strawman, though.
And now, I really do have to run once I’ve given Tuckerfan the attention his post deserves, i.e.:
What’s your point, though? If I remember right, Little Sis was just a figment of your fevered imagination. So where’s the evidence for all these Big Sisses warping their little sisters’ minds with nasty, nasty rap music? See, you have a chain of something akin to reasoning here - social permissiveness leads sixteen-year-olds to have no idea that some things aren’t appropriate for seven-year-olds - but you have no evidence for it. Where is this happening? What’s the evidence that (if it actually happens) the “saturation” of our culture with “permissiveness” is causing it? Because this doesn’t exactly ring true with me - what sixteen-year-old is so confused that they don’t recognize that some material is inappropriate for seven-year-olds? I certainly wasn’t that dumb at that age. Were you? I don’
Not quite as nice as yours. So which actual slippery slope arguments have come true, then?
What’s your point, though? If I remember right, Little Sis was just a figment of your fevered imagination. So where’s the evidence for all these Big Sisses warping their little sisters’ minds with nasty, nasty rap music? See, you have a chain of something akin to reasoning here - social permissiveness leads sixteen-year-olds to have no idea that some things aren’t appropriate for seven-year-olds - but you have no evidence for it. Where is this happening? What’s the evidence that (if it actually happens) the “saturation” of our culture with “permissiveness” is causing it? Because this doesn’t exactly ring true with me - what sixteen-year-old is so confused that they don’t recognize that some material is inappropriate for seven-year-olds? I certainly wasn’t that dumb at that age. Were you? I don’t have any older sisters, but I was pretty close to one of my cousins as a child. She was only two years older than me - so you can imagine there wasn’t that much of a gap between us in our knowledge of the world - but even she would (with ostentatious maternalism) refuse to let me watch certain movies at her house, and so forth, when we were kids.
At any rate, you’re doing a great job of illustrating exactly why there is no rational basis for these restrictions. The only logic behind them is hypotheticals and imaginary, unmeasurable forces of “social decline” whose very existence can’t be demonstrated but which are - with no logic whatsoever - linked to every social ill, real or imagined. What about actual evidence? You vote Republican - aren’t you supposed to be against Big Government interfering with people’s rights to pursue misguided social agendas? Wait, I forgot - that’s all rhetoric. You guys haven’t fought against Big Government in a long, long time.
The funny part is that all of the arguments conservatives advance against their imagined nemesis of “Political Correctness” could be advanced, and so much more effectively, against what you describe. Because in this case, we have real censorship - a government body restricting people’s freedom of speech in order to push some indefinite agenda involving fixing society by advancing a particular set of values. After all, you said this: “Yes, I do. Political correctness, almost by its very definition, exists to inhibit certain types of speech and to dictate others.” Except, in this case, we’re talking actual censorship, not imaginary censorship - because, in this case, we have the government actually punishing people for saying things that aren’t acceptable to some tiny minority of people. You also said this: “No, I think that it’s taken hold in much the same way that political correctness itself has taken hold: it appeals to ‘impassioned do-gooders’ who are perfectly willing to trample the rights of the majority in an effort to try to assure that no minority is offended” - funny how the reasoning you’ve offered up in the past has destroyed your own argument so well. Some tiny minority gets a bug up their ass about hearing the word “bullshit” on TV - and they manage to get tens of thousands of dollars in fines levied against a TV station. Impassioned do-gooders trampling the rights of the majority indeed!
Right - this thread demonstrates quite clearly that your depiction of the “national dialog” is inaccurate. Unless, of course, you can find some evidence for it. Your little “dialog” is simply imaginary.
But tell me, what slippery slopes have we slid down as a result of ignoring conservatives’ warnings? You guys screamed and hollered that the Civil Rights Movement was going to destroy society as well, but that certainly hasn’t happened. If your point is that conservatives have a long history of crying wolf, I guess I won’t argue, but I think you should go a little easier on your fellows. Most of them aren’t quite as inclined to do so as you.
