Nanny-State Television Censorship, Season 7
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On the heels of the latest victory of the First Amendment over the nanny-state censor wannabes at the FCC comes word of the next skirmish:
1. The "right" (a duty actually) to babysit your own children does not translate into a right to babysit me.
2. The means to babysit your own children without babysitting me are already at your disposal. The fact that you are either too lazy or too stupid to figure out how to use the V-chip is not a basis for you to demand censorship.
3. One person complaining 240,000 times is not equivalent to 240,000 people complaining once.
First Amendment precedent is unambiguous on this subject: The government cannot force the media to censor adult content merely because there is a hypothetical possibility that children might watch it. Moreover, the "regulating obscenity" standard of Miller v. California has never, not once, been extended to anything other than hard-core, XXX-smut pornography. All attempts to do so (e.g., "violent" video games) have failed. And rightly so.
Equally unambiguous is that any attempt by Congress, the FCC or the states to impose wishy-washy standards of "indecent," "vulgar" or "violent" in content regulation would be struck down by the courts as unconstitutionally vague. And rightly so.
Indeed, the censor wannabes ought to consider giving it a rest, because the one peg that they have hung their censor hats on for decades — the supposed "scarcity" of broadcast media — is now so hopelessly obsolete that the courts, if pushed, might revisit that premise altogether, and with it the constitutionality of any and all FCC regulation of the airwaves.
Meanwhile, Rockefeller is facing opposition, at the committee level, by (ironically) none other than Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens. So expect Rockefeller's indignant rantings to go nowhere — for now.
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Meanwhile, another activist legislator, Dianne Feinstein (among others), has "wink-wink, nudge-nudged" that she might "look at" reviving the Fairness Doctrine. Her reason? Conservative talk radio actually has — gasp! — an audience. Yes, that fact scares me too — but not as much as the Fairness Doctrine does.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., said he will push legislation in the coming weeks to limit violent content in the media.First things first: The Parents Television Council, for the uninitiated, is a puny gaggle of professional, obsessive-compulsive, radical-social-conservative malcontents who cannot get it into their central planner brains that:
"I fear that graphic violent programming has become so pervasive and has been shown to be so harmful, we are left with no choice but to have the government step in," Rockefeller said at a meeting of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.
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The hearing included a brief video montage of clips of graphic scenes of violence and rape played for the packed committee room and compiled by the Parents Television Council.
1. The "right" (a duty actually) to babysit your own children does not translate into a right to babysit me.
2. The means to babysit your own children without babysitting me are already at your disposal. The fact that you are either too lazy or too stupid to figure out how to use the V-chip is not a basis for you to demand censorship.
3. One person complaining 240,000 times is not equivalent to 240,000 people complaining once.
First Amendment precedent is unambiguous on this subject: The government cannot force the media to censor adult content merely because there is a hypothetical possibility that children might watch it. Moreover, the "regulating obscenity" standard of Miller v. California has never, not once, been extended to anything other than hard-core, XXX-smut pornography. All attempts to do so (e.g., "violent" video games) have failed. And rightly so.
Equally unambiguous is that any attempt by Congress, the FCC or the states to impose wishy-washy standards of "indecent," "vulgar" or "violent" in content regulation would be struck down by the courts as unconstitutionally vague. And rightly so.
Indeed, the censor wannabes ought to consider giving it a rest, because the one peg that they have hung their censor hats on for decades — the supposed "scarcity" of broadcast media — is now so hopelessly obsolete that the courts, if pushed, might revisit that premise altogether, and with it the constitutionality of any and all FCC regulation of the airwaves.
Meanwhile, Rockefeller is facing opposition, at the committee level, by (ironically) none other than Ted "Series of Tubes" Stevens. So expect Rockefeller's indignant rantings to go nowhere — for now.
---
Meanwhile, another activist legislator, Dianne Feinstein (among others), has "wink-wink, nudge-nudged" that she might "look at" reviving the Fairness Doctrine. Her reason? Conservative talk radio actually has — gasp! — an audience. Yes, that fact scares me too — but not as much as the Fairness Doctrine does.
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Posted by Kip on
27 June 2007
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