From: "American Family Association" <afapetition at afa.net> Subject: You did it! FCC fines CBS $3.6 million for 'Without A Trace' Date: Thu, 16 Mar 2006 10:12:08 -0600
March 16, 2006
You did it! FCC fines CBS $3.6 million for 'Without A Trace'
In January, 2005, we asked you to join us in filing formal complaints against CBS and their affiliate stations for broadcasting Without A Trace, complete with an extended teen-age orgy scene. Within days, 165,997 AFA on-line supporters had filed formal complaints with the FCC.
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Groups like the American Family Association have sharpened their lobbying skills to a fine point.
I think the most effective counter to this sort of thing is the creation of a unified counter lobbying putsch that monitors opponent's efforts and swiftly launches anti-petitions.
If the FCC received battling sets of complaints - one, expressing concern with "indecency" the other expressing concern with others' concern with "indecency" it would be more difficult for censors to argue they were merely obeying the will of 'average Americans' (the obvious question would be this: which set is more 'average' in its averageness?? The concerned or the concerned with others' concern...concerned?)
Before leaving terrestrial radio for satellite, stylish misanthrope Howard Stern repeatedly made the point that the audience for "indecency" was surely as large - if not larger - than the one for programs featuring suburban parents lecturing their 20-something children about the finer points of table manners (exhibit A of this monstrousness: the soon to be merged out of existence WB network's "Seventh Heaven").
If the matter and anti-matter influence fields of the self-appointed family defenders and those who lose little sleep over simulated sex on television and in the movies were to meet, the results would be interesting.
I propose a suitably newspeakean name for this group: The American Healthy Family Association None of that civil liberty folderol...this is perceptual war we're fighting!
Parallax maneuvers in the dark are required.
.d.
--------- Sì, il blog. È soltanto un giocattolo. Ma, è un giocattolo serio.