F the FCC!

Today, the House passed a bill that would increase the fines for indecency in television and radio broadcasts tenfold above the current maximum of $32,500 per station per violation. Yours truly would like to state, for the record, his passionate objection to such a measure.

You see, we don't need the government deciding what we (or our children) should be able to watch on television. The reason is because the means already exist for people, specifically parents, to make those decisions for themselves. Remember the whole v-chip brouhaha about ten years ago? Well, the politicans seem to have forgotten. Every TV show these days, save for news and sports, contains a rating that suggests how old children must be for the program to be considered appropriate, and what elements make up that rating. Therefore, if parents believe that their 13-year-old is particularly mature, or if they don't care about their children watching violence but they do object to sex, the parents can consciously disregard the recommendations in favor of their own determinations.

Even the most absentee parents can monitor their children's TV viewing by programming their v-chip to block certain (types of) programs. (I make the major assumption that parents can actually figure out how to program it. On my TV, I have no idea what the security code I need to change the setting is, and the user manual is long since thrown away.) Parents have to know that an episode of NYPD Blue is likely to include gratuitous shots of Dennis Franz's ass, or that certain episodes of Seinfeld will leave children wondering how that can be masters of their domain. And South Park? Forget about it. But even if the parents are totally clueless when it comes to pop culture, they can merely rely on the ratings for a rather accurate measure of a program's content.

I also don't believe we should treat good faith mistakes that result from live television broadcasts as the end of the world. Children saw Janet Jackson's obscured breast for half a second. Oooh. What a tragedy. Let me tell you something about breasts: Fifty percent of the population either has breasts or will have breasts someday. Ninety percent of the remainder has or will have seen or touched breasts of their romantic partner some day. And the last ten percent are gay men who don't really care. The irony is that all the uproar over Nipplegate has focused so much attention to the matter, sending middle schoolers to the internet in an attempt to find pictures of the fleeting wardrobe malfunction that I wouldn't have even noticed at the time had it not been for TiVo. (I would love to see what would happen if these uptight religious types were to take their coddled, overly sheltered children to a beach in Europe, where topless bathing is de rigeur.)

While I don't necessarily object to government banning undeniably obscene material (assuming clear standards), I believe that if material is in any way borderline, the government should not attempt to regulate it. Parents have the means and the information to make those decisions themselves. The government should let them make those decisions rather than imposing its will on a very large and ideologically diverse population.