The FCC fined CBS over a half a million dollars because for several seconds viewers got a glimpse of Janet Jackson’s surgically-enhanced boobie. Infinity Broadcasting, which employs Howard Stern, has been fined in excess of three million dollars for sexual comments deemed “indecent.” Everyone’s scared of nudity, everyone’s scared of sex, and everyone is horrified that children might accidentally get a glimpse of of the human body without clothing on. But violence. Well, violence is ok isn’t it?
News outlets apparently think so, and I’m assuming the FCC does as well since no one, NO ONE, has been fined because of excessive violence on television. Recently, several outlets in California broadcast the live shooting and death a man. Some stations went to a wide shot when the actual shooting and death occurred, others stayed in tight and let their audience see what a man getting gunned down looks like. Here is a page containing a list of links dealing with the story.
Let me say this. I have no problem with the officers that shot that guy. He led them on a forty minute chase through populated areas, and at times he was traveling in excess of 100 miles an hour. When he left his vehicle he pulled a gun. The police did their job by shooting that man. My problem lies in the hypocrisy in the media and the government. You can show a man getting gunned down, you can show a marine shoot an unarmed man and say “dead now”, but god forbid a breast gets broadcast because as everyone knows our bodies are sinful. Killing a guy? Hell that’s a rite of passage isn’t it?
I would imagine some people teach their kids to shoot before they teach them to read.
I hate to be the “you know in other countries they” kind of guy, but
this article from the BBC upsets me, because I know that no politician here would have the courage to claim that people are responsible for their own behavior.
List of links to the shooting compliments of Fark.