FCC Chair

I'm certainly not the first to talk about this, and as such I don't really have much to say. The link pretty much speaks for itself.

Evidently Brent Bozell's Parents Television Council has enthusiastically endorsee the chairmanship of Kevin Martin over at the FCC. Y'all see why this is a problem? If you didn't know, the Parents Television Council (which is what the link above goes to...the article in question is proudly displayed on the front page) is one of those hyper-conservative media watchdog groups that decries filth by making its members watch it all day and tell everybody about it.

OK, so maybe I do have a little something to say about it. If you don't want "filth" around, and if you find it distasteful and corrosive to the human soul, isn't it somewhat counterproductive to bring all sorts of attention to it by filing millions--and I do mean millions--of complaints to the FCC? Isn't it terrible that you've got the entire population of the "pro-values" PTC watching MTV's entire Spring Break coverage, just in hopes of chronicling everything that's wrong? Won't that be corrosive to the members' souls? What if their kids walk in on them watching these terrible shows? Will they be confused when, the next day, they hear their parents loudly denouncing the television they just saw them watching the night before?

I think the thing to do would be (and I'm only writing this because I know no self-respecting members of the PTC--not to mention very few self-respecting members of society at large--actually read this blog) to launch an intense, targeted campaign against one, maybe two things at once. Instead of flooding with millions of complaints about thousands of shows, and instead of flooding e-mail inboxes with thousands of form letters that don't delete the line that says "Your Name Here," why not tell the membership to all watch a specific show one night, in the hopes that there will be something indecent contained therein, and then have them compose their own e-mails? Seems like it'd be more effective than trying to target the whole field at once.

But mayabe none of that will matter under Martin, who's strongly supported not only increased fines from the FCC, but an in-depth investigation of even the non-Janet related parts of last year's Super Bowl halftime show, as well as the bill proposed in the Senate that would extend FCC regulations to cable television and satellite radio.

Goodbye, Will & Grace; hello, Touched by an Angel (but not there, and with a chaperone present).

Fargus...