3.21.2004

In the Matter of Indecency

Unlike Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael ("you BET my dad got me this job so I could stop being a lobbiest media whore for communications corps") Powell, there are actual things I see and hear about on TV and in newspapers and on radio that I find more indecent than Janet Jackson's (it was covered) nipple, Bono saying the F word, and Howard Stern in general.

For example, I find the following pretty indecent:

    * Pat Robertson suggesting on TV that a truck filled with explosives should be used to take out the State Department because he disagrees with Colin Powell.

    * Bill O'Reilly lying night after night after night and then cutting off microphones to make certain no dissenting opinion is heard.

    * Two years of the right wing running to the media to talk about blow jobs related to Bill Clinton while they work to staunch any and all dissenting opinion they can.

    * Listening to CNN's Kyra Phillips interviewing a young Iraqi boy (who had lost his parents, his siblings, and his arms to American bombing on Iraq) through a doctor who asked the doctor why, when the boy said he was angry with the Americans, the boy failed to understand that we had only done it for the boy's own good.

    * Seeing Bush get his photo ops with the troops on safe American bases with hand-picked audience members while the media is not permitted to show caskets coming back from any of Mr. Bush's simultaneous wars.

    * Watching the FCC sell our airwaves and make certain media ownership is consolidated only in corporate America, so the American people will only hear what corporations like Halliburton, Kerr-McGhee, Time-Warner, Viacom, Clear Channel and others want us to know.

And this is just a tiny part of my list.