Yes yes, we know, we know, but...

Do you really care? Does anyone give a rats ass about broadcasting anymore? Sure... Let the dying pre-boomers have this one little sliver of communications bandwidth to quibble over as they see fit. Matlock and the Brady Bunch... whatever.

Are any of the rest of us having any trouble getting our tastes for vulgarity sated?

What's more amusing is all these parents worried that their little princesses are hearing the word "fuck".

Look lady, your little princess is sucking dick in the back seat of the car while you're picketing the record company.

I don't think hearing the word on TV is going to corrupt her morals.

This is a sign of the true nature of social consciousness regarding the "free speech" clause.

Some of the same groups that deplore the banning of profanity on the airwaves turn right around and shout down dissent that they don't approve.

Let the dying pre-boomers have this one little sliver of communications bandwidth to quibble over as they see fit.

If they would only stay there:

Minnesota orders ISPs to blacklist gambling sites

Minnesota wants to be your nanny -- they're trying to get ISPs to block gambling websites into the state, ant the phone numbers. These jokers have obviously never heard of satellite internet and proxy servers.

As to profanity: We went to the last hockey game of the season for our local league, 2-3 weeks ago. Bought tickets in the family section, where there are agreed upon rules for behavior. No alcohol, no cursing the air blue. The arena's so noisy you can't hear other sections. It's even explained to you when you buy the tickets for that section. The team has a very active outreach program for small kids, and they WANT kids there.

Imagine my surprise when there were KIDS (pre-teens even) cursing the air blue. With a very tired-looking mom trying to ignore it all at the end of the row. Odd, that I had to parent her kids for her, and tell them that they were in a no-cursing zone. Odder still that she glared at ME for pointing out her failure to do her job. Oddest of all, the boys complied, and even apologized afterward.

I don't have a problem with cursing, but then again I don't think conversation has to be riddled with expletives (like an episode of Deadwood) to get your point across. The English language is so rich with possibilities that if you can't express yourself sufficiently without using the F-bomb, you might want to crack a book more often. I tend to reserve mine for when it's absolutely necessary to get someone's undivided attention. Make a hearty "DAMMIT!" a rarity and it has soooo much more impact.

Oh, and we don't have cable T.V. We don't need any encouragement to sit on our butts all day. The ten-year old reads at a 12th grade level. Which means she's reading books with inappropriate language, but has yet to try to use such language.

And then you wonder why podcasting is all the vogue. The FCC and all the regulations are pushing original content down into Internet.

For a while, I am hearing news that tv stations are losing their ads revenues to the net. I am not surprised why.

> Look lady, your little princess is

That is a spectacularly weird fantasy scenario, given the context of the comment... I mean, it's just loony. Looney tunes. Is there anything to it besides an eagerness to talk naughty?

Juliana, I agree with you completely. Those kids you spoke to, they KNEW they were being vulgar and offending people, and they apologized afterwards! People who emit an unending stream of profanities are either such hopeless hicks that they simply haven't learned any better, or they're just TRYING to offend people. I feel sorry for both groups, yet am extremely irritated by them at the same time.

And 'Deadwood' - I liked the first couple of seasons of that show. I can listen to their profanities and tune them out. I only swear occasionally, and yes it turns heads. My mother couldn't even get through 'Pulp Fiction,' because she found the language so offensive. However she can hear occasional swearing and it doesn't seem to bother her. (Guess I know where my current approach came from.)

Well, Crid, I was asked to intervene in a PC problem by a friend, who thought he had managed to gum up the works installing iTunes. Nope. It just had AOLer flu.

The first thing to open was his son's AOL chat account, which was set to open on startup. Nine different girls were wondering when his boy was going to be over again.

The pictures were quite entertaining. Did you not see the case where the girl "sexting" herself is going to court?

You did. So, let's not pretend that girls don't do this, and women don't go to bars, etc., for the exact same reason guys do. Yeah, that was extreme, but it's probably right, and often.

Profanity is a crutch for the verbally uncreative, or lazy. I completely support the right to use it.

> So, let's not pretend that girls
> don't do this

Who's pretending anything?... Other than Brian pretending that someone's being blown in a car somewhere, I mean. His comment was essentially childish misogyny.

And again: What does that have to do with profanity on broadcast media? Maybe someone somewhere in those hearings has a teenage girl, and maybe that teenager has a typical sexual nature. So what?

The core point you guys seem to be making is that Everybody Poops. That doesn't mean that everyone wants to hear about poop all the time, though a child will assume that it's perfect conversation for all contexts... Because it's, y'know, real, man.

People who don't want sex or vulgarity (or violence, for that matter) on broadcast television have just as much a right to those airwaves as you do. They own a sliver by citizenship.

Meanwhile, again, there've never been so many sturdy, private channels for pornography or whatever floats your boat. So what do you care if there's no cussing on the public airwaves?

> Minnesota wants to be your nanny

Turns out the Franken liberals are control freaks. Whooda guessed?

I support the right because it makes the uncreative or lazy easy to identify.

So what do you care if there's no cussing on the public airwaves?

The other issue with this is that it is applied from bureaucrats with an axe to grind, not from a set standard.

I grant Howard Stern and Imus are extreme cases, but here is the answer: select another station, or turn of the radio/TV.

Don't make my world a romper room, because you can't handle it.

Crid, my point, which you are obviously TRYING to miss is this:

Those who argue against profanity tend to come from the point of view that exposure to such will corrupt the moral fiber of their offspring.

I'm simply stating the fact that the moral fiber of their offspring is already corrupted. It doesn't matter if they HEAR the word fuck, because they're already DOING it.

Nuance.

> my point, which you are obviously
> TRYING to miss is

It's a little late to feign straightforward rhetoric.

As a fan of fuzztone guitar, I had to stop going to concerts when it became apparent that gifted guys were playing too loudly for anyone to hear what they were trying to do. I once read an interview with a Led Zeppelin roadie, who defended his decision to use inexpensive, indestructible 58's instead of some more elegant transducer: "At the sound pressure levels we're talking about, I defy anyone to tell the difference."

This is like that: Nuance what?

> Those who argue against profanity
> tend to come from the point of
> view that

If their tendency is that strong, you oughta be able to cite something real. It might not be as snicker-worthy as your pottie-mouth confabulations, but it would probably be more persuasive than putting words in people's lives... or painting scenarios into people's families.

Crid -

Look up the lawsuit a woman filed against Wal-Mart for selling her an Evanescence CD (the live one - Anywhere But Home) with the word "Fuck" appearing in a song. Twice.

See, it didn't meet the threshold of three bad words to get the little parental advisory sticker. Apparently this woman was counting on Wal-Mart's policy of not selling CDs with that little sticker to protect her 14 year old girl from being exposed to naughty words.

Yes, she actually alleged that the sale constituted corrupting the morals of a youth.

These are the kinds of people who launch massive letter-writing campaigns when Justin Timberlake tears Janet Jackson's bra.

I create the scenario I do in the hopes that one of them might read it, and collapse from a stroke at the mental image of their pure little princess doing that.

> this woman was counting on
> Wal-Mart's policy

Or, she was just bored out of her mind and wanted to get out of the house, make some noise and get herself on the tee vee.

One of the last women to make a name for herself in that style before the internet came along was named Rakolta. Rakolta's masterstroke was having herself described as a "Bloomfield Hills housewife", a little fib that leads her Wikipedia entry to this day. Once you read the second line of her bio, you see that actually she was as politically connected as a Michigan animal could be. But she also had good skin, and pretty blond hair styled in a teenage manner that thrills TV talk producers to the marrow. (Coulter took notes on "conservative" Rakolta's adventures, I am certain.)

So off Rakolta went, doing talk shows and interviews and pretending to be all upset about indecency on a TV show. The TV show became even more successful, but she got to be on TV, and was poised for a career as a great American scold.

And then came this:

| Critic Took on Steamy TV, but Viper
| Was Too Hot
| Naughton, Keith. Detroit News.
| Detroit, Mich.: Dec 3, 1992.
| pg. A1 Abstract (Summary)

| Conservative TV watchdog Terry
| Rakolta totaled a $55,000 Dodge
| Viper, on loan from Chrysler
| Corp, while speeding along a
| tiny residential street in
| Bloomfield Hills MI. Rakolta
| was ticketed for driving too
| fast for conditions and driving
| with an expired license.

| Indexing (document details)
| Subjects: Traffic accidents & safety
| Locations: Bloomfield Hills, Mich
| People: Rakolta, Terry
| Author(s): Naughton, Keith

| Document types: News
| Publication title: Detroit
| News. Detroit, Mich.: Dec 3,
| 1992. pg. A1

And at the time, it was said that the man in the car with her at the time of the crash was not her husband. We didn't hear so much from her after that.

The point is, Brian, if your really wanna go after someone like this, you ought do it for real. It's not that tough.

> These are the kinds of
> people who...

Whose daughters blow guys in cars, yeah yeah...

> I create the scenario

Your scenario has no basis. You draw a cartoon, and then mock your own cartoon. Where's the sport in that?

----

(Dear Ms. Rakola- Don't sue Amy. I'll go look it up in the library tomorrow if you wanna make me. Dear Mr. Proquest- Don't sue Amy. Putting that materials in this comment all my idea.)