Category: Politics

Posted on
by

KCRW ran a story on the indecency wars this morning, and quoted someone who was concerned that kids are picking up bad language from broadcast media.

Yeah, right. Broadcast media is so locked down they can’t find that kind of language there.

When I was in middle school, I spent a week working at a cub scout day camp. I think I was around 12 or 13 at the time. The adults warned us that we had to watch our language around the cubs (who were probably around 8 or 9), because they didn’t want the kids picking up any bad words from us. They needn’t have bothered. The kids were far more foul-mouthed around us than we were amongst ourselves, and actually managed to shock us. This was in the late 1980s.

Kids don’t need TV or movies to learn bad words. They learn them from their friends at school, or they learn them from parents, or from neighbor kids.

There was a B.C. comic strip a few years ago that I thought illustrated this point well: Two kids (well, ants) walk into the room, one crying, “Mom, he said the Z-word!” The parents send the kid to his room, then have this brief conversation: “Where’d the little %@#&! learn the Z-word?” “Beats the #@*$ out of me.”

Posted on
by

It looks like the FCC isn’t completely insane. After four months, they concluded that the now-infamous Desperate Housewives locker room promo isn’t indecent after all. “Although the scene apparently is intended to be titillating, it simply is not graphic or explicit enough to be indecent under our standard.”

I saw the spot—or at least something that matched the description exactly—and it was no more explicit than typical prime-time fare. I thought it was cheesy, but I honestly didn’t think any more about it, so when the controversy hit, I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was.

But it took them four months to figure this out?

Ah, well, I suppose it’s fast for the FCC. I mean, it took them more than a year to clear a complaint against Angel, by which time the series had been off the air for nine months.

(Incidentally, I’ve never seen a single episode of Desperate Housewives. It just doesn’t look like my kind of show.)

Posted on
by

There’s been a lot of talk on the conservative side of the fence about “activist judges” and “activist courts.” There’ve even been calls to limit the 200-year-old principle of judicial review.

Of course, there’s also been a lot of talk about appointing conservative judges to the Supreme Court so that, given a suitable legal challenge, they can overturn Roe vs. Wade and make it possible for Congress to pass laws banning abortion without resorting to a constitutional amendment.

So can someone tell me, how is this not judicial activism?

Posted on
by

Remember last year when I realized some net filter was looking at teentitans3.jpg, breaking the words in the wrong place, and concluding it must be adult content and therefore should be blocked? (It replaced the “offending” words with spaces, which get encoded as %20 in URLs.)

At the time I left it, since I figured anyone who installed a filter that brain-dead given the popularity of the Teen Titans cartoon deserved what they got. Well, the usability and “make the site work for the visitor” side of the debate finally won out (with a little help from “the people who use these filters aren’t the ones who install them”), and a few weeks ago I renamed the file to teen_titans_current.jpg.

Guess what? I’m now seeing hits for %20%20%20%20_%20%20%20ans_current.jpg.

Even when I give it word breaks, it can’t figure it out.

They’re lucky I called the file titans.html. Otherwise some people wouldn’t be able to see it at all.

Given this level of “quality,” can you blame librarians for opposing mandatory installation of filters on library computers?

Further reading: The Censorware Project, Peacefire, and Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Posted on
by

The Spirit: Fight Censorship. Consider this an act of patriotism!The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund has unveiled the artwork for its 2005 membership card, and it features Will Eisner’s classic character, the Spirit.

The timing is unfortunate, so soon after Eisner’s death, but it serves as a tribute to one of the most influential artists and storytellers in the history of comic books. (If you’ve ever heard of the Eisner awards—one of the most prestigious awards in comics—he’s the Eisner they’re named for, not the Disney guy.)

The CBLDF is dedicated to defending freedom of expression in comics. Artists get sued for parodies, retailers get arrested for for stocking R-rated titles (because everyone knows, comics are only for kids), customs agents confuse satire with piracy, and irate parents complain about Superman as “violent soft porn.” [archive.org] Really. It’s amazing what gets challenged, and the lengths to which some people will go to impose their own views of what’s acceptable on everyone else.

Posted on
by

The last time I bought Ny-Quil, there was a remark on the receipt about it being a restricted quantity item. At the time I assumed people were abusing it somehow, but I never got around to looking it up.

Now I know why. Apparently, pseudoephedrine can be used to make methamphetamine, and some states are considering further restricting sales of over-the-counter drugs like Ny-Quil and Sudafed—making people ask a pharmacist, for example, so sales can be tracked more easily. (At present, California only restricts the quantity bought in a single purchase, which is completely non-intrusive to people who just want to breathe comfortably for the next week.)

Y’know, I have no problem with limiting the quantities purchased (as long as the limits are reasonable), and I can live with standing in line at the pharmacy if I have to—but some of the suggestions are to require you to “show identification—and even enter [your] addresses in a law enforcement database.” Excuse me? What do the police care if I have a cold? New! More government scrutiny of your life, brought to you by the War on Drugs(tm)!

As to the likely success of this effort, consider this quote Continue reading →

Posted on
by

OK, one more election-related post. This one comes from The Big Picture, and features links to various maps of election results. Comparisons of state vs. county maps, looks at which candidates were favored by people in other countries, comparisons to past elections and to pre-Civil War America… and of course the comedy (including the redistricted Jesusland and the United States of Canada).

Interestingly, it’s missing the county-by-county Purple America, though it does have a link to the state-by-state one.

Found via WebWord.