Have you heard of the Parents’ Television Council, or of its founder L. Brent Bozell?

No? Hmm. Well, if you haven’t heard of this group I’ll go ahead and give you some clues as to who they are. What do these five things have in common: Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction,” “Friends,” “The Simpsons,” “Gilmore Girls” and MTV?

All of them have had complaints filed against them with the FCC in some form or another by the PTC. And in most cases, ALL of the complaints filed against the show or insident were from the PTC.

See, this “watchdog group” has taken it upon itself to become the standard-setter for what they feel should be allowed on television. During the year 2003, 99.8 percent of all complaints brought to the FCC were filed by the PTC. When “Nipplegate” threatened to shake the very foundation of Western society and civilization, it was the PTC that had filed most of the 550,000 complaints. What happened is that the group put up a webpage with links to a standardized form that allowed a person to click and complain- including those that hadn’t even seen the program or incident in question.

To give examples of their complaints, the AP reported that

“One complaint involved an episode of ‘Friends’ that aired in May 2003. In it, a female character, her husband and the husband’s ex-girlfriend talk about fertility treatment at a medical office. There were multiple complaints about a November 2003 episode of ‘Gilmore Girls.’ In one scene, a character’s grandfather reminisces about college pranks involving nudity. In another, two college students discuss an incident in which a male student who was nude spent the night in a dorm hallway. A complaint over ‘The Simpsons’ included a scene in which students carried picket signs with the phrases ‘What would Jesus glue?’ and ‘Don’t cut off my pianissimo.’”

(As an aside, all of these complaints were thrown out by the FCC for not being obscene, which is what the complaints were based around.)

Now, why does this group perform such an “important community service” is such volume? Why else- for the children! Heaven forbid that someone under the age of 18 hear about a bare breast on television waves, after all.

My problem with this group isn’t that they don’t like what’s on television, because to be honest most of what passes for entertainment these days on television is worthless. My problem is that a small minority of people have taken up such a large and vocal role in what is and is not on the airways. It is because of the PTC’s influence with the FCC that recently, a five-year-old episode of the animated series “Family Guy” was edited by Fox because it showed an image of the lead character’s bare butt. The butt was blurred and thus couldn’t be offensive.

In one of the most aggregious examples of lunacy regarding this issue, several dozen ABC affiliates refused to air the movie “Saving Private Ryan” for fear of complaints regarding the movie. In a sign of sanity, the FCC has since come out and said that it would not accept any complaints regarding the movie being aired on regular television.

Now, common sense regarding the issue states that if someone doesn’t like a show or the content of it, that they an simply change the channel. However, the PTC has said that they couldn be offended even by passing the show when changing channels.

I consider myself a fairly intelligent man with a pretty thick skin when it comes to what offends me on television. I’m much more bothered by a sitcom with shoddy writing and bad stories than I am of a boob. I truly hope that this was just an election year issue, and that people as a whole haven’t become so weak that they have to listen to the ramblings of a self-righteous group of holier-than-thou naysayers instead of making up their own minds about what they want to watch or listen to on radio or television.

Power does indeed corrupt, and right now the PTC is looking a little worse for wear. The backlash has already begun against the group, as well- see, CBS has refused to pay the $550,000 fine levied against them by the FCC after the complaints from the PTC over Janet Jackson’s performance at the Super Bowl last year, a performance that was offensive not for her boob being bared, but for the fact that the music and “performance” truly, truly SUCKED.

Oh, and if this offended you, and you feel the need to make a complaint about what I’ve written? Then I humbly and truly invite you to please… kiss my ass.

Out.

Tags: bestof
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005 at 6:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.