The Only Decent Thing to Do

FCC chairman Michael Powell, in testimony before Congress in February to help tame the exposure of bare black boobies, claimed that complaints to his agency had risen from fewer than 350 in 2000 and 2001 to 14,000 in 2002 and more than 240,000 in 2003.

Now a new FCC estimate obtained by Mediaweek reveals that 99.8 percent of those complaints came from a single activist group: the Parents Television Counsel.

One group! Is it possible that this country is following the lead of Reverend Lovejoy's wife from "The Simpsons"? ("Why won't somebody think about THE CHILDREN!")

In a New York Times op-ed last week, Powell wrote "Under the law, we must independently evaluate whether a program violates the standard, no matter whether the program in question generates a single complaint or thousands."

OK. That might be the case, but evaluate doesn't mean "find indecent, levy fines, and restore our Puritan theocracy lest we all burn in hell." Not based on a few crummy complaints by organized crackpots.

More and more a small, vocal minority in this country sets the agenda for what is and what isn't acceptable. Obscenity has always been a touchy subject, because it involves body parts and physical acts that repressed, often hypocritical religious zealots claim to fear, but secretly indulge.

But even more worrisome, the definition of obscenity--supposedly aimed to focus on local community standards--is almost impossible to define in a country united by technology. Which is why national broadcast media have come under such fire. What might be obscene in Witchita, Kansas, might be considered a Sunday picnic in Manhattan's East Village. And should the will of the few be ignored for the the will--or indifference--of the majority?

Shit, yeah.

Why should this country de-volve into some cheerless block of waterhead pantywaists just because some bible-thumping reactionaries say so? How come Europe, the continent so many people fled in search of religious freedom is now a beacon of secular sanity and our shining City on a Hill is a cesspool of Jesus freaks intolerant of non-believers and deviant reprobates like myself?

The FCC should be disbanded and the marketplace of sick, socially maladjusted ideas set free to roam across the land. Let all of America have their Robyn Byrd, Al Goldstein, and pierced black nipples galore.

And Michael Powell can go back to fantasizing about what he'd really like to do to Condoleeza Rice.