You know, if you had told me that less than three years after the most horrific attack on American soil in history, I’d be looking at an MSNBC graphic reading “Culture Wars” with a picture of Janet Jackson and intertwined male-male and female-female symbols… I don’t think I’d have been surprised at all, actually, because the fact is that this country, and all countries, really, will never want for busybody idiots.
It’s gratifying to see that, according to OxBlog, Bush’s proposed religious-right Constitutional graffiti doesn’t stand a chance of passing the Senate. (Link courtesy of Andrew Sullivan.) My hope is also that the hypocrisy inherent in this administration’s endorsement of an apparently pornographically violent film, coming as it does at a time when they’re using the power of the government to intimidate companies into cracking down on exposed tits and the use of dirty words, will be apparent to everyone.
Regarding the Howard Stern situation itself, I don’t think it’s as clear cut as people are acting. I think Stern is an unfunny moron who basically got in trouble with one of his bosses, so Jeff Jarvis‘s high dudgeon over the issue strikes me as hubris in the extreme. However, people in the “it’s no big deal” camp, like the inexcusably oblivious Glenn Reynolds, are glossing over the fact that this corporate crackdown, while not technically censorship, is only happening because the government is using its muscle to bully the companies into doing the censoring so the feds won’t have to. By the letter of the law I suppose this is okay, but the words “congressional investigation” or “government hearings” are ones I never want to see in near proximity with speech issues. When that happens, you get travesties like the Comics Code, which destroyed publishers and gutted the medium for decades, or the music industry’s Parental Advisory stickers, which are treated like the Scarlet Letter by some of the country’s largest music retailers. It’s grotesque to watch my tax dollars at work forcing entertainment and media moguls to abase themselves at the feet of Congress, and restrict speech in their products out of fear of the wrath of the government.
The only culture war I’m interested in fighting right now is the one between freedom and tyranny, democracy and theocracy, equality and bigotry, liberty and terror. I don’t want to have to guess as to which side my own government is on.