The Janet Jacksonification of America continues...

If you remember one of the WTC towers had a bomb go off in the underground in '93 or '94 which resorted Osama bin Laden skyrocketing to stardom as one of the top 10 on the FBI's most wanted. I think it's r****ded that they bleeped out the rest of it though.

Howard Stern got suspended indefinitely, I believe. Clearchannel is cracking down on their shockjocks because of the FCC is fining the crap out of Clearchannel since they own most of the radio stations around the nation. We have a morning show jock similar to Stevens and Pruitt that got fined a ton of money for talking about sex with high school girls. He was asking them something about fellatio which the FCC didn't like. Just last week Clearchannel is being fined about $400k for some of his more recent stuff. The FCC accumulates stuff from the past and holds it against ClearChannel, which in my opinion, is as wrong as two boys f***ing. The FCC doesn't care who and how but they will screw anyone they can over. I guess that's why the beginning letter in their monogram stands for "Federal."

 

It's understandable. On the flip side, people are whining about Pres. Bush using the images of 9/11 in his campaign which I think is ludacrous for them to whine. Would I edit the '93 WTC reference out of a song? No, but I understand why they did it. Then again, how many songs do talk about "popping a cap" and this and that and the gore. I prefer the melodies of White Zombie and they refer to mass murderers. Rammstein was named after an airshow disaster at Rammstein AFB, DE. I guess it's an injustice done to please the mainstream.

 

I think the problem is mostly that the FCC has been too laissez-faire historically. Now, they want to actually enforce rules that have been on the books for awhile but never enforced and they are catching the industry and the public by surprise. We had come to an understanding and suddenly, the FCC wants to change that understanding.

Some of it is an obvious overreaction (by either the FCC or Clearchannel), like bleeping references to the WTC bombing. But talking to underage girls about oral sex is probably something they should have cracked down on earlier but, for whatever reason, did not.

 

I think that is essentially correct. The FCC is WAY overreacting because it didn't do anything for a long time.

Amazing. Janet Jackson and the Boob that Changed the World

 

A good friend of mine is Jimbo, the guy that produces that show for the Box. I'll have to ask him about that.

 

You could just buy the CD and listen to it without the bleeps.

Frankly I can understand that line being censored.

 

I can't. It can't be construed as obscene. Obviously Clearchannel (or whomever) can do what it wants, but I think they'd be protected from the FCC on that one.

 

Maybe not obscene, but definitely offensive. Radio stations don't have 'Rated R' on the dial where kids can only get to them when an adult is around. And according to the post it was 7am. A little discretion never hurt - I wish television would show some. You're not going to keep the music out of kids' hands if they want to get it, but what's wrong with saying "we don't think this is appropriate to air"? If everyone in society said that, it may increase the quality of music that gets pushed to kids.

 

Between this crap and the woman in Dallas who got busted for explaining how a vibrator works, I am sickened by these moral standards being forced on us.

Its enough to make you wanna start downloading p*rn or something.

Anyone notice that about 2 days after Dave Chappelle laughed at the fact that white america has no idea what "skeet skett skeet skeet" means, Clear Channel radio stations starting censoring that as well? That in itself should be a Chappelle skit.

 

That reminds me... just what DOES "skeet skeet skeet" mean? I'll never be cool until I know!

 

Well, I figured it out.

Oh my God! What have we done!!

 

It wasn't Dallas. It was a Fort Worth suburb (and she wasn't busted for showing how a vibrator works. She was busted for ownership of the sex toys. The state law they're acting under is pretty strange).

The thing with radio and television, though, is that it comes into your home whether you want it or not (granted, you have to own the proper equipment to receive the signals). So the standard has always been more harsh than with things you can choose whether it comes into your home or not (i.e. cable, etc). In exchange for the free use of billions of dollars worth of bandwidth, broadcast stations have to live by a certain set of rules. Those rules include standards of decency that are stricter than the "community standard" principle that covers obscenity.

I can see the point that with the proliferation of alternative sources of entertainment (cable & satellite, the Internet, home video, etc) that it seems to be a bit over the top to insist that the standards also be dropped for the over-the-air stations. The idea that if one doesn't like something they can turn the channel also works in reverse. If you want something harsher than what's broadcast on over-the-air television, you're more than welcome to change the channel to cable or purchase a DVD to watch or whatever.