How to Chill Free Speech

Janet Jackson's tit pops out. The FCC goes apeshit. Howard Stern draws a record fine. So, what's the response from broadcasters?

"Zero tolerance is the new standard." ...

The open-ended ruling against offensiveness has attorneys preaching absolute caution. It could greatly expand the commission's jurisdiction, [an attorney] says, and the elimination of the "informal or fleeting" excuse means the stakes are higher. The FCC "used to cut people some slack, but now that's gone," Crigler says. "One word will do you."

Why are we letting these people do this shit?

(Tip: Jeff Jarvis.)

Comments

[Oldman]

the same reason why we let school officials suspend a girl for taking a plastic knife to spread her peanut butter on her sandwhich in school. Because absolutist process is the rigid response to percieved moral outrages. One girl stabs a classmate, and suddenly the honor student is being sent home for packing a plastic sandwhich knife entirely innocently to school. The balance between process and product get's lost in these "zero tolerance" schemas.

[Niko Angelis]

Fascinating how out of the millions of breasts flashing on media daily, one with a star, became such a symbol. How many body parts out there, flashing in titillating rhythms or even torn to thousand pieces, wondering if they indeed could be the one.. The human body was/is always the ultimate arena.