Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "breast baring" has reignited the "Decency Debate."

Although I am a strong Free Speech advocate, I see NO "social value" of INDECENCY over the PUBLIC Airways, and am opposed to it.

But it shocks and saddens me to see how people can be SO incensed about the Media's use of VULGARITY, the mere use of "impolite" words or images, and.....

YET be so INDIFFERENT to the Media's INDECENCY in constant and continuing portraying Italian Americans in an almost Totally NEGATIVE manner,....

causing many Italian Americans to "DISTANCE " themselves from a culture that is SO reviled and held in such low esteem, ....

AND others to carry the STIGMA, so that Career Advancement, Business Opportunity, and Social acceptance, etc., etc., is DIMINISHED or DENIED, thus lessening the OPPORTUNITY for Success and Happiness, the similar Obstacles that our immigrant Grandparents faced, in their quest for Opportunity!!

That which was a Torrent, has turned into Flood, that with almost daily revelations of new "smears", threatens to become a Deluge!!

That IS a REAL VULGARITY, a REAL OBSCENITY, a REAL INDECENCY!!!!!

How can we further raise Consciousness??  Where can we gain Allies??

For instance, why wouldn't the ADL use its influence with the Jewish Media Community to put a STOP to these DISPROPORTIONATE number of  Negative Portrayals of Italian Americans.

The ADL certainly have been incredibly successful on behalf of its own, and very helpful in the same type of efforts on behalf of Blacks, Hispanics, Asians etc.

We certainly have a sufficient number of JEWISH Italian Americans highly placed in our Major Italian American Organizations that could/should develop a rapprochement.

Do we not also have a sufficient number of even Non Jewish Italian Americans who have close Relations to the Hierarchy of the ADL, to whom this travesty is obvious and they can see the NECESSITY of assisting.

What other Jewish organizations could/should be helpful?

My attempts to discuss the matter with the ADL chapter in Los Angeles, the center of Film & TV Media, were ignored.

What can we learn from the series of No less than 4 Articles below????
Can we join the Dissidents, and "broaden" the issue, by including our Complaint??
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THE DECENCY DEBATE
THE ZIPPING POINT

Vulgarity overload is creating a critical mass of alliances that target big media along with bad taste. It's not a pure liberal-versus-conservative issue anymore — and therein lies hope.

Los Angeles
By Patrick Goldstein
Times Staff Writer
March 28 2004

.. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps...was in the car the other day with his high school senior son, watching the teenager click the radio dial over and over, trying in vain to find a decent music station...

All too many of us have said the same thing, either about radio, television or the movies. The much-heralded 500-channel universe has turned out to be more of a mirage than an oasis. Of the 91 major cable TV networks available in at least 16 million homes, 80% are owned or co-owned by just six media giants.

Since May 2001, when he joined the FCC, Copps had been something of a lonely voice in the wilderness, waging an uphill battle against the onslaught of both vulgar programming and media consolidation. Then came the Super Bowl, complete with sexist beer ads, erectile dysfunction commercials and a crotch-grabbing, MTV-produced halftime show that culminated in Janet Jackson's infamous breast baring.

A storm of protest erupted. It was followed by the now-familiar election-year Washington kabuki dance, featuring fulminating politicians, contrite media conglomerate moguls and flustered NFL officials — even FCC Chairman Michael Powell, who has consistently avoided criticizing Big Media companies, declared himself outraged by the events.

If anyone had a right to gloat, it would be Copps, a former history professor who rarely watches TV, listens to NPR...

"The FCC has been a paper tiger, so in a way we're largely responsible for the media companies' race to the bottom," Copps says. "When the industry saw we had no interest in pursuing any real indecency enforcement, they figured we must have zero credibility.

We've now finally taken some action, but I don't know if we're really walking the walk or just talking the talk. I'll believe we're serious about indecency when we send a couple of the more serious cases to a license revocation hearing."

Copps' linkage of indecency with media consolidation...since the government's Telecommunications Act of 1996 opened the doors for a vast expansion of local radio and TV ownership by media conglomerates, the growth of media consolidation has been closely followed by a steep rise in indecency complaints.

In 2000, the first year of available statistics, there were only 111 indecency complaints reported to the FCC. In 2003, there were 240,342 complaints. Complaints this year have already passed the 500,000 mark.

As anyone who has ever tried to get a cable company on the phone will attest, media conglomerates largely operate at a safe distance from the communities they service, while locally owned broadcasters have to defend their programming choices at the local grocery store....

[RAA NOTE: Opposing License Renewals, with the FCC for Local Stations, AND
Renewal of Local Licenses for Cable "Rights of Way" in each City, are a potential strategy. Satellite transmission poses a special challenge, but solvable.

Boycotting of Advertisers, or a "rash" of attention getting, but relatively benign civil disobedience, might also be considered.]
 

Unusual alliances

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of the consolidation-decency debate is how it has managed to bridge the country's nasty liberal and conservative divide. Allies of Copps and fellow Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, include the conservative Parents Television Council, the NRA, various civil rights groups, Common Cause, the Conference of Catholic Bishops and NOW. "This isn't a liberal or conservative cause," says Parents Television Council Executive Director Tim Winter. "The political alliances on this issue are extraordinary."...

A decade ago, when the National Endowment for the Arts was under attack over the images in "Piss Christ" and Robert Mapplethorpe photos, the left and right raged at each other across a chasm of free speech issues. The decency debate was so one-sided that (it) claimed "civilization (was) replaced with a culture of irresponsibility."

Today it isn't so easy to stereotype. Conservatives can be found promoting diversity while liberals are heard bashing entertainment moguls....

On the liberal end of the spectrum is James Steyer, a civil liberties attorney who teaches 1st Amendment law at Stanford and heads Common Sense Media...Steyer is just as outspoken about the media conglomerates' refusal to accept responsibility for their programming excesses.

"There's a conspiracy of silence among entertainment executives — they're no different than the tobacco executives who refused to admit that cigarettes caused cancer," Steyer says. "Deregulation has simply greased the pockets (of Big Media) while spawning a fundamental lack of accountability among top media executives. For them, it's always somebody else's fault....to say they bear no responsibility for violence, sexual behavior and other health issues among young people flies in the face of reality."

..."Until recently, the press painted two extreme perspectives — either the 1st Amendment absolutists who represent a 1950s ACLU view of the world or the right-wing fundamentalist Christian thought police," Steyer says.

"But millions of people take a more thoughtful middle-ground approach. The 1st Amendment isn't a suicide pact — it doesn't say anything goes."

The media take notice

..."The Super Bowl had more of a galvanizing effect on the media and the FCC than it did on grass-roots America," Copps says. "Ordinary citizens were already upset. For the past three years, when I boot up my computer each morning, I see dozens of complaints about what was on TV the night before. We're just catching up."

The decency debate could serve as a consciousness-raising alert. When the FCC was readying its rollback of limitations on media ownership last year, Powell held one public hearing, and that was only after Copps raised a ruckus. Copps held a series of his own hearings, paid for out of his personal budget. On the other hand, FCC officials had 71 private meetings with top broadcasters in the months before the rollback, including personal lobbying sessions with News Corp.'s Murdoch and Viacom's Mel Karmazin.

...Shock jock supporters say parents carting kids to school can always change the station, though in many cities across the country that simply dials up another tawdry show on a station owned by the same do-anything-for-a-rating conglomerate....

The House has already approved, and the Senate is considering, far more restrictive broadcast decency standards, which include drastically higher fines and a so-called three-strikes provision.

...Ardent anti-consolidation activists...suspect that politicians, being politicians, will simply channel their outrage into hollow election-year grandstanding. "Congress should be looking at the real culprit, which is themselves," says Jeff Chester, head of the Center for Digital Democracy.

"Congress has basically rubber-stamped everything the broadcast industry has ever asked for. Along with the FCC, they've created the economic structure that promotes today's tabloid, bottom-fishing media culture."

No one is sure whether the alliance among some conservatives, civil libertarians, consumer advocates and the creative community will hold fast under political duress. But it's refreshing to see people confronting such an age-old issue without retreating to knee-jerk ideological bombast. Liberals have been reminded that free speech isn't just a right but a responsibility, while conservatives have discovered that unregulated big business can be just as damaging to family values as any raunchy radio show.

The 1st Amendment isn't just a legalism, it's one of America's great contributions to the arts. But if the media conglomerates freeze out our most independent, outspoken voices, free speech will be more of an antiquated concept than a reality.

"This is a family issue, not a partisan issue, one that's too important to be left to ideological extremists from either side," Steyer says. "What people are looking for is accountability, not government interference. That's why the solution is going to come from the bottom up, not from the top down."

calendarlive.com: The zipping point
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THE DECENCY DEBATE
Pulled into a very wide net

Unusual suspects have joined the censors' target list,
making for strange bedfellows (wait — can we say that?).

March 28 2004

Janet Jackson's bare breast was one thing. But for a real sign of how sensitive the broadcast indecency issue has become, consider the case of Raquel Smashenburn.

The sight of her bare bottom was too much for executives at UPN, who ordered it obscured in the first episode of their new sitcom "Game Over." Oh, and for the millions who didn't see it, Raquel is an animated character.

Hoping to avoid millions of dollars in fines and protect their licenses, the networks' gatekeepers are now rushing to cover naked body parts, cut foul language and monitor anything that smacks of poor taste … except they are wildly inconsistent. seems....

In 2001, NBC chief Bob Wright sent a memo to TV executives urging them to ponder the long-term effects of HBO's "The Sopranos." For all the series' success, Wright wrote, "we could not and would not air [the show] on NBC because of the violence, language and nudity."

...Since Wright's memo surfaced, NBC has aired "Kingpin," a hard-hitting series about a Mexican drug lord, as well as envelope-pushing unscripted series such as "Fear Factor" and "Meet My Folks."

It's important to note that at least so far, the media companies are censoring themselves — mostly from fear that the indecency debate will end up affecting their balance sheets. As always, it's the bottom line — and not so much a naked bottom — that gets the attention of the big media companies....

And yet, life goes on

OK, so there's a decency crusade raging through the airwaves. Yet in keeping with the seeming arbitrariness of the current media crackdown, there is no shortage of opportunities to see or hear programming that pushes the taste boundaries. Consider these examples:

Violence: USA Network, that reaches nearly 90 million homes, aired the first 10 minutes of Universal Pictures' "Dawn of the Dead", a teaser for the sister studio's very bloody horror remake...

Profanity: on "American Idol" cameras caught Simon Cowell with his head on his right hand, just the middle finger extended...

Sex:  Britney Spears' "Toxic" video, featuring the singer as a flight attendant introducing a passenger to the mile-high club...

Nudity: Perpetually addled rocker Courtney Love revisited her stripping past, showing up on CBS' "Late Show with David Letterman" March 17 and blurting "FCC!" as she raised her top for the nonplused host...

Staff writers Scott Collins, Lynn Smith, Randy Lewis, John Horn and Bob Baker, as well as Times researcher Scott Wilson and contributor Dana Calvo, contributed to this report.

calendarlive.com: Pulled into a very wide net
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THE DECENCY DEBATE
Standing by his words

A George Carlin monologue has kept people talking for years.
And the comedian has plenty more to say.

By Erin Ailworth, Times Staff Writer

OFF-COLOR. Blue. Naughty. Nasty. Indecent.

Whatever you call them, George Carlin's 7 dirty words first hit the airwaves in 1973.

The 12-minute monologue titled "Filthy Words" that would drive the decency debate for years was taken from "Occupation: Foole," one of Carlin's comedy albums. Ultimately, the Supreme Court would hear the routine that New York-based WBAI-FM had aired.

Now, 25 years after the court ruled that broadcasting offensive words during certain hours could be deemed indecent — including those in the Carlin routine — we still can't utter most of them on-air or include them in a newspaper article. But we can see some of the things they describe in prime time. If the words have faded into memory, www.GeorgeCarlin.com has the original list, plus 2,443 more contributed by fans and friends...

calendarlive.com: Standing by his words
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Doo-wop hip-hop bops despite blips

She done him wrong. Now the airwaves are full of Eamon's anguished cries,
minus the expletives.

By Baz Dreisinger,
Special to The Times

What do you call a hit song that's oozing with expletives but more dulcet than
doo-wop?

This isn't a droll riddle; it's the real-life quandary dealt to disc jockeys by an inimitably likable single that recently topped Billboard's sales chart for more than two months. The heavily edited cut by Eamon, a 20-year-old crooner from Staten Island who pairs the vocabulary of an Eminem with the vocals of a Frankie Lymon, has an edited, printable title: "I Don't Want You Back."

But the song also has an unedited, unprintable title, found on Eamon's website and on the "un-clean" version of his album, that contains a hot-button expletive.

That word — think "f," for "forbidden" — joins a plethora of like-minded obscenities in transforming Eamon's anti-ode to a cheating ex-girlfriend from just another "crying-over-you" ditty into a hate song that earned him attention from scores of adolescents, a record deal from Jive and a chance to raise his figurative middle finger at the FCC...

Dominating airwaves just as broadcasting standards have become the subject du jour, "F**K It (I Don't Want You Back)" has become the right song for the right moment. Many songs contain edited-out obscenities, but Eamon's is unique in making style and subject matter a glaringly ill fit: The track's slow and sweet start — "I liked you so much / I gave you all of my trust," Eamon croons — yields to an equally sweet-sounding chorus brimming with more invectives than a locker room.
Well-placed sighs and silences camouflage these lyrical unmentionables, but it's easy to discern that Eamon isn't wielding expletives as weapons; he seems less interested in shock value than the value of making us feel his pain...(Eamon is), fresh-faced, has ethnically ambiguous looks that lend him an air of mystery (for the record, he's Irish and Italian).