Politics

I’m sure by now we are all tragically acquainted with the battle over the mosque to be built near Ground Zero. What began as a generally well-accepted construction project somehow turned into a media blitz and then a public battle as, this past weekend, dueling protests (both against the mosque and for it) met on the street outside the designated construction site. Of course, the fight isn’t just over the mosque; if it were just about the mosque I doubt enough people would have cared to even stage a small rally.

I recently read an article that seemed like a complete blast from the past in the sense that I thought, “Didn’t we go through this in the 70’s?” Apparently, a U.S. appeals court struck down a proposed FCC policy that would ban networks from broadcasting profanity. Does this policy sound a little 1950’s to anyone else? Do you remember in I Love Lucy or Dick Van Dyke that the couples slept in separate beds? This was because a single bed referred too much to sex. Or in the Brady Bunch, the kids had that big ol’ bathroom, but you never saw a toilet? Toilets were considered profane.  Now, it seems like the court was also having these flashbacks because it claimed that the policy was unconstitutional and that the banning of all offensive material (not just swear words, but references to things like sex or toilet time) without a clear definition of what is meant by offensive would essentially limit what broadcasters would feel safe to talk about on-air. Good news for toilets.