Blech!
Jul
21
2006

I don’t claim to not be opinionated. I have strong beliefs about a lot of things, most of which I try to keep off this blog but one thing, as a writer, I won’t be silent on is censorship and this strange compulsion by certain groups to attack what they haven’t even seen, read or heard.

From this month’s Details magazine comes this little factoid:

ZERO: The number of the 4,211 complaint emails the FCC received about an episode of CBS’ Without A Trace that were sent by people who had actually seen the show. The messages came via the Parents TelevisionCouncil and the American Family Association in response to a brief “teen orgy” scene. (The FCC has sought to fine hte show $3.3 million for indecency).

You know there are several things that bug me about this – firstly the glaring fact that none of these people saw the show they’re complaining about but are complaining about it. WTF is that all about?

Secondly, if the people who actually SAW the show didn’t complain, not a one, where’s the problem? Doesn’t that mean that the show is in its correct time and place?

If our society gives in to this terrorism, and it is terrorism when bands of people who have no first hand knowlege or even offense at something will get together and complain about something they never even saw to censor things for the rest of us – if we give in, we’re losing the very thing that makes us special.

I didn’t see the show. I don’t know if it had a teen orgy scene in it. I highly doubt it, but again, I didn’t see it. But neither did a single one of those 4200 people who may get the show fined over 3 million bucks.

There’s something really wrong with that.

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