[Vision2020] FCC Nonsense

[Chasuk]

I just sent a letter to the FCC about a proposed fine for ABC
displaying nude buttocks in 2003.  I encourage others to also write
letters.

My letter is reproduced here:

To Chairman Kevin J. Martin, Commissioner Michael J. Copps,
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein, Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate,
and Commissioner Robert McDowell:

I am writing about "your proposed a $1.4 million fine against 52 ABC
Television Network stations over a 2003 broadcast of cop drama NYPD
Blue," (to quote the AP).

According to the AP article, the FCC's definition of indecent content
requires that the broadcast "depicts or describes sexual or excretory
activities" in a "patently offensive way."

Apparently you haven't seen the excerpts in question.  I have, first
when they were initially broadcast, and then later on YouTube.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=SnsxFvCaZJ8

Yes, there are nude buttocks.  Not the lascivious display of nude
buttocks, but nude buttocks.  Certainly not buttocks depicting sexual
or excretory activities.  In other words, in case you fail to
understand your own definition, there wasn't any intercourse or even
sexual innuendo, and there was no defecation.

That's what an excretory activity would be, defecation.  The buttocks
that I saw didn't do anything in a patently offensive way.  You must
realize that your definition implies that there exists a non-patently
offensive way to depict buttocks.  If this non-titillating,
non-erotic moment wasn't it, what does that leave us?  A mother
non-offensively powdering her baby's bottom, or would that be too
close to pedophilia?

Who bought you off this time?  Was it the Parents Television Council?
I rather suspect so, as they are already crowing:

http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/release/2008/0125.asp

Do the job that you were originally formed to do (allotting frequency
band segments, which you also seem incapable of doing efficiently or
fairly) and leave my First Amendment guarantees alone.

Chas Warren

Here are the email addresses for the assorted cretins:

KJMWEB at fcc.gov
Michael.Copps at fcc.gov
Jonathan.Adelstein at fcc.gov
dtaylortateweb at fcc.gov
Robert.McDowell at fcc.gov