173. machinate

Here’s a surprise bit of news from the FCC: it’s considering dropping current broadcast decency standards that ban explicit profanity and “non-sexual” nudity. Apparently they’ll cut their backlog of pending complaints significantly (I think by about 70 percent), and save a ton of money in the process.

Translation—we’d be hearing a lot more “shit” instead of “shoot” or “crap”; “fuck” instead of “frack” or “fudge”; and seeing more boobs and (fingers crossed everyone) cock on television. Naked breasts I could care less about. Cock, however…

Not surprisingly, the “family” councils (e.g., American Family Association, my local Minnesota Family Council) are up in arms over this “outrage.” I guess while they were focused on keeping gays and lesbians from getting hitched, the Gay Agenda snuck this one through the backdoor to finish its job of stripping the United States of its morals.

Their response: send their legions of panic-stricken Christians to the FCC website to file complaints. Some of the responses are unwittingly hilarious (taken verbatim from the FCC Electronic Comment Filing System page). Like this one:

Philippians 4:8 says – for the rest, brethren,whatever is true, whatever is worthy of reverence and is honorable and seemly, whatver is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely and lovable, whatever is kind and winsome and gracious, if there is any virte and excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think on and weigh and take account of these things (fix your minds on them). F words and nudity would cause my to discontinue television.

The old fundamentalist Christian standby—when there’s no rational argument, quote Bible verses! That one always works. Or this one:

By allowing the F word and nudity on to television you are striking very damaging harm to the already seriously wounded culture in the United States. Our sex saturated culture harms especially young people and deprives them of hope that their lives can mprove when they experience the reults of a culture which places sexual gratification as the ultimate game. When many young people realize that they have been deluded they will be tempted to increase the already alarming statistic on youth suicide.

So if the FCC broadcasts words like “fuck” and (non-sexual) images of nude women (and men!!!) … young people will commit suicide?

Some comments make wild use of punctuation to drive home their point:

Do you think more FILTH on TV is good for our country???????????????

Or this one, from a gentleman who claims that the United States will somehow be overthrown and its citizens enslaved if the FCC airs “naughty” words:

Your advocacy of nudity and profanity on public TV are the signs of the terminal moral decay of America, as this nation turns from its moral foundations to puruse its own direction free from the moral and religious standards that once made this nation great. You are part of the sweeping tide that is bringing about the destruction of our nation through the advocacy of pornagraphy and profanity; an advocacy which only 20 years ago would have been unthinkable. Freedom abused and misused wiil be freedom lost,as we lose this country to the results of moral decay – which will be our enslavement. Be forwarned.

The FCC wouldn’t be advocating nudity, profanity or pornography, any more than it currently advocates batshit crazy Evangelical theology by allowing lunatics like Pat Robertson and Bryan Fischer to air their hateful ideology on their television and radio shows.

Then there are comments like this one:

Please do not relax the FCC standards. If anything, tighten the standards and enforce them. TV and radio have gotten too filthy and violent. It’s already too indecent and repulsive and needs to be cleaned up. Our culture is in rapid decay, every little bit we can do to reverse the damage would be a step in the correct direction.

With one breath, these Christians tell the government to stay the heck out of their lives and their religion. With the next, they demand the FCC enforce some kind of moral police state. Which do they want—a small government, or a Big Brother state? (We know the answer: they want nothing short of an Evangelical Christian theocracy.)

Of course, I know plenty of Christians and other people of faith who won’t be flummoxed at all by this. They drink, swear, fuck, and enjoy a good nudie show as much as the next godless heathen. And I know plenty of atheists who are just as offended by profanity and nudity as many of these Christians (albeit for different reasons).

Point is—if you don’t like what’s on TV, don’t watch. With the exception of activities that really do harm people (e.g., cigarettes, stabbing people with knives), just because you feel offended by or don’t like something doesn’t give you the right to try and outlaw or ban it for everyone.

—

More on this from the International Business Times: http://www.ibtimes.com/fcc-may-finally-relax-draconian-bush-era-indecency-rules-parents-television-council-not-happy-about

172. leeward

Several weeks ago I discovered that a friend of mine had never seen the 1964 film version of Lerner and Lowe’s My Fair Lady, with Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison. It was rather shocking because A) I grew up with it and can’t imagine anyone else not having seen it; and B) he’s gay… and, well, musicals seem the particular purview of the gays. Hell, it’s one of the qualities that all but gave me away back in the day. (My friend Emily said, “You got way too excited about Sondheim to be straight.”)

My friend and I were talking about the moment that language goes from being merely parroting to true acquisition, when words go from sounds to meaning, and I brought up this iconic scene:

He had a percipient observation about the show: namely, that it’s a picture of imperialism. Eliza Doolittle is taken from the gutter by the chauvinistic Henry Higgins, dressed in the garb of the upper class, and taught how to speak and behave “properly.” In the same way, Native American children were taken from their homes by Christian missionaries and taught how to speak, behave and dress like proper Christians (i.e., Western Caucasian culture).

The reason we were talking about this scene, and this song in particular, is that it illustrates that “light bulb” moment. My college French teacher told my class that her’s took place one semester while studying abroad. She was reading in a tree one day, she said, and all of a sudden everything just snapped into place. She didn’t have to translate from French into English anymore. The words carries meaning.

Writer David Sedaris describes a similar moment in Me Talk Pretty One Day, from the essay collection of the same name:

It was mid-October when the teacher singled me out, saying, “Every day spent with you is like having a cesarean section.” And it struck me that, for the first time since arriving in France, I could understand every word that someone was saying.

Understanding doesn’t mean that you can suddenly speak the language. Far from it. It’s a small step, nothing more, yet its rewards are intoxicating and deceptive. The teacher continued her diatribe and I settled back, bathing in the subtle beauty of each new curse and insult. . .

The world opened up, and it was with great joy that I responded, “I know the thing that you speak exact now. Talk me more, you, plus, please, plus.”

These moments came to mind because several weeks ago I finally stopped believing in God. That’s not to say that I haven’t been an atheist these past two years. I still see no evidence or reason now to continue believing in God. The difference is that, a couple of weeks ago, I finally stopped missing God. It’s like that moment when you finally get over someone you’ve held a torch for, and one day, for whatever reason, those feelings stop. The memory of the love and the feeling is still there, but the gravitational pull doesn’t yank you out of your own orbit every time it wheels around.

Walking to work one morning a couple of weeks ago, the part of me that missed having a God to believe in went away. I’m not sure why it happened just then, but it was as if a balloon had popped, or a string were, and I wasn’t tethered to those feelings anymore. I didn’t feel the need to get angry or mean when someone talked about God or faith. I still get upset when hearing about someone being hurt by Christians, but then I get upset when anyone is hurt by anybody, for any reason.

I’m still passionate about the separation of church and state, about promoting secular and humanist values in society and throughout the world, and encouraging people to think for themselves instead of letting their thinking be done for them by those who want to fetter everyone in the world to a 2,000-year-old book. But I’m not doing it out of some revenge fixation, like a jilted lover railing against an ex.

None of us had a choice about being born in the proverbial Christian missionary school and taught the clean, holy Christian ways of the White Man. Neither did any of us have a choice about being attracted to members of the same sex. Eliza Doolittle chose to become the pupil of Henry Higgins, and accept his narrative of being a “proper lady.” But in the process she maintained her sense of self, and at the end of George Bernard Shaw’s original play, Pygmalion, she does indeed go off to marry Freddy and become a teacher of phonetics. Her final words to Higgins in the play show her to be a truly emancipated woman, unlike the chauvinistic ending of Lerner and Lowe’s musical: “Buy them yourself.”

I didn’t have a choice about being raised a Christian and saddled with all the negativity. But I’ll be damned if my parents’ choices are going to steer the course of the rest of my life.

You dear friend who talk so well: you can go to Hartford, Hereford and Hampshire.