Jarvis v. Powell
Posted on:: December 8th, 2004
Jeff Jarvis rebuts sentence by sentence Michael Powell’s defense of the FCC’s First Amendment restrictions.
For me, it’s enough to know that the moment most re-played by TiVo owners during the SuperBowl was the flash of J. Jackson’s nipple, the very image Powell is protecting us from.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
It’s not us, it’s the kids. Won’t somebody think of the children?!
So I agree in general that the FCC is not a good body to determine content that’s not in the public interests on the public airwaves. Until there is an independent body that has consistent, objective standards that don’t chill Private Ryan out with the bathwater, the current process is broken.
I don’t want the public airwaves full of objectionable content, but I don’t want objectionable content defined as things it’s hard for people to see and hear but rather things that are generally regarded as in a category that parents would rather choose whether their children had access to them or not on the public airwaves.
That opens a Pandora’s box, of course, with Harry Potter as unwanted as Janet Jackson’s nipple. But I do think it’s in the public interest to try to suppress vulgar sensationalism without chilling speech. Maybe it’s impossible.
I’d rather the FCC focus on how giant media companies are misusing their public interests than fining Bono and Oprah.
Actually, here’s the question, David: is there a line that shouldn’t be crossed on air and on TV? That is, full-front nudity: yes/no? All obscenities: yes/no? Horrible violence: yes/no?
If the answer is no even provisionally, then you have to have objective standards and a body set up to help determine and enforce those standards.
If not, then, in the words of Marge Simpson in 2020, “You know, Fox turned into a hardcore sex channel so gradually, I didn’t even notice. Yeesh!”
I don’t see the big hub-bub, I mean I saw the nipple, and I didn’t really mind seeing it. Infact if you really think about how many people were sitting and watshing her during half time. WE all know this is the time that you use to get food, beer, or go to the bathroom. Anyway nipple jewlry sales skyrocketed.
And Jeff proves he can act like a two-year old. Fisking is such a lame substitute for thoughtful debate or conversation. Any time I see someone do it, I think of a boss I once had who ran his dot-com into the ground, burning through several million dollars of other people’s money. His e-mail and conversational style was just to fisk. It was always so important to him to be right point by point, that he almost always screwed up the big picture and couldn’t figure out why nobody showed him any respect.
Here is something to ponder… How often do you see women engaging in fisking? Not often. OK, now that we’ve established this is a male thing, think about the serial fiskers that you know. These are the same people who have size and girth issues, aren’t they? So instead of calling it fisking, I vote that we call it “showing the world how small [the author’s] penis is”. Anyone with me on that? Even if a Republican does it, it’s stupid. That’s how strongly I feel about it.
I never quite got that whole Nipplegate thing. Admittedly, it was the middle of the night for me, so when that break came, I had already gone to bed. However, before that time I had had a faceful of boobs from all those cheerleaders at the sideline. That struck me as the more obscene. (Although, quite frankly, I would not object to both.)
Something Brad Hutchings and I agree on. Fancy that. ;^)
I thought Mr. Jarvis’ “rant” was especially unfortunate coming, as it did, only a month after his rather high-profile and much-linked “pledge” to, among other things, uphold the standards of civil discourse on the web.
I was also disappointed, though unsurprised, that many (most?) of the usual high-profile bloggers who linked to him, (ahem, cough-cough, nudge-nudge) endorsed his rant and didn’t comment on the markedly “uncivil” tone to it. Many of the same people also linked to and endorsed the pledge.
As I’ve written in my own weblog, I believe it is possible to agree with Mr. Jarvis’ more reasoned criticisms of Mr. Powell and the FCC without endorsing the manner in which he offered them.
Yes, I didn’t care for the histrionics, but I liked the piece overall because I think it important that Powell be called on his two-facedness. And, for better or worse, I’m not nearly as bothered by name-calling when it’s directed at public figures. There are even times when it needs to be done. But, in this case, I was more interested in the factual and opinionated dispute than in the rant-y quality.
Actually, the inanity of fisking is more offensive to me than the incivility. Rhetorically, it’s surface strength — give no ground — is its most profound weakness. I don’t care who your talking with or debating… at some point, they will say something that’s either totally valid or that you agree with. To ignore points of agreement or twist them into disagreement is to show that you are more interested in being disagreeable than in having a conversation.
Funny, but Pat Sajak (Wheel of Fortune Guy) recently made a point about what I see as a wide scale fisking of the Bush administration. Sajak addresses the lack of outrage from the Left over the murder of Theo van Gogh, and suggests that the Left might think that showing outrage over a totally outrageous action of a Muslim thug might be equivalent to showing support for Bush’s Middle East policies. More important to oppose Bush I guess… You know, at the very least, conservatives and libertarians are the first to credit and applaud Jimmy Carter for moving to deregulate trucking and airlines, and laying the foundations for telecom deregulation. I always offer this credit to tweak my friends who want to regulate everything. Hehe.
While nudity on TV is banned, extremely violent images are proliferating. One can hardly flip through the channels any more without coming across someone cracked open on a coroner’s table. If a bear breast is obscene, why isn’t this? We live in a fucked up country.