Showing posts with label Family Research Council. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Family Research Council. Show all posts

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Waiting for Howard!

I just needed to put one more post - perhaps not the last one - up about the Parents Television Council's new white whale on TV. Here is a link to their latest whining session about Howard Stern on Fox's American Idol.

This piece by the PTC almost reads like a self parody. If Saturday Night Live would ever revive their old Church Lady routine with Dana Carvey, the PTC could give them endless free material. But the best part of this whole farce is that the PTC's Tim Winter seems to be daring Fox to put Stern on the show and see the program disintegrate because of the "anti-family" tone it is sure to take on.

Sure, Tim, I'm sure that American Idol will wither and die of low ratings once they put on the most successful radio personality in history.

Tim, could you please say hello to the Easter Bunny for me, since it's obvious that you're living in a fantasy world. I would also ask you to say hello to Santa as well, but I don't want to keep endorsing that secular symbol of the liberal media's attack on Christmas.

I really, truly hope that Fox would rise to the PTC's little challange and continue soaring in the ratings. It would prove yet again that a demented group of terroristic whackos like the PTC and all their sister organizations like the MRC and the CMI and Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council are nowhere near to representing the values and tastes of the average American.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Support Howard Stern on American Idol!



If Howard Stern becomes a new judge on American Idol, I would whole-heartedly endorse the show, applaud it, and encourage everyone I know and everyone who reads this blog - especially if you are one of the "Nielsen families" - to watch and support the show. Howard all the way!!

Now why do I write this? I admit that I've never watched an episode of American Idol all the way from beginning to end and I really could care less who wins each season and becomes the next big bubblegum music sensation. American Idol is just not my thing. There's no sex or violence on American Idol, so it doesn't really hold my attention. Maybe if the contestants could get into some fistfights or some good hair-pulling chick fights...perhaps.

But Howard Stern changes things and - most importantly!! - Stern's judgeship is now being opposed by America's own home-grown terror group, the Parents Television Council.

The PTC just started e-mailing their members and it's attempting to round up a protest campaign against Idol, trying to force the show to keep Stern out of the judge's seat. In other words, this group's terror campaign to push broadcasters into censoring themselves is up and going again. Just like their past intimidation campaigns have forced CBS to censor its Grammy broadcast (see posting below), they are attempting to bully and coerce the producers of Idol into caving in to the PTC's repressive, ultra-right-wing social agendas. And make no mistake about it, this is what the PTC's ultimate goal is...

Just why exactly is the PTC mounting its terror campaign against Fox and Idol this time and trying to bar Howard Stern from this show? Because of what Stern has said and done on his show in the past. Behavior on Stern's show is offensive to the PTC, it's behavior which the PTC in all its self-righteous wisdom as America's moral guardians, has defined as "indecent" and "offensive," and behavior which now should disqualify Stern from a show like Idol. Nowhere in its harangue against Fox (read it here), does the PTC even try to make its usual effects argument for why Idol should be censoring itself. Just what kind of an effect will Howard Stern's words have on "America's children and grandchildren" if they hear it on Fox?

Nothing the PTC can prove, of course. As usual!!

No, the anti-Stern hysteria campaign is just more of what the PTC usually tries to cram down America's throat. It's a war of values, and a war of trying to force a retrograde, repressive Victorian value system on 21st century society.

Perhaps if the PTC were were so outraged by people's past bad behavior, they could have campaigned to keep the Tim Tebow anti-choice ad off the Super Bowl as well. The Focus on the Family's own past behavior can easily be found through any quick Google search...or wait a minute, even by going to their web page right now. Some of the most virulent, intolerant homophobic hate-speech one might wish to try and stomach is all over the pages of Focus on the Family and its adjunct organization, the Family Research Council. If Howard Stern qualifies for the PTC's pressure campaigns, so does the Focus on the Family.

Monday, December 7, 2009

The last days of the FCC...I hope!

Check out this piece on Yahoo News I was recently interviewed for here.

Of all the possibilities posed by converging media, especially the movement of so much broadcast material to the cable and the Internet, what especially excites me is the coming obsolescence of the Federal Communications Commission.

Since the FCC has no regulatory power over the Internet or cable, a very-near future (the nearer the better!) of online entertainment should be completely free and unfettered, completely independent of the meddling of a bunch of ill-read, double-digit IQ Church Ladies like the members of the Culture and Media Institute, the Parents Television Council, the Family Research Council, and the rest of their moralistic ilk. These are the folks who usually like to start their letter writing campaign to the FCC every time they hear the words "hell" or "damn" on TV, then turn around and claim to represent the values and sensibilities of the "average American." I don't think so!

But this sort of puritanical control over expression in the broadcast media will see its days numbered in the world of digital convergence and the move of ever more entertainment content to the Internet. And it's about time the FCC and its unconstitutional assaults on free speech was put out of commission for good.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

Well, it looks like something positive can be said for a bad economy after all. According to this article, the bad financial times drove one of those busy body do-gooder pro-censorship family groups out of business.

Yessssss!!!!!

The National Institute on Family and the Media has closed up shop because of the bad economy. Of course I'm completely enjoying this because this is a group that's even more ignorant of basic social science research than the Parents Television Council and more insane than the Family Research Council (they, the supporters of Carrie Prejean and all things wholesome, homophobic, and holy until, at least, their wholesome media darlings start masturbating on sex videos).

Yesssssss!!!!!!!

These folks have been almost exclusively obsessed with video games and, as the article discusses, at one point seriously argued that the video game industry tries to persuade America's children to become cannibals.

To the concerned parents and activists of the National Institute on Family and the Media: Good riddance! We won't miss you!

Or wait a minute, maybe we will. People this nuts are just too entertaining.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

God Bless the USA!


Well here are just a few more reasons why I definitely don't want to move to either China or any country run by a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy. These two stories about web surfing in the not so free world just sealed the deal. Check them out here and here.

Aside from being identified by Reporters Without Borders as the country that exerts the most censorious control over the Internet in Asia, China is also deeply concerned about the moral rot Internet pornography may bring about in young and impressionable minds. Therefore, they want to censor the Internet even further. All computers sold in China, apparently, must be fitted by porn-blocking software. As an educator of college students who understands the importance that rest, relaxation, and entertainment to overstressed and overworked students, this sort of censorship just appalls me! It APPALLS me!!!

The second piece about the new Microsoft search engine, Bing, seems to hint that some software developers might have been Boy Scouts in a previous life. They plan ahead. Apparently versions of their software marketed in Islamic countries already have blocking functions built in, not allowing access to pornographic videos.

While this is an entirely easy shot to take, I will definitely take it...because it's just so much fun and so satisfying: The censorship of so-called "smut" and "indecency" usually goes hand in hand with general censorship, intolerance of dissent, and totalitarianism. Those are words - meaning "totalitarianism," "dissent," and "intolerance," - such American guardians of morality like the Traditional Values Coalition, the Family Research Council, and (my all-time favorites) the Parents Television Council should look up in a dictionary.

And I think I will now check out some of the search functions on Bing...