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...

Swine Flu Casualty (sort of): Free Speech

Well, there seems to be a casualty of the swine flu today...attention to the Supreme Court's outrageous ruling that the FCC will be allowed to fine broadcasters for airing any "fleeting expletives." These are single-word curses like "fuck" and "shit" - or perhaps references that should be thrown around a lot in any documentary about the kinds of people (Parents Television Council) who are celebrating this ruling: "assholes." But while the news headlines have been dominated by the "all swine flu all the time headlines" (and yeah, not an unimportant story), the Supreme Court allowing the FCC to trample all over the First Amendment has fallen off the media's radar today.

For some excellent thoughts on this, do check on the right of this blog for Paul Levinson's piece too. As he argues - and has been arguing for years - it's outrageous how the words as clear as "Congress shall make no law...abridging the freedom of speech" can be allowed to be flouted by an irrelevant and reactionary bureaucracy like the FCC.

And Dr. Levinson is absolutely right in the argument that conservative justices are ignoring their own beliefs that a judge should not legislate from the bench. This is an exact point I have believed in for a very long time, every time I heard the conservative far right wing moralists supporting censorious legislation. What the hell happened to the party of "small government" and Ronald Reagan's goal to "get government off your back?" What happened to the American people knowing how to live their lives and raise their families better than Washington bureaucrats and censorious, puritanical, whacko special interests?

Perhaps this might be one of the reasons so many are deserting that party for a real limited-government-alternative like the Libertarian Party.

See, I Told You So!!

Check out this interesting little story about a killer attempting to shift the blame onto media use for his behavior.

Some vicious lunatic slit a man's throat and now he and his lawyers are arguing that it was all because of a pornographic video he was shown by a "third party."

So he shouldn't be punished so severely, right? It wasn't really his fault.

Yeah, right! Sure!!

Just as I argued before that all these ridiculous, idiotic, absolutely unfounded arguments about the effects of media violence and porn are a boon for lawyers trying to keep their scumbag clients from being punished, anti-media-violence and anti-porn do-gooders are the best friends every violent criminal in this world has.

And take note of how this pornographic tape has mysteriously vanished...like it never existed in the first place.

Here's an invitation to all the "family" advocacy groups, the media watchdogs, our good buddies and pals in organizations like the Parents Television Council: if you really believe that a porn tape made this piece of human garbage kill, please contact me right away. I have this great big stone and concrete and metal thing that spans the river between Manhattan and Brooklyn to sell you. It's mine! I own the deed! Trust me! You believe me, don't you?

Comparing "Sexting" to Child Porn is Ludicrous

Check out this latest article about how a budding new moral panic, the teenage cell phone phenomenon of “sexting” is about to turn into the next salvo on free speech and expression in America.

The ACLU, to its credit, is at least taking on this Pennsylvania county’s paranoid and destructive attempt at prosecuting teenage girls who sent provocative pictures of themselves to their boyfriends over the cell phone. And this prosecution is taking place despite the fact that THE TYPES OF PICTURES SENT BY THE GIRLS ARE NOT CLASSIFIED AS ILLEGAL IN PENNSYLVANIA!!!!!!!! So what the &^$%ing %#&* happened to equal protection under the law?

What happened is the latest case in the ages-old social phenomenon of the moral panic. A moral panic usually ensues when some strange and unusual event, some aberant occurrence is suddenly blown out of proportion (most easily by the mass media) and cast as a pernicious crisis threatening all of society. Sexting is just the latest moral panic, right after the scientifically baseless media violence hysteria, the steroid paranoia, the violent video game hysteria, the Satanic heavy metal hysteria, the comic book moral panic of the 1950s, the Red Scare, and all the way back to the colonial witch trials.

Sexting, as so perfectly argued by Fordham Professor Paul Levinson on today’s Culture Wars radio show, is not child pornography. It is not created under the same circumstances and it is in no way an equivalent of child pornography. Child pornography is the victimization of children, the videotaping or photography of children against their will by a pornographer, for distribution and sale. Sexting is teenagers voluntarily taking pictures of themselves and controlling those pictures by distributing them to friends and boyfriends. It is sexual experimentation and rebellion by kids at an age when every generation of teenagers had been rebellious, when they have experimented with sex and sexuality. Comparing sexting to child pornography is ludicrous.

But sexting is also a wonderful boon to various groups of censorious crackpots and control freaks like the Parents Television Council (check out their web page where they bemoan the creeping immoral menace of sexting) and the rest of their meddling ilk who use this as an opportunity to push for more intrusive laws and regulations that control private behavior. And just be sure and take a look at the part of the Pennsylvania sexting article that describes some of the punishment the authorities want meted out to these girls. A forced “re-education” program? RE-EDUCATION?? The Soviet Union used to have re-education programs in the Siberian gulags!!!

So don’t believe for a microsecond that all the moral watchdogs and media crusader groups are as appalled and saddened and outraged by sexting as they claim. These folks are happy as can be every time they imagine another kid “sexting” a picture of herself. The more kids sexting, the better, they must no doubt be gushing in their most private moments. Every such incident is just more ammunition for these parasites to launch their assaults on free expression and civil liberties.

A Can't Miss Culture Wars Episode

Be sure and tune in to the March 26th episode of WSPC Culture Wars, when we talk to Fordham University Communication Professor and Science Fiction author Paul Levinson. Dr. Levinson, a strong supporter of our show and St. Peter's College, will talk to us about the intrusion of ideology and political dogma into the world of science and research.

Plus, Dr. Levinson has debated PTC head Brent Bozell and challanged him on the fact that his regressive and repressive organization has virtually no scientific basis for their anti-speech agendas. You must check those out on YouTube!

Also, Jennifer B. White, author of The Witch and the Devil's Son, will talk about aspiring authors trying to beat the odds and breaking into the big, bad world of New York commercial publishing. In this economy, the deck might be stacked against writers, but Jennifer, a PR professional, has tips for guerilla marketing tactics and how talented and imaginative first time writers can get their work some attention.

More Culture Wars podcasts available!

More episodes of the WSPC Culture Wars radio show are available on podcast for downloading right here.

Be sure and check out our most attention grabbing episode yet, our debate with the head of the New Jersey chapter of the Parents Television Council from February 5.

In hindsight, I realize that our discussion with that woman was entirely too long to make the point that her organization has no proof, scientific basis, or even understanding of the issue of negative media effects. If you read her blog entry about our exchange right here, you will realize that she does a much, much better job of trashing the PTC's repuation than I ever could. Just read through her entire blog entry and take a close look at her defense of the nature of the PTC and why my criticisms are unfair. The PTC, she explains, is not a scientific organization and they can not be expected to offer scientific proof to back up their claims about all these horrific, heinous and brutal effects of the media. Need I say any more?? A major PTC figure basically admitting that everything they argue is essentially worthless because they can prove none of their assertions. What a gem!

But make sure and listen to the entire broadcast because everything that she argues - including her endorsement of PTC members threatening a school's donors - are loud and clear and easily understandable...contrary to her blog suggestions that her comments were made intentionally hard to hear.

Then, for a guest arguing the different side of the story, make sure and download our talk with USC sociologist Dr. Karen Sternheimer.

For more of Karen Sternheimer, check back in to the Culture Wars podcasts this week and hear our discussion with her about the modern celebrity culture and the social networking phenomenon. Then read more of Dr. Sternheimer's thoughts about identity and social networking at the Everyday Sociology blog.

WSPC Culture Wars Podcast Available!

Podcasts of Culture Wars episodes are being made available at http://culturewars.libsyn.com/

Check out the entire hour broadcast on January 22...the infamous episode that inspired the disapproval of the New Jersey chapter of the Parents Television Council.

Take a listen and let us know if the brief discussion of my book, The Asian Influence on Hollywood Action Films was dangerous, subversive, and threatening enough to family values and The American Way of Life to warrant threats of boycotts against St. Peter's College. E-mail your comments to wspcradio@gmail.com

What I'm still convinced of is that God must love crazy people, because He makes so many of them...and they're all members of whacko media watchdog groups like the PTC and they're listening to our show.

Now at least they can enjoy our programs over and over again! Hey, we take 'em where we can get 'em.

More episodes are being uploaded over the next few days!!

The Battles of Culture Wars

Check out a lengthy article about our Culture Wars show and our PTC run-ins.

I haven't yet discussed the boycott and donor issue here, but this story goes into the matter in detail. Once our ongoing podcasting delay has been resolved, everyone can listen at their convenience and hear how this matter played out on the program.

Good riddance to more bad laws...with loving thoughts of the PTC

Well, a federal appeals court has just declared that a California law that tried to limit the sale of violent video games to minors is unconstitutional, violating the First Amendment and the 14th Amendment. Check out the story right here. And my reaction to this is...YESSSSS!!!

Good riddance to yet another bad law based on nonexistent evidence to prove any sort of a causal relationship between media content and behavior.

And yes, in case my big fans in the Parents Television Council are reading this blog, I am indeed grinning very broadly right now, barely able to resist jumping up and down for joy.

Rulings like this are victories for common sense and reason. These are things severely lacking today. You see, we seem to be living in a world where such things as evidence and proof are no longer requirements for many people to make up their minds about issues. A couple of weeks ago, my radio show, WSPC Culture Wars, aired a debate with the head of the New Jersey chapter of the PTC, where that organization's policies on rational, scientific proof were very clearly demonstrated. Not only does the PTC not really care about whether or not their ridiculous assertions about media violence can be scientifically proven, but they wouldn't be able to recognize scientific data if it very aggressively hit them over the head.

A couple of examples: Their web page is filled with "studies" on the amount of violent and offensive behavior in the broadcast media. These are, technically, content analyses, or literally the count of exactly how many times punches are thrown or shots fired or curse words uttered in any given episode of a TV show. That's all nice and good, except that such a study does not prove a causal link. If you're ever taking a statistics or research methods class and you feel like getting and "F" just to make life more exciting, tell your teacher that a content analysis study is a proof of causality. Your "F" will be assured. Maybe the teacher might even mumble something like "moron" or "idiot" under his breath.

Or go to the PTC's link of "Education" and then the link to "outside studies." Here you will find a lot more content analysis studies, as well as a massive pile of correlational studies (and look up this blog's January post about correlations and the explanation for why saying that a correlation proves causality will also earn you an "F" in a stats class). The best part of the PTC's list of outside studies, however, is the fact that they actually list some studies that completely disprove their position about media effects!!!!!!! The conclusion here is obvious:

THESE PEOPLE DON'T READ ANY MORE THAN THE TITLES OF RESEARCH ARTICLES BEFORE THEY POST THEM ON THEIR WEB PAGE! Or, for that matter, before they try to lobby and pressure lawmakers to enact unconstitutional, un-American, McCarthyesque censorship laws.

So yes, while the good folks like the PTC, their blowhard leader, Brent Bozell, and all the "concerned" activists in their local chapters are upset over the California decision today, I am having a really, really good laugh at their expense.

The posts are back! I promise!!

...with more apologies to the readers! From now on anyone can fantasize about violent retribution if they need to go an entire week without an update on this page.

I must confess that during the fun and excitement of a long holiday weekend, there was too much I let get in the way of updating the blog. To confirm the suspicions of some of the people who've written the Culture Wars e-mail account (wspcradio@gmail.com), I might even have been up to some no good. Some of the show's PTC listeners have accused me in the past of being in favor of everything immoral, so at least now I need to be honest. I did rip the wings off of a few flies the last couple of days and tripped an old lady.

But at least the past week has provided some really interesting - and exciting - research to mull over. Check out this article about a study from Europe showing that playing video games is actually good for kids! And I endorse the study because it actually takes the social research approach to its data gathering, talking to video-game-users about the meaning of the video games in their lives. So they eschew the correlational and content analytical nonsense. Good for them!!

Sanity on Culture Wars! 2/12/09

Be sure and tune in to the February 12th show of WSPC Culture Wars when we talk to people who understand big words like “research,” “proof,” “correlation,” and “causality.”

In the wake of last week’s PTC debate, we are joined by USC sociologist, Dr. Karen Sternheimer, talking about her book, “It’s Not the Media: The Truth About Pop Culture’s Influence on Children.” For one of the most readable and concise works on why all the media violence arguments are little more than unfounded paranoia and dishonest flim flam by a bunch of censorious control freaks, buy a copy of this book as quickly as you can!

But that’s not all!!!

Also joining us will be Rick Biondi, former Libertarian congressional candidate from Arizona’s 6th district. He’ll discuss the viability of third party candidates in today’s political culture…and the inherent wisdom of all who call themselves Libertarians!

Don’t miss it!

A Dangerous Media Effect

Since I was just arguing media effects with the head of the New Jersey chapter of the Parents Television Council on Culture Wars, I can’t help but comment on what may be a truly dangerous media effect I just ran across. And no, it’s not people becoming more violent, or wanting more sex, or trying to bully each other, starving themselves after reading fashion magazines, or watching anything on TV. It’s the possible effect of atrocious journalism.

The FOX news web page has a link to an AP story about a study on video game use by college students, with the headline reading “STUDY: VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES BAD FOR MENTAL HEALTH.” Check it out here.

The article describes a study published in The Journal of Youth and Adolescence. It looked at the sort of people who play a great deal of video games. The researchers report that students who play a great deal of video games are also the ones who may have alcohol problems, use drugs, and have bad personal relationships. The gamers who enjoy the violent games are also the ones to have a lot of sex partners and bad personal relationships. We are told that there is a “clear correlation” between the video gaming habits of these students and the sorry state of their lives.

So this study is proof that video games really cause you to become and alcoholic, a junkie, perhaps a sex addict, and someone who can’t have a healthy relationship, right?

Wrong!

But, of course, going by the AP story, you might conclude exactly that. The way the story is written – and most people are going to get the majority of their science news from the mainstream media rather than reading a dense, jargon-laden academic journal – the average person might conclude that here is a study establishing a clear causality between video game use and behavior.

Except that the study does nothing of the sort. The study finds a correlation, which is NOT the same as causality. A correlation is merely the observation of changes between two variables. From a study like this, we can’t tell if playing video games turned these students into sex-crazed, alcoholic drug users, or if people who like their cheap frat house beer, smoke too much reefer, have sex a lot with different women (most of the problem gamers appear to be men) because they’re loose and licentious (or perhaps they’re just lousy in bed and get dumped after the first roll in the hay) will also play a lot of video games. Maybe if you’re a drunken screw-up to begin with, you might be a high-using videogamer as well.

Again, maybe these people were screw-ups to start with and they turned to video games in their screwed up state.

Of course the problem with this is that media-phobic control freaks like to jump on these stories and get all “active” and “concerned.” For example, we might have a lot of folks at the PTC with a great, big silly grin all over their face right now, writing an Op-ed about the “scientifically proven” danger of video games. Then they’ll be starting campaigns to pass new laws to control video game sales because “the research proves the dangers.” These are the people who are incapable of understanding the nature of correlations in statistics and incapable of grasping why a count of the number of punches thrown in your average Rocky movie is not a proof that Rocky movies cause people to get into fights.

But, nevertheless, these very concerned activists like to get active and pass new laws to control your life and behavior.

And the real culprit in all this is a sloppy reporter!

More State of Panic Coming Soon!!!!

The podcasts of Culture Wars will be available by early next week. You can tune in and listen to our PTC debate with sound enhancements correcting some of the level problems experienced in the studio today.

Be sure and check back in here and I'll let you know when you can hear our thrilling exchange and the NJ PTC's explanations of:

The rampant crime...

Out-of-control social diseases decimating humanity...

Children going wild in the streets...

The breakdown of all civilization...

...all caused by the mass media!!

And why colleges should be coerced and intimidated if they let anyone say anything that offends the high arbiters of taste, style, and morality!!

B.D.

The PTC on Culture Wars!

With apologies to the constant reader - as Stephen King would say - for the lax updates over the past week, I just wanted to announce that the Culture Wars radio show, hosted by yours truly and Ernabel Demillo, will have a special presentation this Thursday. The head of the New Jersey chapter of the Parents Television Council will join us to discuss her organization and their agendas and views of the media.

While this blog had been critical of the group, there is nothing we support more than free speech and the opportunity for everyone to exercise their rights to free expression. Thus, Culture Wars will give the PTC the chance to speak up tomorrow and air their views.

Tune in and decide for yourself!

B.D.

Go screw yourself with a broccoli!

The culture wars roll on and on! With the approach of the Super Bowl, we have the approach of more ridiculous advertising controversies. Check it out right here.

Apparently NBC is already trying to prevent any possible trouble with the Super Bowl broadcast by refusing to air an ad for vegetarianism by PETA. Too sexual, they argue. One part of the ad, according to NBC’s interpretation, suggests that an actress is “screwing herself with a broccoli.”

Now, unfortunately, we can’t see this for ourselves and decide whether or not this is appropriate because NBC is letting itself be bullied into acting like our broadcast nannies. We must be protected from ourselves because we are too dumb to handle a simple TV ad, or we are such incompetent parents that we don’t know how to raise our children so they are not scarred and corrupted for life by a vegetarianism ad.

The root of all this, of course, is the fact that Super Bowl broadcasts are now anniversaries of the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” and the Parents Television Council’s reign of terror. Following the Jackson situation, the FCC went psychotic and issued more fines against broadcasters in the following year than fines it had proposed issuing in the previous 10 years. This was all due to the prompting of the members of the PTC.

I am certain that these champions of censorship will soon enough be celebrating their ability to keep more expression they don’t like from the airwaves. Check out their web page and keep an eye on this, I suggest. Or, better yet, since these folks like to start complaint campaigns – the home page of their organization has no fewer than THREE links to file an FCC complaint – maybe people can take the time to send them a message and let them know that Americans don’t appreciate their First Amendment rights being trampled upon by bullies and cheap thugs.

The culture wars, in the meantime, will keep rolling on the web broadcasts of WSPC Culture Wars as well. Every Thursday at noon, Eastern time.

I Seek Britney

Being away from a regular dose of entertainment gossip, I almost lost track of a great Britney Spears story…then almost missed a piece summarizing a pornography study on the FOXSexpert column. The timing of these stories is just perfect and I wanted to comment on them as a follow-up on my previous post praising the timely and thankful rejection of an absurd anti-porn law by the Supreme Court.

Although we’re in the twenty first century, I still feel the urge to scan the headlines every few days in case there might be the public burning of a witch. Or maybe the red-lettering of an adulteress. Today I just got my almost-missed story of something equally as stupid: the brain trust of the Parents Television Council is threatening to file obscenity complaints against radio stations playing Britney Spears’ song “If You Seek Amy.” Now I’ll have my school radio station to play it completely uncut, I think.

Their reasoning is explained here, on their web page. Some delicate, impressionable young child might accidentally be exposed to it while listening to the radio. The horrors of playing a silly double-entendre that most junior high school kids would be embarrassed to say! Most would be embarrassed because it’s so tame and silly, in fact, that other kids might laugh at their lack of sophistication in matters of sex. I know when I was in junior high, or grade school for that matter, that’s probably what would have happened to you. “If You Seek Amy? Come on, you can do better than that!”

Now would I really would urge anyone to check out the Sexpert article’s summary of a study on teen attitudes on pornography. It is brief, it summarizes the study well, and it’s clear enough with its numbered points for even a member of the Parents Television Council to understand. Or maybe they might want to invest time in a second reading. But the point is that if this is how teens react to pornography, it really is an absurd waste of time to listen to the PTC’s harping about the pernicious threat Britney Spears poses for America’s impressionable, innocent young children.

The study is a remarkable outline of what active and critical consumers teens are of pornography. Far from being stupid, mindless, thoughtless sponges that see images in the media and imitate them, teens process information from even the hardest, most explicit pornography “critically, (compare) it to life experiences and information from other sources. Young people are able to evaluate the materials as overstated, distorted or incorrect. The ultimate reaction: They tune out or distance themselves from the source.”

Furthermore, “hardly any of the participants (in the study) considered the pornography actors as celebrities, but rather as ‘cheap’ and ‘ridiculous.’”

Kids, or adults or any of those audience members in whose name the meddling do-gooders of the PTC usually advocate censorship are not as passive, weak, and pliant as the PTC usually argues.

This should be something to think about for all those admiring the PTC for their efforts to protect America’s families: These people think you are stupid, you can’t run your own family or raise your children, and you need the hand of big government bureaucracies to tell you how to live.

So just relax and let the kids listen to Britney!

Regards,
Barna W. Donovan, Ph.D.

Good Riddance to Child Online Protection Act

This Wednesday the Supreme Court decided the Child Online Protection Act will definitely not be revived. You can check out the story here.

This was a law attempting to censor the internet, keeping sexually explicit content away from kids.

It is nice to see the Supreme Court make this decision at the same time we're hearing about the Chinse government cracking down on sexually explicit material available to its citizens over the internet. It's great to see exactly what the contrast is between free societies and dictatorships.

Especially since there isn't a single study offering a single shred of empirical evidence proving that pornography will change children in any way (at least no study that an undergraduate half way through any introductory research class could not tear to shreds, stomp all over, and humiliate), it's great to see nonsense like the Child Online Protection act get thrown right on top of the legal trash heap where it belongs.

I'm kind of looking forward to the reading the reactions of sanctimonious would-be censors like the Parents Television Council.

Violent Films are Good for You

On our January 22 show, we had such a rollicking good time (soon to be available on podcast) on Culture Wars that a few interesting moments still come to mind. Actually a couple of moments where we talked about a few nicely controversial things that might not have been as well-elaborated upon as they should have been.

Like my reflections on being accused of being the anti-Christ just a couple of days after Christmas…during a get-together with friends I haven’t seen in some two years. Since this is not something that happens to you (or at least to me) every day, you kind of wind up scratching your head over it for a while. But it is amusing.

It happened while talking to an old friend about my book, The Asian Influence on Hollywood Action Films. This was a friend I can still remember shooting the breeze with about ninja action movies during junior high lunch periods. But now he was all bent out of shape about my book. A once really cool guy was chastising me about concluding that violent Asian action films are actually good for society because they uncover the erroneous nonsense about so much of the anti-media, anti-violence crusades carried on by all the too-tightly-wound do-gooders on the left and the right. These films, I told him, were made in cultures where the media are much more explicit and violent than ours, yet their violent crime rates are miniscule compared to those of the U.S.

“But hasn’t all the research proved…?” he said.

No, actually it hasn’t.

But my friend, a new father, is now a devout reader of the works of those tireless protectors of America’s hearts and souls and impressionable kids, the Parents Television Council. “This organization quotes all the great studies showing all the correlations between media violence and crime and sexually explicit TV and pregnant teens…”

Which, I needed to explain, was just about proof that the people running this bottom-feeding organization must never have passed an introductory-level research class in college. Anyone arguing that correlations prove causality could certainly never pass my research methods class at St. Peter’s College. “Correlation does not prove causality” is a mantra that every beginner-level student should be able to recite if kicked out of bed in the middle of the night. (An increase in the number of storks nesting in a town as the number of newborns increases is a correlation too) So, no, if your once-sweet little baby girl is turning into a nonstop nymphomaniac while addicted to Sex in the City, it does not mean that S.I.T.C. caused the little angel to go astray.

Nevertheless, throughout the rest of my stay at my friend’s house, I continued feeling kind of unwanted.

B.D.