don't these people understand about family values? maybe we should send them John Ashcroft. Americans are really FOS!
FullofS**T when it comes to this stuff...they just don't get it!...the HUMAN BODY is WHAT THE OLYMPICS ARE ABOUT!
Athens Olympics Chief Fumes at U.S. Lewdness Claims
Mon Jan 17,12:54 PM ET
By Karolos Grohmann
ATHENS (Reuters) - A clutch of complaints by U.S. viewers that the Athens Olympics opening ceremony featured lewd nudity has incensed the Games chief, who warned American regulators to back off from policing ancient Greek culture.
Gianna Angelopoulos warned the Federal Communications Commission (news - web sites) watchdog, sensitive after a deluge of outrage when singer Janet Jackson exposed her breast to a Super Bowl football audience, not to punish NBC television that aired the Games.
Male nudity, a woman's breast and simulated sex were the subjects of shrill complaints about the opening ceremony on Aug. 13 which were posted by the FCC (news - web sites) on its Web site.
"Far from being indecent, the opening ceremonies were beautiful, enlightening, uplifting and enjoyable," Angelopoulos wrote in a weekend letter to the Los Angeles Times.
"Greece does not wish to be drawn into an American culture war. Yet that is exactly what is happening," she said.
Complaints focused on a parade of actors portraying naked statues. Among them were the Satyr and the nude Kouros male statues, both emblems of ancient Greece's golden age.
Created by modern Greek dancer Dimitris Papaioannou and broadcast in the United States by NBC, the opening ceremony was credited with giving the Games a vitally successful start.
HISTORY OF EROS
"We also showed a couple enjoying their love of the Greek sea and each other. And we told the history of Eros, the god of love. Turning love, yearning and desire into a deity is an important part of our contribution to civilization," Angelopoulos said.
The FCC, whose authority only extends to U.S. media, has said it is looking into complaints, nine of which were listed on its Web site, but it was not clear whether a formal investigation would be launched.
Angelopoulos, who said the handful of U.S. complaints were dwarfed by the 3.9 billion people who watched the ceremony, had a blunt message.
"As Americans surely are aware, there is great hostility in the world today to cultural domination in which a single value system created elsewhere diminishes and degrades local cultures," she said in her letter.
"In this context, it is astonishingly unwise for an agency of the U.S. government to engage in an investigation that could label a presentation of the Greek origins of civilization as unfit for television viewing."
An FCC spokesman was not immediately available for comment on Monday, which is a public holiday in America. |
