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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (21582)	6/20/2006 2:21:43 PM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 541556

Re: global warming. You don't have to actually change much; if you have enough money, you can buy your way into a "carbon neutral" lifestyle. Fly a million miles around the world, then invest in solar power and hydroelectrics, and voila, you're "carbon neutral." wired.com

To: Lane3 who wrote (21582)	6/21/2006 7:54:04 AM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541556

Here is another example like the one of gun violence where incremental implementation of what is doable can't possibly fix the problem. Yet folks are out there fighting for each inevitably toothless increment I guess because they feel they have to "do something." Is Decency Going Down the Tubes? By Ruth Marcus Wednesday, June 21, 2006; A21 Showing too much of Janet Jackson just got pricier. President Bush signed legislation last week that hiked fines for broadcasting indecency tenfold: from $32,500 to $325,000 per nasty bit. America, the president noted, is awash in televised vulgarity: "People are saying, 'We're tired of it, and we expect the government to do something about it.' " I'm sympathetic to this impulse. But it's foolish to think the latest measure will do much to resolve the concerns of parents who, like me, feel assaulted by the coarseness of popular culture and besieged in the multi-front war they have to wage against it. Will supersizing fines make much of a dent? Right -- and that bare breast really was a wardrobe malfunction. For starters, the fundamental problem with broadcast television isn't the occasional outburst of indecency during the hours between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when the indecency rules apply. It's the constant avalanche of the inappropriate -- from talk shows to reality TV to prime-time dramas. A Kaiser Family Foundation study last year found that 77 percent of prime-time shows contained sexual content, up from 67 percent in 1998. More than one in 10 shows overall featured "scenes in which sexual intercourse is either depicted or strongly implied." Anyone who complacently relies on indecency rules to shield his or her children is committing parental malpractice. Moreover, the quest to define indecency inevitably devolves into the ludicrously subjective. A few months back, the solons of the Federal Communications Commission found that a term for bovine excrement is "so grossly offensive" as to be "presumptively profane." Okay, except that, according to the FCC, a certain nickname for Richard, and its two-syllable version ending in "head," don't violate this standard. These terms are "understandably offensive to some viewers," but not "sufficiently vulgar, explicit, or graphic descriptions of sexual organs or activities to support a finding of patent offensiveness." As pretty much any 13-year-old could have told the FCC, it ordered the wrong expletive deleted. This would be amusing if there weren't also a chilling downside to indecency enforcement. After the Janet Jackson uproar, some ABC affiliates balked at showing "Saving Private Ryan." And in its recent crackdown, the FCC fined a public television station for showing a Martin Scorsese-produced documentary on the blues, because it used profanity that the commissioners deemed not "demonstrably essential" to the work. Somehow, I'd rather leave the artistic judgments to Scorsese. The bigger problem with focusing on broadcast indecency is that, in the real world, it's almost meaningless. More than 85 percent of American households get their television programming through satellite or cable, which aren't, and as a constitutional matter probably couldn't be, subject to indecency rules (although the broadcast stations carried over cable are, of course). So broadcast networks can be fined millions for failing to bleep out barnyard epithets while cable channels air far dirtier words with impunity. This is like fencing off a few miles of an ever-expanding border and declaring that you've solved the problem of illegal immigration. And that doesn't consider the proliferating number of alternative platforms for foul language and coarse content: video games played on Xboxes and GameCubes and PlayStations; music downloaded to iPods and other MP3 players; and -- most vexing of all -- the array of opportunities for mischief on the Internet, from click-to-view pornography to chat rooms to social-networking sites. All of which adds up to a need for a national discussion about solutions -- what part legislative or regulatory, what part old-fashioned parenting combined with 21st-century techno-savvy? I'm not opposed to governmental involvement; requiring cable operators to offer a family tier makes sense, as does vigorous oversight of entertainment industry marketing practices and ratings. But the combination of constitutional concerns and exploding technological progress makes content-based regulation a blunt and ineffective instrument. Fundamentally, parents have to serve -- in the president's words -- as "the first line of defense" against inappropriate content. "In our free society," Bush said, "parents have the final responsibility over the television shows that their children watch, or the Web sites they visit, or the music they listen to." And this brings into play a disturbing parental paradox. As Kaiser's Vicky Rideout pointed out at a recent New America Foundation seminar, parents bemoan the content their kids are exposed to even as they facilitate the exposure. They want the government to step in to solve the problem, yet they fail to use the technology available to control it. According to a Kaiser survey, almost two-thirds of parents say they're "very concerned" about inappropriate media content. But just 15 percent have used a V-chip to control access to programming. Some 40 percent -- I'm among them, I confess -- aren't even sure whether they have one. Meantime, one-third of children 6 and under live in homes where the television is left on all or most of the time -- whether or not anyone is watching. More than 40 percent of 4- to 6-year-olds have a television in their bedroom. For older children, that share is almost 70 percent. Now that's indecent. marcusr@washpost.com © 2006 The Washington Post Company

To: Lane3 who wrote (21582)	6/21/2006 11:51:29 AM
From: JohnM	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541556

Actually, I wasn't ignoring your point, so much as remaking my point. Which interested me a lot more than your point. As for wholistic approaches to political problems, go right ahead. It just won't happen. At least those of us who log in from the "politics is the art of the possible" port, see all policy problems as, fortunately or unfortunately, political and solutions are always compromises. I don't like it but have to live with it. I'm quite aware that licensing and training don't "solve" the too many guns in the hands of civilians issues. But that approach is at least tractable. Can't say that for the approach which says you have to solve the whole problem or none at all.