RE: C*nsorship in the TV [was: List Administration & Etiquette]

[Jim Sharkey]

> [I don�t know if USA society is this much sexually
> repressed, but the news that come to us about children
> being sued for sexual harassment after kissing a
> classmate scare us. OTOH, we all watch USA TV series,
> that are paranoically sexless to the point of suggesting
> that the human body is a monstruosity that should
> never be shown]
>

Apparently you've never seen Baywatch or V.I.P. Count yourself and your brain lucky on those counts. :-)

To be fair, there *is* a certain Puratinism that seems to be a general cultural thing for us. However, how much of that is actual *censorship* from the POV that it is mandated by the government and how much of it is societal pressures (or pressures from the advertisers) I'm not sure.

To me, when the Federal Communications Commission fines Howard Stern $1.5 million because of something he says, it's censorship, right or wrong. When an advertiser threatens to drop a show or a group puts pressure on its creators because of a gay character being in it, that's *not* censorship. If you wish to call it "shadow censorship," you may, but I don't think of it that way.

Jim

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