Surrounded by his fellow lawmakers who feel the need to protect children from smoke and mirrors, President Bush signed into law legislation that will increase the maximum penalty the FCC can fine a broadcast by tenfold. According to the Washington Post, broadcasters are not allowed to show indecent material between the hours of 6pm and 10pm. Those caught in violation can now be fined upwards to $325,000 per incident, a sharp increase from the previous max of $32,500. This whole landslide started with the infamous “wardrobe malfunction” of 2004.
Of course, who is qualified to define what is indecent? Apparently those who espouse that television pushes the boundaries of decency are not because the bill does not even attempt to define what is or isn’t indecent. The FCC says indecency is “that which contains sexual or excretory material that does not rise to the level of obscenity.” So what’s obscene? That travesty I watched on Tuesday night was enough to convince me of the decay of modern television, and in my opinion that is obscene to the point of outrage. Does that mean CBS should lose their license for broadcasting a worthless heap of trash like ‘Tuesday Night Book Club’? If Congress does not have the authority to say, the onus falls on us as a society and I for one don’t think boobs hurt anybody.
