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Wholesome Canadians Tired of MTV's Smut
Tuesday, April 10, 2007 - reddit
The United States has the Federal Communist Commission, and Canada has the Communist Broadcast Standards Council. Their jobs are the same: take from people the right to decide what they might find offensive by removing anything that might be offensive from the airwaves. In other words, it's censorship day in Canada and MTV is the target of the CBSC's wrath.
From Reuters:
"It was the creepiest, most distasteful thing I've ever seen on television! This was cable TV, Easter Monday at 8:30 a.m.!," the viewer wrote. The viewer was particularly concerned about a segment on a virtual sex machine, which he described as "indecent" and "distasteful." I suppose I can understand that religious people might be upset with this, not to mention sexually repressed prudes too, but what's the big deal? It's one thing to to repress yourself and your kids, but now you've got to do it to your entire country as well? And why the hell didn't they show that in America? We love that stuff!
In a written reply, MTV Canada said it regretted causing offense but defended its talk show as "an innovative, interactive television experience that generates healthy debates about a wide range of topics." I see. Not only can't you show a sexual device on television, you can't even talk about it anymore. But there are solutions to this problem other than censoring things you don't like or agree with, and it's called changing the damn channel. This reminds me of the manufactured Super Bowl/Nipple fiasco from a few years back and the often coined "wardrobe malfunction", you know the kind where another person rips a portion of your shirt off so your breast comes out.
According to ars technica that single incident generated over 272,000 complaints in the second half of 2005, and here's the kicker, over 90% of them were generated by form mailers hosted by the Parents Television Council, a militant group bent on censoring television so harshly that nothing but kids programming would ever survive, and even then probably not all of it.
This is a steep contrast with the second quarter 2004 when the FCC received only 351 complaints, and 141 the year before. When will people stop letting the most prudish few decide what the rest of us get to watch?
Other posts from this blog: Television, Censorship, Entertainment, MTV, Canada
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