The Tit That Will Never Die

Howard Stern predicted that this bill, known as the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, would eventually pass Congress and (of course) be signed into law by Bush, and he was right. The bill passed in the U.S. Senate on May 18th (S.193), and yesterday, it passed in the U.S. House (H.R. 310). As a result, fines on communications companies and individual broadcasters have been raised to a potential maximum of nearly half a million dollars.

Let’s think about how utterly preposterous this is for a minute, OK?

If I accidentally said a bad word in a particular circumstance, the effects could be highly detrimental to my employment and, potentially, my career, but I can guarantee you that it wouldn’t cost me nearly half a million dollars. Likewise, if Preston and Steve on WMMR or anyone else on TV or radio (excluding cable and satellite, but make no mistake…the FCC under Bushco is going to try and find a way to regulate that also) now accidentally drop an “F” bomb or something similar to it, it could cost them that preposterous amount of money.

And for what? Who will be “corrupted” anyway? These stick-up-their-ass, Dobsonite zombies who seem to have no problem with violence in our media marketplace but go into spasmodic convulsions at the sight of a diamond-studded, 40-year-old African American mammary gland?

Historians and others will be commenting on the farcical absurdity of all of this for decades I’m sure, but for now, I’d like to pay tribute to the 35 voices of sanity in the U.S. House (entirely Democrat but for two) who opposed this nonsense:

Abercrombie
Baird
Becerra
Berkley
Berman
Blumenauer
Clay
Conyers
Delahunt
Frank (MA)
Grijalva
Harman
Hinchey
Honda
Kucinich
Lee
Lofgren, Zoe
McDermott
Nadler
Olver
Paul (R-TX)
Payne
Sabo
Sánchez, Linda T.
Sanders (I – VT…great job, Bennie!)
Schakowsky
Scott (VA)
Serrano
Sherman
Stark
Wasserman Schultz
Waters
Watson
Watt
Waxman

In response, I can’t wait to get home tonight and watch a Friday DVD double feature I’d been planning for some time of “Raging Bull” and “RoboCop.”

Update 7/29/08: Sanity prevails! (here)