Here's a government organization that's managed to completely subvert its mission, basically guaranteeing that media ownership of pubilc airwaves has been concentrated into large conglomerates who now all but claim ownership of their rental properties. It seems like its on a decades long regulatory putsch is to keep vag lips, behinds, ding-dongs, tits and swear words* off the air. Who the hell cares if the country is served with pablum. We must protect der kinderen from das boobies und das snatchenfrauzen.
josh [email] said at 8:34 PM 01-28-2008: i must admit i was suprised that clip was from a network tv show... but the news link i found said that it was aired in 2003? why are they suing now? also why are they using the increased fine amounts when the show aired before the fine rules were increased?
jake [email] said at 9:29 PM 01-28-2008: To be fair:
1. She has a porno ass, and the camera knows it.
2. The kid is framed between her legs, staring in awe/shock.
3. There's a lingering shot of her from the side that, well, lingers.
4. There's even a "cum shot" if you will, when she's shown full frontal and grasping her bits in horror.
5. To me, all this takes the segment out of NYPD's familiar ground of casual nudity that artistically employs the understated naturalism of the whole show, and into the realm of intentionally titillating and exploitative cinema. I have no problem with them eating a fine for this, and I think it wouldn't be so high if the network hadn't tried to shine the FCC on.
That said,
A. I agree that in general the FCC is a nightmare and has perverted its mission beyond redemption.
B. I totally had this moment with a foreign exchange student who lived at my house when I was three years older. It was hot and disturbing, and I never made eye contact with her again.
C. I mean, I didn't have this moment, like, in part. I had it totally.
D. I saw this episode when it first aired. It was surprisingly raunchy, and there was a lot more of that in that last season of the show.
E. That character, though, was sort of a pro-life icon. If I recall correctly, she was emotionally torn up because she had a kid at 16 and put her up for adoption, barren because of an abortion (or complications from that early pregnancy?), and then miraculously got pregnant, while building a relationship with modern Job, Andy Sipowicz. But you can't please everyone...
brandon [email] said at 10:02 PM 01-28-2008: The FCC is consistently used to pad sweetheart deals for big campaign contributors and score easy points for the administration. When Republicans are in power, they give the FCC marching orders to put the "liberal media" in check. When Democrats are in power, they send it on Tipper Gore groan-worthy police state errands "violence on T.V. is killing children" a side shot of some boobs causes rapes to rise. Has anyone seen daytime television lately? Those soaps may not show as much skin all at one time, but the scenarios and infinitely much kinkier, dirty, and than this fairly innocent, and somewhat comical, primal scene. And sure, It's OK if Rambo goes in and wastes a bunch of gooks to help his buddies, the forgotten MIAs of Vietnam, but a middle-age woman innocently surprised getting into a shower - now that's obscene.
America loves porn. This nebbish fear of the female body is, well, it's fucking stupid.
kiche [email] said at 10:33 PM 01-28-2008: ok, look we make jokes about how in rambo 2 his love interest dies so he symbolicly blows his wad by ejaculating bullets all over the vietnamese people.
brandon [email] said at 10:38 PM 01-28-2008: It's true. Loose women will drain men of their precious, vital fluids - our essence. Men without their essence can't fight a war. They can barely get up in the mornings. The war glands require hydrostatic pressure - an entirely different kind that only highly concentrated essence imbued semen can provide.
brandon [email] said at 3:53 PM 01-30-2008: Basically I thought about what might really be considered obscene, and I thought of that Lou Reed Song "Sex with your Parents" so I searched for youtube "Fuck your mom" and voila. Pretty linear.
rick [email] said at 10:43 PM 01-28-2008: Dunno 'bout that d00d3r; there are any number of national epics in which the warlike protagonist lays down with countless lovers. And even in our own times we see the Foreign Legion with its own brothels and the USO sponsoring scantily-clad WWE female wrestlers (many of whom pose nude for men's magazines) going on morale-boosting trips to troops overseas.
brandon [email] said at 10:48 PM 01-28-2008: Fact: man had sex with women during Vietnam. Foreign women. Fact: we lost Vietnam. Fact: Pvt. England had sex with that other dude at Abu Graibve. Fact: We're losing Iraq. Fact: General Hooker almost lost the civil war, because Lee sent him prostitutes wrapped in Small Pox blankets smeared with VD. Fact: Pol Pot could not stop masturbating. Idi Amin refused the company of women, and wore their severed breasts. Fact. Idi became like a god and was assumed into heaven to sit at the right hand of the father.
kiche [email] said at 11:16 PM 01-28-2008: yes, but this can be used as the military as a gateway into a sexual world away from the puritanical home.
as in, sex is available to the deserving military man who is protecting the sexually pure homefront. there is a reason that most of our soldiers come from the bible belt.
also, this creates a virgin/whore dynamic that permeates our culture.
Rickle Down Theory said at 11:54 PM 01-28-2008: I don't buy this either; most of the military bases stateside that I have seen, even the ones in the rural South, are surrounded by bars, strip clubs and tattoo parlours (not that there is anything wrong with that). In what would otherwise be a very culturally conservative region, young men are cutting loose. There HAS historically been a "moral hygiene" movement in the military but it has not tó my knowledge ever been truly dominant.
