editorial

i have a lot i want to say today about various topics, but i'm going with this first.

This is taken from the most recent issue of Rolling Stone (Issue 947, April 29, 2004). it's an editorial concerning the state of the 'war on culture' as they put it. RS doesn't put their magazine on their website, so i typed it up real fast. I hope you enjoy.


Time to Fight
Who will stand up to the war on culture?

Janet Jackson’s breast is the 9/11 of the new culture war. But who has answered the alarm? So far, only Viacom CEO Sumner Redstone and Viacom president Mel Karmazin. Both have come under government attack from the Federal Communications Commission and Congress, and both have spoken up: Redstone to say to an investors’ conference, “I don’t know about you guys, but to me a woman’s breast is not such a big deal,” and Karmazin to say, of media giant Clear Channel, “Another company canceled Howard [Stern’s] show for no reason other than that they were going to Washington [to] testify and just didn’t seem to have the courage to stand up for programming what they aired.”

We applaud Redstone’s and Karmazin’s courage. Where are the other network-TV presidents, radio executives, cable-TV owners and record-label chiefs – the executives who profit most from popular culture and the freedoms of the First Amendment? If FCC chairman Michael Powell has his way, we will return to a time half a century ago when you couldn’t show Elvis Presley on television from the waist down.

At the end of March, when Powell met with the National Association of Broadcasters, he issued this threat: “Heavier government entanglement through a ‘dirty-conduct code’ will not only chill speech, it may deep-freeze it. It might be an ice age that would last a very long time.”

And make no mistake: The chill is already here. Record companies are hoping to avoid government pressure by toning down music videos and pushing artists to edit lyrics; live TV broadcasts are on time delays to prevent artists from saying or doing anything that could be deemed offensive. And it doesn’t stop there: When Howard Stern defended himself by pointing out that Oprah Winfrey has explained explicit sexual slang on a show about teen sexuality, the FCC responded by investigating Oprah. They’re threatening to add daytime soap operas to the list.

Oprah? Daytime soaps? These are not cultural dangers. How much clearer could it be that the FCC’s crusade is an excuse to proceed with an out-of-date Christian-right agenda? As of yet, only two leaders of entertainment companies have stood up to say just how ridiculous this is. But our silence gives power to pop-culture critics. We call on the executives at the major record labels – Universal, Sony, Warner Music Group, EMI and BMG – as well as those at CBS, NBC, ABC and Fox to defend their creative visions and the rights of artists to express themselves.

We need figures of courage and strength to fight back in the war on culture.