AJC.com > Opinion > Woman to Woman > Archives > 2007 > September
September 2007
Do we need stronger protections against ‘fleeting expletives’ on television?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Rebuttal
Fleeting expletives are on the mind when battling traffic. So on a recent drive I was musing about the FCC’s crackdown when my young teen asked, “Isn’t that, like, the government trying to be our parents?”
Right, honey. Now could you explain that to the grownups?
In the past few years it’s as though we’ve all been adopted by the FCC, that self-appointed arbiter of good taste and good art. Thus, Saving Private Ryan was aired with fleeting expletives outnumbering the flying bullets, while Martin Scorcese’s documentary The Blues didn’t pass muster. Soldiers can swear, blues musicians can’t. Cheney and Bush can, Nicole Richie and Bono can’t. Get the pattern? Of course, the FCC won’t give you warnings in case you don’t. Why, that would be censorship.
I think even “NYC-based” judges share my aversion to the junk on broadcast television. Yet I think they also share my confusion: if fleeting expletives are truly “harmful to minors,” shouldn’t hearing one from the president be more damaging than hearing one from a disgraced reality TV starlet? The courts didn’t order up a blitzkrieg of f-bombs; they simply called the FCC’s rulings “arbitrary and capricious”, even “unconstitutionally vague.” For now, paranoia prevails; some stations wouldn’t air documentaries on 9/11 and Marie Antoinette at all, fearing their content might land them in the “indecency” bulls eye.
Next up on the docket: giving the FCC more power over TV violence. It sounds helpful, until The Parents Television Council moves into overdrive. Then, the same watchdogs who took their kids to “The Passion of the Christ” will make sure we don’t see so much as a brandished gun during the sacred family hours.
Another approach to fighting dreck? Talk to kids about the issues they confront everyday. By advocating Media Literacy and critical thinking , we arm young people with both information and the same skills we prize as parents.
Yet if you’re still wondering how to keep your kids away from “fleeting expletives”, this simple plan might help: Turn off the TV. Monitor the computer. And, for friggin’ sakes, don’t let them drive with me during rush hour.
How religious do we want our presidential candidates to be?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Quick quiz: Which recent presidential candidate encouraged us to “question with boldness even the existence of God…”?
Answer: None, of course. The speaker was actually Thomas Jefferson, whose tolerance of agnosticism would surely tank a campaign 225 enlightened years later. Religiosity is a requirement in a viable 2008 candidacy, right up there with being a natural-born citizen, and not being Dennis Kucinich.
Yet a recent Pew Research Center poll reveals that “so far religion is not proving to be a clear-cut positive in the 2008 presidential campaign”. The current frontrunners, Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani, are considered the least religious, although both are church-goers and speak frequently of their faith.
More conservative religious candidates grab both headlines and votes when hot button social issues dominate a campaign. Yet the Pew report goes on to explain that many domestic debates continue to be overshadowed by the war in Iraq.
This trend troubles Ken Blackwell of the conservative, Christian-based Family Research Council, who also noted that concerns about the war make it hard to focus attention on his group’s key issues like abortion, stem cell research and gay rights.
“…I think we have to make more Americans believe the war is being prosecuted competently, and for a reason…” he said last spring.
One can understand Mr. Blackwell’s dilemma; it’s difficult to make citizens believe something that simply isn’t true. There’s conflicting, dispiriting news coming out of Iraq, a mounting deficit and an accelerating health care crisis. No wonder we aren’t focusing on controversial domestic matters, even though they’re portrayed as threats to our democracy-and our souls.
Thomas Jefferson said of God, “…if there be one, he must more approve of .. reason than…blindfolded fear.” His words have the air of prophesy, for not even divine intervention can redeem George Bush’s presidency, propagating fear, immune to reason.
This endless campaign season promises to be a roller coaster of accusation and spin, none of it very holy. As we examine our various candidates of faith, facing down the challenges that loom before them, the most important question is this: who truly deserves our faith?
Rebuttal
Ironic that Andy quotes Ken Blackwell. Blackwell is also a former gubernatorial Republican candidate from Ohio, beaten last November by Democrat Ted Strickland - who also happens to be an ordained minister. Americans put their faith in people of faith all the time, and that doesn’t make them less enlightened — or in this case, less Democrat.
Our country will always be indebted to Thomas Jefferson for championing religious freedom, Christian and otherwise. But that doesn’t mean we want a non-religious president to lead us. In fact, the September Pew Research poll showed that while Americans may be reasonably accepting of a secular-oriented president, they prefer one whose life is bounded by faith. As Pew put it, “Most Americans continue to say that it is important for a president to have strong religious beliefs. And voters who see presidential candidates as religious express more favorable views toward those candidates than do voters who view them as not religious.” In fact, 61 percent of Americans would not vote for an atheist candidate, no matter how qualified he or she was otherwise.
Why is that?
Well, the vast majority of Americans share some fundamental religious beliefs. And if the average Working Joe recognizes how much he needs the guidance of the Almighty in his own day-to-day life and work, surely, he instinctively feels, the most powerful leader in the world should need it even more. Something deep within us recognizes that with all the problems in our world, we need a President who recognizes that we can’t “go it alone.”
Americans can flip-flop with the best of them on issues and often lack patience to see military or domestic policies implemented fully over time. But the one thing we have consistently been is a country where faith matters. And I pray that never changes.
Follow-up quiz: which president said he did not want his administration to be a “government without religion,” allowed church services in government offices, and wrote in his Bible that, “I am… a disciple of the doctrines of Jesus. I have little doubt that our whole country will soon be rallied to the unity of our creator.” That would be our third president, Thomas Jefferson.
Are the problems of the Morning-After Pill Properly Understood?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
It’s been one year since the FDA approved the Morning-After Pill (Plan B) to be sold without prescription to any woman or man over 18. While the media hasn’t followed the results, the non-partisan Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) has - and they’ve filed a lawsuit against the FDA to protect the safety of women.
Despite years of political pressure that eventually doomed the prescription requirement (Senators Clinton and Murray delayed approval of the new FDA Commissioner), no-one has ever proven Plan B safe or explained why it should be available without medical supervision if much lower doses of the same medicine (the regular birth control pill) require a prescription.
Now, women wanting Plan B rush into it without fully understanding the drug — mistakenly believing no problems exist because a prescription isn’t required. As the lawsuit states, the label comprehension study showed that “fully one in three women (all ages) did not understand that Plan B is not a replacement for traditional contraceptives. [Further,] the label is affirmatively misleading, occurs within the context of an effort to sell Plan B as a panacea, and does not provide the legally required clear disclaimers.”
Dr. Jane Orient, AAPS Executive Director and practicing internist, emphasized in an interview that, “the FDA is really lax in its responsibility to inform the public or have the manufacturer inform the public about side effects — not just with Plan B but with vaccines, hormones, and so on. Women think that if there were problems, the government wouldn’t allow it to be sold, but that is not necessarily true. Young women are risking stroke, blood clots, lack of supervision for repeated use, unknown long term effects of hormones, and that is not being addressed.”
To one reader who emailed me, distraught after a miscarriage, these warnings come too late. She took Plan B after a clinic doctor guaranteed it wouldn’t cause abortion (which she’s firmly against) if she was already pregnant. She later learned she was pregnant, then lost the baby. Her OB-GYN said it was almost certainly because of Plan B. She didn’t fully understand the drug, and now she has to live with that heartache and loss for the rest of her life.
Rebuttal
Limiting Birth Control. If I could put those words in a mile-high font, I would, because that’s what this issue is really all about.
Conservative activists are wisely thinking outside the box when it comes to attacking Plan B. After all, the mainstream view is that safe and effective birth control is a good solution to unwanted pregnancies, addressing the huge gap between abstinence and abortion. So extremists employ dubious medical claims to scare away anxious women. Hey, no judgment here, it’s all in the name of safety.
Safety issues? A comprehensive study deemed Plan B safe and effective eight years ago. Seems the only people in danger of a stroke were those battling against Over The Counter status for years after a panel of FDA agency experts strongly recommended it.
Of course, if listening to experts isn’t your thing, you can always huddle for safety in the “non-partisan” arms of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS). Somehow, I fail to find comfort in a group whose medical journal promotes abolishing Medicare and dismisses evolution as a “humanist” conspiracy.
If women are unclear on the particulars of Plan B, it’s due to groups like AAPS and activist pharmacists, dispensing “protection” instead of information and medicine. Ignoring their disingenuous concern, a woman can go on the internet or talk to a health professional to learn the facts: Plan B is only for emergencies. It’s not intended for regular use. It doesn’t make sense to take it while already pregnant.
Or, she can do what I did: request Plan B from the pharmacist and read the outside of the box. It’s all right there, including side effects and a technical description of exactly how it works.
You want real protection? The next time someone tries to warn you off birth control, read their fine print: it isn’t your well-being they’re after. Your right to privacy and ownership over your own body mean nothing to the sanctity-of-life sledgehammer, eternally coming down hard on family planning measures.
And what happens to all those lives, forcibly brought into being? Sorry. They don’t have a plan for that.
Should cities adopt ordinances
to ban the “saggy pant” look?
Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
Andrea Cornell Sarvady succeeds the late Diane Glass, who died this summer at the age of 42, as the left half of the Woman to Woman column.
“I see London, I see France, I see someone’s underpants!” So went the childhood taunt.
Who could imagine that one day that might be considered, in some circles, a compliment? No wonder city leaders from Dallas to Atlanta are currently looking into banning “sagging”, the trend of wearing trousers so low that boxers are in full reveal.
This isn’t the first time that young men flaunting an edgy style have brought the ire of a community. The Zoot Suit Riots in 1940’s Los Angeles saw young Hispanic men beaten over their baggy apparel. Early punk rockers in New York and London often fought for their Mohawks. Unconventional dress has always aroused curiosity, even suspicion.
But —fines and imprisonment?
Such immodest dress can be upsetting, particularly for our seniors. Yet when we are confronted with semi-attired fashion victims, the salient question is this: are they covering up the parts of their body already covered in our public decency laws?
Face it—we just can’t mandate good taste. (Where were these leaders with their moral indignation when mullets were in style?) There are both African-American and Caucasian advocates for such laws, lessening cries of racial bias; gender bias isn’t an issue when bra straps and thongs are added to the “no fly” zone. Even so, with public decency laws and other dress codes already in place, such proposals have died on the vine in Connecticut , Virginia and Florida— and for good reason.
There is nothing wrong with “quality of life” ordinances, stamping out the little things that can make city life difficult and dangerous. Yet in legislating a fad that will likely go the way of beehive hairdos, we risk looking as foolish as the fashion we’re trying to eradicate. One hates to see well-intentioned leaders become fodder for late-night talk show jokes.
Maybe the way for the older generation to wipe out this unsightly look is not to wage war against it, but to embrace it. Once young men catch a few glimpses of fleshy City Councilmen flashing their Fruit of the Looms, even those voluminous zoot suits won’t seem like enough of a cover-up.
Rebuttal
As amusing as it is to visualize baby boomers striking a blow for equality, this isn’t about bad taste. And it’s not really about the saggy pant “style” per se either: it’s about what sort of partial public nudity we should tolerate. I could care less about the style, as long as the underwear model is covered up - but that’s often not the case. If you want to wear saggy pants or low-riders that practically show your equipment at a private party, that’s your business. Just don’t make it mine - or my kids’ - by wearing it on the street. I’d prefer to not be confronted with the thoroughness of your bikini wax when I stand next to you at the airport or take my pre-schooler grocery shopping. And neither would most people. That’s why most public decency laws prohibit “partial nudity.”
The trend of cities proposing amendments or new laws suggest that either the original laws aren’t specific enough to keep up with the skin-showing trends, or - more likely — the laws are just fine but we need a collective kick in the saggy pants to enforce them.
Calling this trend a ‘fad,’ as if it’ll shift with the next season lineup from Hilfiger, ignores that this trend hasn’t changed for years. And can anyone argue with a straight face that fashion trends are likely to become more modest?
In Atlanta, C.T. Martin is one city councilman who’s had enough. He recently told the Associated Press that flaunting boxers and thongs is an “epidemic that is becoming a major concern around the country.” The amendment he proposes would allow for stiff fines to get the point across.
In an interview, Dr. Janice Crouse, Senior Fellow at the Beverly LaHaye Institute, the think tank arm of Concerned Women for America, said we don’t really need new laws: we need to enforce existing ones. Of the low-slung-underwear-and-thong trend she said, “You can definitely make a case that that is partial nudity. All of us know the example of extreme partial nudity, and these are definitely instances of breaking the law. We could definitely make someone an example and that would help curb the problem.”
Are Americans too impatient in Iraq?
Shaunti Feldhahn, a right-leaning columnist, writes the commentary this week and Andrea Cornell Sarvady, a left-leaning columnist, responds.
Commentary
An Associated Press Poll found 60 percent of Americans “lose their cool” if they have to wait in line more than fifteen minutes — and only 7 percent could stay on hold for twenty. No wonder Americans aren’t exercising the Iraq patience that we knew would be required from the beginning.
President Bush told us that Iraq action would not be quick. He emphasized it “could be longer and more difficult than some predict. And helping Iraqis achieve a united, stable and free country will require our sustained commitment.” Words Hilary Clinton might remind herself of, since she voted for the war “with conviction.”
What did we think “sustained commitment” meant? A few months? In 2003, I was bewildered to hear television commentators discussing whether we’d need to be there for more than a year. It’s like we have a subconscious sci-fi assumption that we’ll just shoot a few phaser guns, subdue the bad guys, and have the whole thing neatly wrapped up by the end of the hour-long episode.
We don’t just need a dose of patience: we need a dose of reality.
Thankfully, two high-profile critics on Iraq have also provided some surprising encouragement with a recent New York Times article entitled, “Stability in Iraq: A War We Just Might Win.” Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack of the liberal Brookings Institution say the troop surge is working. Civilian casualties have dropped by a third, military morale is up, and American troop levels can decline in places like Mosul because the Iraqis lead security.
Unfortunately, a new Gallup Poll showed most Americans want troops out by April 2008.
And too many Democrat leaders are demanding timetables as well, even though timetables invite chaos. As Pollack put it in an interview last year, “[If] people become confirmed in their suspicion that the United States is not going to be there to prevent civil war, they are to going to start making decisions today to prepare for the eventuality of civil war tomorrow.”
He added, “That is how civil wars start.”
There’s a new self-governing nation out there that is desperately trying to learn how to stand on its own and avoid civil war. Americans owe it to the Iraqi people to learn patience. Rapidly.
Rebuttal
Yes — Americans who work in the White House, that is. The refusal to give diplomacy its due, the rush to war … who’s being impatient here? This administration has been quick to claim false proof: “We know where the (WMDs) are,” quick to claim victory: “Major combat operations in Iraq have ended,” quick to think stabilization was around the corner: “…they’re in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.”
Bush and Company’s bold statements turned out to be wrong, like so many things in this nobly fought, badly thought-out war. What did we think sustained commitment meant? Hard to say. Yet we didn’t think it meant a war lasting longer than America’s participation in World War Two. We didn’t think it meant 3000+ Americans dead and rising, over $450 billion in costs by the end of September 2007, troops pulling multiple tours to make up for understaffing. We didn’t think that being “greeted as liberators” meant an increase in the ranks of Al-Qaeda while true democracy remains elusive, in a land so wracked with cross currents of sectarian violence that it often resembles, already, an outbreak of civil war.
We have been so starved for a turnaround in Iraq that The Brookings Institute report my colleague cites is a breath of fresh air, giving much anecdotal evidence of positive developments. Yet it also rhetorically asks: “How much longer should American troops keep fighting and dying to build a new Iraq while Iraqi leaders fail to do their part?”
This is the 3 a.m. question. Without a draft or a “war tax,” Iraq might feel like a direct hit only to those who actually are risking their lives, and their families. Yet our stinging conscience calls so many of us to outrage.
In warning President Bush about the consequences of an invasion, Colin Powell told him, in essence, “You break it, you own it.” So here we are, shards at our feet, critically obligated to both the Iraqi people and our troops .With so many lives on the line, demanding that our leaders demonstrate better judgment isn’t impatience. It’s a moral imperative.
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Commentary
By Shaunti Feldhahn
One year ago, CBS aired a 9/11 special laced with expletives during the family hour. As many readers recall, I argued against the timing, not the special: It is still illegal to air explicit sex, violence or profanity over public airwaves (as opposed to paid cable) before 10:00 p.m., since kids could be watching. Despite that instance, I was still encouraged that the Federal Communications Commission was finally - by fining even “fleeting” network profanity - beginning to enforce the indecency laws.
Only months later, however, the crafty broadcasting industry successfully appealed their case to a NYC-based court, where two judges unbelievably overturned that FCC enforcement - basically ruling that the F-word and S-word can be aired on television at any time.
Why would broadcasters even want to air these so-called fleeting expletives? And why would it be so difficult to bleep them out? One might assume that the surge in live and taped reality shows would account for it - but one would be wrong. A recent study by the Parents’ Television Council (PTC) found 2245 instances of “objectionable violent, profane and sexual content” in just 180 hours of original television programming - and the scripted indecent content was three times higher than for unscripted and reality shows. In other words, real people have a far better sense for how to conduct themselves on-air; it is the broadcasters who are trying to ensure that any child in the room can hear and see sex, violence and profanity.
It is crazy that we have to even go to these lengths, but following the NYC court ruling Congress began considering legislation that would explicitly give the FCC the authority to fine “fleeting” instances of indecency. As the PTC’s Dan Isett recently exclaimed in an interview, “What profanity isn’t fleeting? The content by very nature is fleeting! But the F-bomb is an F-bomb no matter when you say it.”
Broadcasters disingenuously claim they respect decency laws, while legally pushing to gut them - and while purposely scripting most indecent content. Since broadcasters apparently actively want our kids to hear and see this stuff, both the courts and the congress need to take a firm hand to stop them.