Hey, wasn't it you righties who claimed that Bush and company wanted
LESS government?

Who Will Save The Children?!
Aww, heck. The FCC says curse words now cost $500,000! And your child
might just hear one, and explode!

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, June 25, 2004


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The world, it is a teeming reeking cauldron of wicked malevolent
demons, with sharp pointy teeth and filthy mouths and really
impressive porn collections, and each and every one of them wants
nothing more than to suck the juicy pith from your helpless innocent
child like Donald Rumsfeld drains color from the sky.
It's true, isn't it? Senators believe it, the Christian Right believes
it, the FCC believes it, half a million stunned nipple-horrified Super
Bowl viewers who complained to the FCC believe it, the clenched
morality police of this nation chant it like a mantra, John Ashcroft
has it tattooed on his shriveled colon. This, after all, is the
prevalent American view.

Why the incessant outcry? What are these demons that threaten our kids
so horribly? Why, the demons of profanity, of course. Swearwords. And
sex. And drugs. And violent video games and J.Lo and illegal MP3s and
sex, gangsta rap and sniffing glue and Janet Jackson's nipple and
Howard Stern and naughty billboards and low-slung jeans and hardcore
porn and Marilyn Manson and shocking flotillas of appalling swearwords
coming from the mouths of celebs and rock stars of sufficient tone and
timbre to make Tony Montana blush. That's what.

This is the mental image we are to believe, happening right this
moment, across this fine nation: One hundred million honest,
hard-working, sexually terrified parents are running around their
homes with their hands to their heads, each thinking oh my freaking
God what if our beautiful wee one just so happens to walk by the TV on
his/her way to get an innocent glass of pure clean innocent Coca-Cola
to wash down the pure innocent kiddie Prozac, and s/he just so happens
to hear Tony Soprano call someone a "motherf-- " on TV? Why, our
child, s/he would surely quiver and tremble and explode! Yes s/he
would!

It's all about the kids, you know, and who will protect their
so-called innocence, their nubile unfiltered dreams, and how, and with
what sort of laws and guns and lawsuits and ridiculous fines and
sneering Bible-thumping misguided misinformed self-righteous
indignation.

Does it matter whether this seems to contradict everything you
naturally intuit about child development? Does it matter whether our
warped puritanism is causing the nation ideological whiplash? Does it
matter if the notion that our kids are ever threatened by nudity and
swearwords insults your intelligence and your cursing ability and your
parenting skills on roughly 100 different levels? No it does not.

But what actually should matter is that there are forces at play right
now that are far more intent on devouring your child's nubile soul --
like, say, ultraviolent war images, and rampant obesity, and organized
religion, and pharmecuetical companies, and the Olsen Twins --
enerrgies that are molesting his/her sense of the world more than any
hot genital reference or wanton exposed nipple could ever dream.

No matter. The horrified senators, they all imagine that very same
image of millions of distraught American parents, and they furrow
their oily brows and respond accordingly. How? Well, for example, by
voting 99-1 in approval of a snide little bill that will now allow the
FCC to fine the living bejeezus out of any broadcaster who lets slip
an errant "f--" or "s--" or boob shot in any major media outlet
anywhere (cable excluded, praise Jesus), up to $275,000 per incident
(or, in the House version of the bill, $500K), up to $3 million per
day. For starters.

And, verily, you could hear a pin drop in the Senate floor as the bill
sailed through a few days ago, tacked on to a completely unrelated
massive defense bill like a leech on a diseased whale.

There was no debate. There was no discussion. The senators were all
cowering and whimpering and scrunching their faces, and not a single
one dared speak out and say gosh, you know what? This bill we're
approving here? This insipid FCC thing? This bill is just, you know,
totally effing moronic.

Of course, they don't dare. They may be dumb, but they ain't stupid.
Go ahead. Try and suggest, in the era of BushCo and Ashcroft and
Michael Powell and Dubya making his churchly rounds and working the
rabid evangelical right-wing set into a
get-out-the-homophobic-fundamentalist-vote furor -- go ahead and stand
atop your soapbox and suggest that swearwords and sexually suggestive
materials might not be, you know, the most harmful things a kid can
encounter in his or her little innocent life.

Boom. You are so dead.

Just watch as you are instantly branded a heathen whore pervert. Just
watch as you instantly lose your lead in the polls or your position in
the TV ratings or your job at the media empire and have your head
served to you on a platter. Sure it may be true. But don't you dare
say it.

This is what you are not to forget, ever: We are a nation wherein it
is perfectly OK to show a dozen vaguely nauseating ads for erection
pills and a hundred more touting the merits of slamming a sixer of Bud
Light at halftime as you and your frat buddies ogle that chick at the
bar as meanwhile the wife stays home and prances around the kitchen,
high on the fumes from her new Swiffer WetJet. But a shot of a woman's
breast? Inappropriate and traumatizing, pal. Don't like our hypocrisy?
Move to France with the other perverts.

Aww hell. Let's try and spell it out anyway. Let's just say it right
he The kids are fine. Kids are not traumatized by much of anything
we think they are. Kids are not scarred for life by hearing Howard
Stern crack a penis joke with a porn star. Kids are not scarred for
life by seeing one quarter-second of a famous nipple on national
television. Kids are not scarred for life by reading the word "f--" in
this column, which of course they can't, because we can't print it,
because if they saw it they would explode and die.

You know what scars kids? You know what traumatizes our youth and
stabs at their innocent spirits like Dick Cheney thrusts at integrity?
Kraft Lunchables, that's what. Drug-happy shrinks. Refined sugar.
Abstinence-only sex education. Gutted school-music programs.
McDonald's marketing gimmicks. Joe Camel's head shaped like a giant
penis. Bovine growth hormones. Homophobic adults with guns. Rampant
hypocrisy, like legal Zoloft but illegal pot, or being sent to Iraq at
18 but you can't have a beer until you're 21.

You want the trauma of youth? Try learning how BushCo's Big Industry
cronies are being allowed to poison the air and the water and the food
supply. Try self-righteous organized religions that tell kids their
bodies are evil and their beautiful natural urges are sinful and their
new Messiah is Mel "Gushin' Blood" Gibson and never mind that priest
staring at you so longingly, sweetie.

Try senators and FCC honchos and attorney generals and religious
morality police who make life feel like a disease to be suffered
rather than a pile of random messy bliss to be rolled around in.

Really, now, is there any scar more grievous than that? Anything more
traumatic than teaching our kids that, no, you are not a healthy
potent sexually burgeoning self-defined being of potential and love,
but, rather, you are prey, ever put upon, ever under duress, ever meek
and misinformed and ever requiring armed, patronizing protection. What
a wonderful lesson.

As Tom Robbins says, "There's many ways to victimize people. The most
insidious is to convince them that they're victims."

What, too radical? Well, you know, frook that.