FCC patrolling our airwaves to protect us from dirty words

MSNBC has just reported that the FCC is working long hours to protect us from harmful language, i.e., language that “depicts or describes sexual or excretory activities or organs in a patently offensive manner.”

In its continuing crackdown on on-air profanity, the FCC has requested numerous tapes from broadcasters that might include vulgar remarks from unruly spectators, coaches and athletes at live sporting events, industry sources said.

Tapes requested by the commission include live broadcasts of football games and NASCAR races where the participants or the crowds let loose with an expletive. While commission officials refused to talk about its requests, one broadcast company executive said the commission had asked for 30 tapes of live sports and news programs.

As explained by MSNBC, the Commission is cracking down on variations of the words “f***” and “s***” even if the words are uttered accidentally.

I’m really glad that our government is keeping TV safe.   This sort of detail work is likely quite expensive, but I’m sure they’ve thought this all though to make sure that there is nothing better to do with all of that money.  There’s no telling what harm could happen if one is exposed to a dangerous word.  I didn’t see Janet Jackson’s nipple, but had I seen it, I might have missed several days of work trying to recover. 

Or so I thought.  Because this is such an important matter, I decided to subject myself to an experiment.I turned off the phone, went to a quiet room …

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What Jesus said about homosexuality: Nothing.

This, according to Dr. Bob Edgar, who was interviewed by CBS News.  Edgar is General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, which represents about 50 million Christians in America — the majority of them mainline Protestants. "Jesus never said one word about homosexuality, never said one word about civil…

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Reflections on Hotel Rwanda

I haven’t seen Hotel Rwanda.  I actually rented the movie, and my husband and I started to watch it, but we had to stop.  We knew what was going to happen, and we didn’t want to see it:  we would have known what was going to happen even if we hadn’t had advance knowledge of the story.  He and I know all about Africa.  Personally, I am too broken-hearted about what is happening there to watch it played out on a 42-inch plasma TV screen.

It’s not just happening in Rwanda.  We only hear about Ruanda more often now because this particular story has given that region a voice. 

The stories are endless, one more chilling than the next.  In South Africa, gangs of black youths who suspect an individual of not being “one of them” inflict horrible death.  And they do not reserve the torture for adults.  Children are not immune.  One favorite form of execution involves soaking a tire in gasoline, placing the tire around the neck of the bound victim, and setting it alight.  I repeat, this is done to children as well as adults.  It is done to blacks by blacks, and the rationale behind the brutality is obscure.  Sometimes it is tribal – amaZulu against any black not Zulu – sometimes there is a loosely formulated political agenda.  Sometimes it is simply a case of bloodlust.

This is no urban myth.  We have witnessed something like it personally.  On our last trip to South Africa …

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With regard to vote counting, Mexico has “a lot to teach the United States.”

The Wall Street Journal argues that Mexico is far ahead of the United States with regard to preventing voter fraud.  That's good news in close election such as the one that just occurred in Mexico.  As the Wall Street Journal reports: Mexico has developed an elaborate system of safeguards to…

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Do unto thyself what thou wouldn’t let others do

Would we harm our selves in ways that we would never let others harm us?  Yes, actually.  We do this all the time.  This common occurrence has long intrigued me.

About fifteen years ago, I was trying to lose weight.  A diet book I was reading presented a hypothetical, which I have embellished:

Imagine that a gang of strangers repeatedly broke into your house.  Each time they broke in, they brought a large basket of food with them.  Each time they broke in, they tracked you down and forced you to eat food that you didn’t need or want.  “Stop that!”  You would yell.  “I’m not hungry.  Go away!”  Nonetheless, the strangers forced you to eat food that you didn’t want.  They returned every few hours and repeated his attack on you.  Every time you tried to exercise, the strangers appeared and made you sit on the couch to watch television instead. 

Over the course of months, the excess food the strangers forced you to eat caused your body to bloat larger and larger.  Your clothing stopped fitting.  It became difficult to get in and out of your car.  Most of your acquaintances gossiped about how you had become “fat.”  

And it got even worse.  You became diabetic. You got depressed.  You constantly cursed those strangers for making you obese and unhealthy.  You bought special burglar-proof doors and windows (but they didn’t work).  Because this gang repeatedly violated your rights, you even considered buying a gun to defend yourself from

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