Talk about the golden ass ...
Hard to believe - or maybe not, given Congress and the FCC's increasing trampling of our First Amendment - but now the FCC is proposing to fine ABC 1.4 million dollars for repeatedly showing a woman's "nude buttocks" on its NYPD Blue police-drama back in 2003.
All right, perhaps "psycho" is not the right word. "Treasonous" would be more like it, because our First Amendment clearly says "Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech," and, last time I checked, NYPD Blue was not silent television (and, even if it was, pictures are a kind of communication or "speech").
The FCC and Congress have been growing ever bolder in their flouting of the First Amendment since the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident of a few years ago (come to think of it, we're approaching its anniversary). I gave a keynote address about this at Fordham University in 2005 - here's a transcript - and am currently writing a book about it. (I'll also be giving another keynote address about this problem on April 30, at St. Peter's College in Jersey City - I'll post an announcement with details closer to the event.)
About the only possible remedy on the horizon is a new President who will (a) fire as many of the current batch of FCC commissioners as the law allows, and replace them with people who can read and understand the Constitution and (b) begin to appoint US Supreme Court justices who will similarly respect and enforce the supreme law of the land.
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