As long as the broadcast airways are "public property" you are going to have this conflict, especially when T&A is served up in a family primetime arena.

Look how fast Los Angeles county board of Supervisors have bowed to mere threats from the ACLU about a small cross on the county seal (which was representative of CA's mission past).

I'm not that happy that so many have substituted "legality" for "morality." It's as if things like "appropriateness" are from another age.

Thanks Darleen.

I am even more opposed to censorship of religion than I am censorship of sex. (The right to free exercise of religion is spelled out in the First Amendment, but the right to free exercise of sex is not.)

There's certainly a big difference between the broadcast airways and subscription-only programming, but this appears to be a distinction that those clamoring for censorship ignore. Here's a site (I don't know how typical it is) complaining about "South Park" and "The Sopranos":

http://www.moralityinmedia.org/index.htm?mediaIssues/rogues2002.htm.

Hmmm... not having seen the scene itself, but I just heard that the actress in the towel was wearing a crucifix.

Let me rhetorically ask

Wassup w'that?

The promotional shot was so shocking that it has been played non-stop on the news and the cable channels since it originally aired. Eric, thanks for your kind remarks below.

Here's something interesting... the flipside "gang of three"...

A school district's long-standing policy banning Christmas songs with religious references is under scrutiny after officials clarified that it includes the prohibition of the performance of instrumental numbers without lyrics. ...

Superintendent Peter P. Horoschak explained the brass ensemble's Christmas carols have slipped under the radar since the policy was adopted in the 1990s. A few have complained about it, he said, and this year the district is trying to be proactive.

Stuff like this makes me want to privatize the public airways AND the schools.

argh

(shamelessly, I rant about it here)

666!!! 666666!!!!!! Hmmm.... I prefer: 69

333. 4444. I love the number 3. I love the number 4 even more. 3+4=7 I also love the numbers 8, 12, and 16. I love these pairs: 1 and 0. 2 and 5. 3 and 4. 6 and 9. 7 and 8.

But, most of all I love the look of the number 38.

Eric Scheie wrote:
"It's not a silly question. The enemies who attacked us on September 11 were at least as concerned about sex as they were about things like support for Israel. And even while we're at war, there's talk of cracking down on sex as an appeasement strategy.

(In debating this topic, might it behoove us to take into consideration that we are fighting a war against people who object to our sexual freedom?)"

That is absolutely true. That is why I say, and why I have been saying for the last two years, that the Enemy within is the same as the Enemy without. In the face of either, appeasement will destroy us. We are at War and we must fight to _WIN_. Nothing less will do. This is a spiritual War every bit as much as it is a military War.

"ignorant and stupid red state moral conservatives"

1) They, the Enemy, are not ignorant nor stupid. They know what the real issues are, and they know exactly what they are doing.
2) This is an issue of ideology, not merely of geography.
3) They are not conservatives but radicals. And I refuse to surrender morality, values, religion, to the Enemy.

"Republican religious police", "position the Democratic Party as the voice of sanity and reason."

This is not an issue of political parties, Republicans vs. Democrats. It is a spiritual War between fundamentally antagonistic philosophies and religions. Sex, in its very essence, is _sanctity_ and _passion_, and therefore cannot be defended with mere "sanity and reason".

"It is an article of faith among liberals (and among many libertarians) that moral conservatives are the most stupid people in public life, and have nothing better to do than monitor the networks for the slightest sign of indecency."

It is an article of faith among Marxists, New Deal liberals, and many libertarians, that the "real" issues are economic. The so-called "moral conservatives" (totalitarian radicals) know better. So do I, from an opposite quadrant of a spectrum. The real issues are precisely the spiritual issues, the religious issues, the ultimate origin, meaning, value, and destiny of the self, and, therefore, of sex as the deepest and highest expression of the self.

"The degree and kind of one's sexuality reaches up into the very pinnacle of one's spirit."
-Friedrich Nietzsche, "The Joyful Wisdom"

No truer words were ever written.

"I am even more opposed to censorship of religion than I am censorship of sex. (The right to free exercise of religion is spelled out in the First Amendment, but the right to free exercise of sex is not.)"

I am equally opposed to censorship either of religion or of sex, and the two are one and the same thing.

"At the heart of liberty is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life."
-Justice Anthony Kennedy, Lawrence and Garner vs. Texas (June 26, 2003)

Darleen asked:
"Hmmm... not having seen the scene itself, but I just heard that the actress in the towel was wearing a crucifix.

Let me rhetorically ask

Wassup w'that?"

Sex, by its nature, by its very nature, must be either a desecration or a consecration. It cannot be neutral.

The spectrumology of it all, as I see it, is this:

In terms of a 3-fold spectrumology: A profound philosopher, Dr. Kelly Ross (Web site: Friesian.com), noted that, from a religious point of view, all things are divided into: 1) the merely secular, worldly, mundane, everyday, or 2) the profane, defiling, desecrating, Devilish, or 3) the sacred, consecrated, consecrating, holy, Divine.

Directly tying into this, that other profound philosopher, Dr. Murray S, Davis (book: "Smut: Erotic Reality/Obscene Ideology"), shows that there are fundamentally 3 opposing sexual ideologies, divided by how they approach the gap between "everyday reality" and "erotic reality":
1) the "Naturalists", who blur the distinction as much as possible, who see sex as merely secular, worldly, mundane, everyday, ordinary, trivial, a joke.
2) the "Jehovanists", who see sex as profane, defiling, desecrating, corrupting, "dirty", perverted, and perverting, and who seek to suppress it as much as possible, or to subordinate it to the social (and in their view, cosmic) order of everyday reality.
3) the "Gnostics", who see sex as sacred, consecrated, consecrating, holy, Divine, and who seek to exalt it over against mere everyday reality.
There are many variations and permutations of these three primary ideologies, but that is the basic conflict.

In terms of a 4-fold spectrumology: Ayn Rand once noted that the Marxist/New Deal "liberals" see economics as the most important realm, which they seek to control, and ideas, including or especially ideas about sex, as unimportant, a mere game, which they leave free. Conversely, the "social conservatives" see ideas, especially religious ideas and ideas about sex, as the most important realm, which they seek to control, and economics as less important, and which they leave free.

Therefore, from that observation, I therefore see a spectrum with 2 dimensions:
1) Whether it is the economic, the material, or the spiritual, the religious, the sexual, the realm of ideas, which is the most important,
2) Whether that which is the most important must be controlled, censored, regulated, prohibited by society or the state, or must be left free and in the hands of the individual.

Thus, 4 quadrants:
1) the Marxists and New Deal or modern, Left, liberals, who see economics, particularly the distribution of wealth, as the most important, and which they believe must be controlled, regulated, and redistributed, equalized, by the state for the good of society.
2) the classical liberals or libertarians, who see economics, particularly the production of wealth, as the most important, and which they believe must be left free, in the hands of individuals or associations of individuals, for the good both of those individuals and of society.
3) the "social conservatives" or spiritual collectivists, who see ideas, religion, morality, sex, as the most important, and which they believe must be controlled, censored, regulated, and prohibited, both by church and state for the good or protection of society.
4) the spiritual individualists who see religion, sex, values, ideas, ideals, morality, as the most important, and which they believe must be left free and in the hands of the individual for the good, the consecration, of that individual and of that other individual man or woman whom he or she most values.

That is how I see the spectrum essentially. Once again, there are various variations and permutations within this basic spectrum, but those are the basic parameters.

Whoa, Steven!

I'm going to further mull over what you've written, but I'd like to add that my rhetorical question "wassup" was more to alert, again, how the MSM views religion. That the religious are really nothing more than hypocrites because here is a married woman wearing nothing more than a towel and a cross ready to commit adultery.

:::sigh:::

The only "non-hypocrites" out there are the ones that proudly say they don't believe in morals and standards ... which is why such things as "appropriateness" is something these people either have a real blind spot about or just dismiss out of hand as "old fashioned."

In terms of a 4-fold spectrumology: 4nication.

Fine. Ya'll want a slut world? Fine.

Give me my money back. I don't care if it works out to 1/2 of one cent - I want my money back.

Out of simple courtesy, taxpayer supported airwaves should cater to general standards of basic decency. If you can't do that little tiny bit - give me money back, vile thieves.

Courtesty, respect and dignity are NOT bad words.

Eric & Steven, I love you like brothers but on this issue you're all wrong, short-sighted, and other bad things, too.

I can't make my point well without being very rude, hateful and obscene - which is what I find the ABC broadcast to be (& don't even get me started on Timberlake/Jackson).

Just consider yourselves having been treated in a vile, hateful, rude and obscene manner - on YOUR tax dollar no less - and see how you like it.

In a just and perfect world, all people who think such broadcasts are okay would at least have the courtesy to send me vast sums of money to make up for the taxpayer robbery.

It's especially egregious in a sports broadcast. Sports are such an integral part of American life - and yet I'm coming to believe that anyone who watches professional sports is sadly deficient in personal morality and in long-term concern for their country and society.

Cable is a different matter, though.

It's past time for the feds to put the airwaves up for sale.

Darleen:

Good point. Thank you. Yes, the mass media, to the degree that they lean "Naturalist", treat religion as a joke just as they treat sex as a joke. That the religious are all hypocrites is taken as a given, even as they ignore their own hypocrisy.

Persnickety:

Thank you, and good points also. I do support time, place, and manner (as opposed to content) restrictions on free speech, which the courts have always found consistent with the First Amendment. E.g., you can broadcast Communist propaganda, but not from a sound-truck in a residential neighborhood in the middle of the night. And certain bookstores and theaters are rightly restricted to adults only. Parents have a right to decide what their children can see.

I myself am very conservative as far as children are concerned. I'm glad that I didn't know sex even existed when I was a little boy. Precisely because sex is a deep and high expression of one's selfhood, one has to have developed a high degree of selfhood in order to really understand and experience sexuality. It's not something to be thrust on children.

I need to elucidate a bit more on those spectra, the slopes of the triangle, the sides of the square.

On that first spectrum I described:
A "Naturalistic-style Jehovanist" would suppress sex as much as possible while denying its significance.
A Naturalistic-style Gnostic" (wicked Wanda and her women [Wendy, Cindy, Sandy, Candy, Brandy, Brenda, Glenda, Stella, Hannah...]) would free sex from all restrictions, promote open and explicit pornography, glorify promiscuity and adultery.
A "Jehovanistic-style Gnostic" (holy Dawn and her holy wife Norma) would strive to keep sex sacred, mysterious, taboo, want pornography or erotica to be suggestive rather than explicit, glorify monogamy and holy marriage as total commitment.

On that second spectrum I described:
Between the first and the second quadrants emphasizing economics would be purely pragmatic, range-of-the-moment businessmen who like economic freedom but also want government favors.
Between the third and the fourth quadrants emphasizing moral values would be religious conservatives torn by conflicting premises or seeking a balance between freedom and authority in the realm of morals and faith.
Between the first and the third quadrants advocating collective controls would be the consistent totalitarians, Nazis, Stalinists, Maoists, the Politically Correct, for total control over everything.
Between the second and the fourth quadrants upholding individual freedom would be Ayn Rand, integrating the free economy with the free mind and stressing the importance of ideas and values.