China’s Propaganda Department (yes they still have one, with immense arbitrary powers) has the most sophisticated internet filter in all the world.  And they justify it with a logical fallacy of distraction:
their stated concern is to cleanse the internet of “unhealthy information”, including pornography.  However, the Chinese Communist Party ALSO consider the BBC news website, and any honest histories of the Tienanmen Square massacre, to be “unhealthy information.”

Do we really want to delegate similar arbitrary powers to any censors in our own country?  Americans too, just like the Chinese Communists, could easily appeal to good purposes such as censoring pornography, while censoring information which is essential for the health of the body politic under the same umbrella.

“If truly the public is sick and tired of garbage, or if the public is sick and tired of the way our culture has been destroyed by our toleration of sick and indecent humor, of evil films, of attacks on religion and on and on then we are into a different era.”

We most certainly are entering a different era for broadcasters. It’s called Chapter 11.

According to the CNN website:

NEW YORK (AP)—Maybe they’re outside in the garden. They could be playing softball. Or perhaps they’re just plain bored.

In TV’s worst spring in recent memory, a startling number of Americans drifted away from television the past two months: More than 2.5 million fewer people were watching ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox than at the same time last year, statistics show.

Everyone has a theory to explain the plummeting ratings: early Daylight Savings Time, more reruns, bad shows, more shows being recorded or downloaded or streamed.

Source: Where have all the viewers gone?

They lost 2.5 million viewers in two months AND they don’t know why!? It doesn’t take a financial genius to know where they’re heading..

Bye bye!

----
Bob’s Riddle: All anti-white racists agree that it’s ok for whites to become minorities in their own countries. All anti-white racists also agree that a Japanese person who wants to become a minority in his own country is either a traitor or clinically insane. Therefore, what is an anti-white racist? Answer

The problem with the 7 deadly sins is that you can’t stop them.

I think it was Yogi Berra who said “No body goes there anymore, it’s too crowded”.  O’Donnel and Imus had ratings, and lived and died on them.

Same with all the fast food places around and the obesity pandemic (and the few exercise places).  What is your body mass index?

And everyone loves a good war.  Let the media go in and whip up americans into a frenzy so we’ve killed millions of Iraqis with sanctions before our invasion, and probably a million with occupation.

Lust, Glutonny, Sloth, Wrath…

Oh, and you have to have the new TV, your portfilo must grow - either stocks or real-estate.

And you need to feel good about yourself no matter how objectively dysfunctional or evil the results are.

I’ve all but turned off TV (except for EWTN, news, and an occasional sci-fi bit), I listen to Catholic radio and select podcasts.  And I’m battling the other sins daily too.  But it has to start with humility which has been pointed out in an earlier article here.

Dear Sir,

A rather odd column for Taki’s Top Drawer, which I thought

The solution to both the TV and Radio
“dilemma,” (as I see it) is to simply
provide the public with MORE choice.
Why are both the television and radio
broadcasting bands so limited? Who is
restricting its expansion? This is
the success of the internet, vitrually
limitless choice. Why are there only
4-5 major broadcasting companies?
Why can’t we have 20 or 30 on our public
airwaves?
(rhetorical questions...all.)

There is too a filter for the internet.  Go to
http://www.k9webprotection.com/ and download it to
your PC.  It is not only the best internet filter
I have ever seen, but you can tailor it to your
specific needs; it blocks from any browser or
searchbar the user chooses; it responds quickly to
users’ own ratings suggestions for every website;
you can block all “unrated” sites (which includes
pornographic websites that do not rate themselves)
until k9 can get around to rating them; and finally,
IT’S FREE. We don’t need the nanny state, we don’t
need anti-porn congressional hearings, we don’t need
SWAT teams, and we don’t need to be taxed.

We need the free market.  We’ve got the free market
with k9.

“The solution to both the TV and Radio “dilemma,”
(as I see it) is to simply provide the public with
MORE choice.”

Amen, Mr. Blalock!  Howard Stern, Rosie O-Donnell, and
Don Imus never bothered me.  And why?  Because I don’t
listen.  No one forces me.  My own solution was to
get rid of the TV.  We don’t need ANY government
solutions for offensive content.  We need our choices.

Imus was often offensive, would go on ad naseum about his
pet topics, and I’m sure could be personally very rude.
He also had the best roster of guests this side of
Charlie Rose, and usually interviewed them in a very
effective understated manner.  And just perhaps it should be
noted that he was the driving force behind raising
$10,000,000 for the Fallen Heroes Fund, and dedicated large
amounts of his own time and money to working with
children with cancer.  In short, he was a strange mixture
of good and bad, like most of us.  Personally, I’ll take
his contributions to society over 99.9% of generally
humorless morality police.

I agree this is a weird column.  is this guy offended by “the canterbury tales”? if you dont like it turn the channel.  I love howard Stern.

You may be barking at the wrong tree.  The filth in mass media is a symptom, not a cause. Producers put out this stuff, because they have to get an audience to get money from advertisers, and by trial and error they have learned that filth and insults get people to tune in.

Don’t despair, however.  Twice in its history Europe has grown more moral.  The first time was in the late medieval period.  (See last two chapters of Peter Burke, “Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe.") The second time was in the late eighteenth century, when the remarkably dissolute Englishmen of the enlightenment turned into Victorians.  There was a period around 1800, when older members of the House of Lords had to be careful with their language, so they would not shock the strict moral sensibilities of the younger lords.

The most intriguing aspect of this movement toward morality is that it happened in the top elite, i.e., in people who could not be compelled.  These people appear to have concluded that there was something wrong with the dissolutenes, and as a result they adopted a strict, quite ascetical, religion-based morality.  This change was totally voluntary.  The slide toward decadence is by no means a one-way street.

When the French monarchy in the eighteenth century sought to silence Voltaire for his advocacy of both freedeom of speech and freedom of religion it did not go after him directly for these liberal beliefs. Rather it used the cover of protecting public morals from Voltiare’s susposedly obscene plays and essays.

In this way the monarchy sought to appeal to the prejudices of the “boob-ocracy” as a way to silence such a formidable opponent. 

I would rather have absolutely no censorship whatsoever if this meant in turn that we would retain our all important right to all important political free speech.

I have never been able to understand the concern that the mass media is pumping moral sewage into our minds.  There is a very simple way to avoid this.  Do not listen to the cretins, and do not patronize the advertisers behind this swill.  I have not seen a movie in years.  I have yet to notice any negative effects.  I very seldom watch television.  When I was staying at a B&B;some years back, I had cable and a small television.  After spending some time trying to find something worthwhile to watch, I discovered EWTN.  Now, happily back in my own house, the only television in my quarters is a 5 inch set, that is not hooked up and sits on the floor gathering dust.  My parents watch what little is available via rabbit ears, which is golf, Jeopardy and NASCAR.  We have discussed getting cable and decided not to do so.  Yet I have friends who must be wired into this garbage 24/7.  They are the worse for it.  I enjoy hobbies, friends, family, reading and surfing the internet.  I never had any withdrawal symptoms for leaving the MSM.  Consequently, I do not understand the efforts like this posting which gets all bent out of shape over the lack of morals in the entertainment media.  It is not necessary.  If enough other people ignored it, it would go away.  What Mr. Weyrich ought to be discussing is that the “enlightenment” always seeks the lowest common denominator.  Capitalism, unchecked by Christian morality soon aims at the gutter and drags its customers into less than moral thoughts and actions because it is based on avarice as its lowest common denominator.  But, without a market for swill, things change for the better.  If radio, satellite, television and movies are disgusting, shut the damned things off and go read a good book.  If you do so, you are much better off.  If enough people did so, the problem would solve itself

Mr Blalock wrote:

“The solution to both the TV and Radio
“dilemma,” (as I see it) is to simply
provide the public with MORE choice.”

No.  That doesn’t solve any problem; it just reasserts the problem, UNLESS one believes, as the most crude, most superstitious kinds of nominal “Libertarians” do, that Humans tend to make “rational” choices and that more liberty inevitably leads to better quality and better choices.  But no, that’s just not how Humans tend to behave.  If there is any general rule of Human behaviour, it’s a rule of willful stupidity and wilfully evil choices.  (And Christ BROKE that “rule” of fallen Human nature, or so Christians believe, except for the heretics among us like the neocons and free-market-fundamentalists.)

For thousands of years, History has proved - almost like a scientific law - that Humans tend to abuse their liberties more often than they use liberty for good purposes.  Again, Christ and what he personified is an EXTRAordinary EXCEPTION to that dreadful old “rule” of Willful Human Stupidity. 
Even the most saintly of Humans cannot be relied upon to behave as truthfully, or even as practically and sensibly, as Christ did.  Hell, even my hero, Pope John Paul the Great, was wilfully stupid about some things, and he was at the highest end of the intellectual AND moral bell curve.  If we can’t even trust geniuses and borderline Saints like Pope John Paul II always to make the right choices, then how the HELL can we trust the masses to do so?

Thus, by positing more “choices” for the masses, we’re not solving the essential problem of Human Nature.  We’re merely reasserting it.

I think the main point of Mr Weyrich’s article, was to provoke us to reconsider the complexities of this problem.  On the one hand, Humans do need SOME kind of moral and even intellectual authority.  On the other hand, it would be a mistake to delegate too much intellectual authority (or ANY moral authority) to any temporal government.

There is no easy answer to this problem, but the best clue we have is from Jesus who said, “My Kingdom is not of this world.” Render to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, but be very wary of rendering
any moral authority AT ALL to Caesar.

Mr.Ball, I think you are a prisoner of your
own hair-doo.
And boy-o-boy are you at the wrong blog!
I think you should stick with NRO and Freepers.

Mr Blalock,

I didn’t attack you personally.  I disagreed with you.  It’s bad form to insult the host OR any of the host’s guests
unless they insult you first or otherwise step way out of line.

You got a beef with me, take it up with the managing editor, who - as a more traditional Catholic than I am - is not likely to object to my arguing that the essential Human condition of original sin poses a problem with cannot simply be solved by “choices”.  Adam and Eve’s choice in the Garden was where all these problems began, and multiplying choices will never solve the problem of original sin.