Moral Values - A Court Case

I've long believed that you can't legislate moral values - your best bet to gain some control in creating a moral society is to provide your populace with education and information. I was pissed a few years ago when CBS was fined so heavily for broadcasting the exposure of Janet Jackson's breast during the halftime of the Super Bowl because I felt that it would have an incredible dampening effect on all broadcast TV shows.

Here again, I'm not so sure that it's fair to ask the broadcast networks to compete with cable TV shows when the networks are relegated to only broadcasting shows suitable for 5-year-old children. It is up to families to monitor what the kids watch, it's not up to the networks to censor what adults watch. As a nation, we're simply too uptight.

Now this from the Los Angeles Times...

Janet Jackson's brief, provocative dance during the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show lasted long enough to trigger more than half a million formal complaints to regulators, tougher indecency rules, dramatically higher maximum fines and video delays on many live programs.

But an appeals court panel ruled Monday that the flash of Jackson's right breast for 9/16ths of a second was too quick to warrant the $550,000 fine levied by the Federal Communications Commission against CBS Corp. for airing it.

I hope the appeal holds up.