Parents Television Council makes good point about cable choice and racist jokes

[alp227]

Last night on my flight home to California, I was watching the Comedy Central roast of David Hasselhoff. The JetBlue flight I was on had some DirecTV and XM channels, so I spent most of the flight flipping between the Giants vs. Jets Monday night game, some MTV shows, and the roast since I don't have cable at home.

And as I always expect, the Parents Television Council released a statement denouncing the roast and calling for Congress to pass legislation allowing for cable channel choice. But this year, it wasn't just merely the cursing and sexual vulgarity and taboo topics that outraged America's moral guardians there.

Americans are fortunate – indeed we are blessed – to have a constitutionally-guaranteed right of free speech. And as offensive as “comedy” may be to some, we have a right in this country to speak it. Sadly the cable television industry has concocted a scheme whereby those who are most shocked, offended or harmed by such “humor” are forced to subsidize it.

In order to watch a powerful History Channel presentation about the horrors of slavery, cable subscribers were forced to underwrite jokes about African Americans, slave ships and picking cotton.

In order to watch a cable news report about religious struggles in the Middle East, cable subscribers were forced to underwrite jokes about Jews wanting to jump into an oven at Auschwitz.

Comedy Central, and its corporate parent Viacom, could offer such a program on a premium or pay-per-view basis. But with their anti-consumer, anti-competitive market leverage, they are able to bundle Comedy Central with their other owned networks, prohibiting their offended customers from opting out of paying for such a flagrant diatribe.

While I detest the PTC's astroturfing of FCC complaints and generally overly prudish attitudes towards sex and language, I think that PTC president Tim Winter (who's actually a liberal Democrat, before anyone decides he's a conservative Republican just because of his opinion about the Roast) is spot on with his History Channel/news analogy.

If you subscribe to cable or satellite as it is now, your subscription dollars are also supporting the lying, hateful, right-wing propaganda arm known as the Fox News Channel, not just the raunchy leftist anti-moral shows on Comedy Central, FX, and MTV that PTC finds to be causing the end of the world. Also, do realise that the ABC Family Channel shows The 700 Club because of a contract by Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, which founded the network as CBN Satellite and changed it to several different names during the 80s and 90s. So if you wanted to catch reruns of Boy Meets World or Full House on ABC Family or want to check out the channel's original programs (like Secret Life of the American Teenager) you also pay for the channel to broadcast archaic religious propaganda (and controversial comments like Haiti deserved the earthquake).

While this is the rare time I agree with the PTC, shouldn't the PTC be hammering Fox News too if it's so concerned about racist jokes? Because I think that Glenn Beck's non-stop Nazi analogies (including comparing Obama admin to the Nazi regime and comparing Fox News to the Jews during Holocaust) are far far worse than some late-night roast jokes, right? Fact is...Fox News's propaganda shows are broadcast when impressionable children are in the audience and likely to swallow up the message of "Obama is a socialist pinko Nazi who's plotting to destroy America" repeatedly marketed by Beck, Hannity, and the goon squad. Those programs don't even have Parental Guidelines ratings. In contrast, the Comedy Central roasts are shown only after the 10/9c "watershed" slot and have TV-MA ratings. So which media outlet is poisoning children's minds more likely? (Oh yeah, aren't South Park and The Daily Show even more intellectual and rational than anything you'll see on Fox News???)

And finally, are topics like slavery, murder, and genocide ever taboo in comedy, or should comedians just approach those topics with extreme discretion? (Last year, the PTC also slammed the Joan Rivers roast for having jokes allegedly about child molestation.) I think that the PTC is taking the former side that any joke about sensitive topics are offensive. But I bet the same moral conservatives outraged at Comedy Central roast jokes then turn on the radio to Rush Limbaugh and find no issue with his crude, classless, racist substandard attempts at humor. One joke in the Hasselhoff roast by Lisa Lampanelli (spelling?) said that if Hasselhoff's music was played in Auschwitz the Jews would be running to the ovens. This blog has some more examples of offensive roast jokes including some more that invoked the Holocaust, black culture, and even the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. I bet a lot of you here oppose Rush Limbaugh's and Michael Savage's loose trash talk about minorities and easily said Nazi analogies. So do you find Comedy Central roast jokes near the same severity, or are those jokes in a completely different context?

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

1. "Parents Television Council makes a good point..."

stopped reading right there.

[alp227]

2. Maybe you should read further.

The reason I said "makes a good point" was that I personally agreed with the president's statement. Maybe if you'd open your mind a little crack more then you'll get what I was wanting to discuss. Your "enough said" maybe reflects more on you than on the PTC's statement.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

3. Maybe the PTC should eat shit and die.

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16. +100 nt

[madinmaryland]

4. Wow, just Wow. The "Comedy Channel" is comedy, and you are allowing

it to be compared to the Fox Noise Channel, that claims to be a new outlet?

:wow:

[alp227]

11. I'm talking cable TV in general, not comparing the two.

Although Comedy Central and Fox News are in two diff. categories both are basic cable channels, and if you subscribe to Dish or Comcast or Time Warner or whichever local beyond-antenna service have you, you're pretty much guaranteed to have to pay for Fox News if you want to watch Comedy Central or FX or TNT. The issue here regards cable choice and as a rationale acceptable language.

[madinmaryland]

14. I'm sorry, but I see absolutely no comparison between the two.

Fox "News" is peddling something that they are telling everyone is true. They want you to believe what they say. I find there crap far more insidious than Eric Cartman farting.

Now if you want to talk about acceptable language, that is a completely different subject. Just check out any comedy show on any network and they are there to provide comedy (NOT NEWS).

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. You know it's been my policy NOT to watch

the roast for YEARS. The older ones were good. The new iteration of them... not so much.

But I will also say this. It is cable... and what else do we want to make pay per view? The Daily Show? Yes I can see people demanding that.

[sandnsea]

6. PTC = L. Brent Bozell

They've got nothing useful to contribute to anything.

I resent my comedy underwriting the right wing revisionist "History" Channel.

[Orrex]

7. I think that all religious channels should be exclusively pay-per-view

Beyond that, I'd like to speak to your final point:

I bet a lot of you here oppose Rush Limbaugh's and Michael Savage's loose trash talk about minorities and easily said Nazi analogies. So do you find Comedy Central roast jokes near the same severity, or are those jokes in a completely different context?

The answer, obviously, is that Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage et al are passing themselves off as gatekeepers of knowledge and crusaders for moral righteousness. And they get 15 (or so) hours per week of prime air time to spread their bigotry, disinformation, and general hatred. As far as I'm aware, these programs do not offer a warning about offensive language or mature themes.

Lisa Lampanelli, Gilbert Gottfried et al are comedians performing sharp-edged comedy for comedians on Comedy Central. The roast is an occasional one-hour event in a late-night slot preceded by a content-warning. In addition, the content-warning is aired after most commercial breaks, so that the innocent and delicate viewers need not be offended by coarse language.


Really, there's no comparison at all, unless Conservatives are willing to admit that their cherished demagogues are nothing more than braying comedians. But to make that claim, they'd first have to demonstrate that Limbaugh and company are funny, which they are not.


I'm much more deeply offended by the profusion of sports channels and God-networks in my cable package. Why must I be forced to subsidize this idiotic programming just so that I can have a chance to hear George Takei making bleeped-out jokes about vaginas?

[Orrex]

8. Whoops! So nice, I had to post it twice.

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9. Sorry, I'm for freedom of speech. Where are the offensive jokes at issue anyway?

Not in your post that I can see. Not in the link to the group that would decide what is "acceptable." What exactly is in question here?

[alp227]

13. In case you couldn't find the link

Again, this blog has some of the jokes that probably inspired the PTC's press release

http://jumblejack.com/most-offensive-jokes-from-the-comedy-central-roast-of-david-hasselhoff-photos-national-howard-stern/

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15. Thanks. And please, find something more worthwhile to be outraged about. nt

[notadmblnd]

10. I think it's totally different. The jokes were not in reference to those groups

The jokes were in reference to David Hasselhoff.

[fishwax]

12. I prefer bundled pricing to a la carte pricing

Because I think if a la carte pricing would ultimately not reduce the cost of cable and would likely limit the number of channels that are available.

That's not to say I don't wish there weren't more options in terms of how channels are bundled, but ultimately I don't agree with the PTC about that (or much of anything else, really).