Now and again a great writer comes along and hits the nail on the head by vividly describing a particular problem or social ill. Well, Quin Hillyer, associate editor for the Washington Examiner and a senior editor of The American Spectator, has written a terrific article illustrating how bad broadcast TV programs have become: the level of indecency, vulgarity, and nastiness on TV just seems to grow more intense daily with no abatement in sight. Combined with a Vesuvius-like eruption of indignation, Hillyer gives a stunning description of one show he saw while waiting to catch a basketball game. Hillyer then launches the equivalent of an anti-p.c. nuclear bomb: a call for “all decent Americans to proudly demand censorship of the public television airwaves.”
His battlecry made me wonder whether “censorship” is even the correct word for taking adolescent trash – like the show he describes – off the air. Isn’t there some minimal qualitative level to which a piece of “art” must attain – or pretend to attain – before a grandiose term like “censorship” can be applied to said program’s eradication ?
Quin, excellent analysis with a terrific bonus rant thrown in. I salute you and hope the game was worth the wait.
Comments (2)
"...the level of indecency, vulgarity, and nastiness on TV..."
Is Hillyer talking about Bill O'Reilly (on his TV show, he called Neal Gabler a "rabid dog"), Pat Robertson (on The 700 Club, he called for a nuclear bomb to be placed inside the State Department), Rush Limbaugh (on his long-defunct TV show, he implied that a then-13-year-old Chelsea Clinton looked like a dog), or Chris Matthew's Hardball (in which conservative radio host Michael Graham said that Hillary Clinton's voice made him want to beat her with a tire iron. The supposedly "liberally-biased" Matthews did not object to Graham's words).
April 25, 2008 11:42 PM | Comment Permalink
"Isn’t there some minimal qualitative level to which a piece of “art” must attain – or pretend to attain – before a grandiose term like “censorship” can be applied to said program’s eradication ?"
Even if this is true, who would you trust to make the classification? That is a position of too much power to be entrusted to anyone.
April 29, 2008 5:34 PM | Comment Permalink