Waiving Private Ryan in the New Moral Climate

by Tony Norman
 Last night brought us all a bracing dose of the new morality. It's getting to the point where even jingoism and flag waving have to pass a sniff test on Veterans Day.

In a political climate awash in rhetoric about moral values, it was only a matter of time before the network broadcast of "Saving Private Ryan" would be deemed too risky for affiliates spooked by the threat that the Federal Communications Commission might fine their network if they showed the profanity-laced World War II movie.

When Janet Jackson had her infamous "wardrobe malfunction" at the Super Bowl, who would've thought that an exposed mammary gland had the capacity to offend more Americans than a military incursion into Iraq?

Last week, while watching the red spread across the electoral map like a geyser of blood erupting from a bullet wound, even the most despairing of us didn't think we'd be entering the regulatory dark ages of a second Bush term this quickly. The headlong gallop into aesthetic poverty and cowardice is amazing.


for the entire article visit: http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1112-29.htm