Mar 262008
 

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Fox Television is standing firm (sorry) in the face of a $91,000 fine thrust (yep!) upon it by the Federal Communications Commission for a single episode of its reality series, Married by America.

Despite Fox’s argument that the material in question was not statutorily indecent, an FCC analyst maintained:
Even with Fox’s editing, the episode includes scenes in which partygoers lick whipped cream from strippers’ bodies in a sexually suggestive manner. Another scene features a man on all fours in his underwear as two female strippers playfully spank him. Although the episode electronically obscures any nudity, the sexual nature of the scenes is inescapable, as the strippers attempt to lure partygoers into sexually compromising situations.
(taken from Variety via Defamer)

While that might sound like the plot-line of your typical mid-season replacement sitcom – “the guys run amuck!” – the amount of the fine was originally $1.2 million, levied to include all 169 stations, at $7,000 each, airing the 2003 episode. That amount has since been reduced by the FCC so that only the 13 stations that ostensibly received complaints would be fined, but even that degree of outcry is suspect. Through just a bit of sleuthing, journalist Jeff Jarvis uncovered that the number of complaints was not 159, but merely 23. And of those, all but two were identical form letters, boiling down to three original complaints out of millions viewing.

Instead of paying the reduced amount, Fox will file a request that the FCC completely reconsider the fine. In another case currently pending Supreme Court review, Fox also successfully sued the agency over a new restriction on “fleeting” expletives.

The world watches. (Or pretends otherwise, but secretly Tivos.)

Dec 012006
 

>Sure, it might be some seriously freaky roleplay, but we’re certainly not the first to speculate on Ann Coulter’s seemingly dominatrix-y demeanor. (See also Google re: Ann + Coulter + dominatrix.) But Ann’s nattering on and on reached a new level of sadistic tedium when she appeared on FOX News recently, as part of an “alarming new report,” Ivy Gone Wild, commenting on a wee bit of to-do in the news over Columbia University’s BDSM Club, Conversio Virium.

As writer/activist/sadomasochist Susan Wright observes:

I expected outrage from her, but all Ann does is giggle inanely and jab at “losers” who have to join a sex club to get sex. Her most priceless quote: “This has been well documented. Christians have more sex, better sex, more sexual satisfaction…you want a sex club, become an evangelical.”

Oh, really? Is that the Religious Right’s new rallying cry? Join us and get lots of sex? Seems to me the first thing the Evangelical Sex Club should do is stop telling everyone else that the way we want to have sex is wrong. Then let the orgy begin!

Um, Ann. Like we said? Anytime!

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