FCC Chairman Martin? It's Time for You to Resign

FCC CHAIRMAN MARTIN? IT'S TIME FOR YOU TO RESIGN
[SOURCE: AdAge, AUTHOR: Simon Dumenco]
[Commentary] What's driving the FCC's censorious crusade? An extreme, faith-based view of governing that's being championed by underqualified FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, who got this job thanks to a resume that includes serving on Bush's 2000 Florida recount team and working for Monica Lewinsky fetishist Ken Starr. Martin has pumped up his case for a morals crisis in American broadcasting by allowing the use of fraudulent complaints to shape the FCC's great crusade. We're talking about just another form of un-American ballot-box stuffing: quasi-automated complaint e-mails about "indecency" that are invariably generated by a handful of religious organizations that whip their members into click-and-send frenzies, usually with few of the members ever having witnessed any (supposed) broadcast offense. Liberals and conservatives alike should be panicking about this, because the FCC absolutely shouldn't be beholden to any one minority group, let alone a religious lobby that's manufacturing the appearance of mass outrage. The FCC should be striving to reflect the views of the majority of Americans; the commissioners should not be held hostage by one hyperactive, megaphone-wielding group looking to impose its point of view on the rest of us. Like Donald Rumsfeld before him, Kevin Martin has stubbornly and willfully relied on faulty intelligence that does not reflect reality outside of a certain hermetically sealed bubble. Martin and his ultra-conservative religious allies would have us believe that they've found the moral equivalent of WMDs on our airwaves: an epidemic of foulness that necessitates the FCC's invasion of American living rooms to protect us from broadcast evildoers. But the average American simply does not want the government deciding what adults can and cannot watch -- and certainly doesn't want censorious rules to extend to pay-cable networks (such as HBO), as Martin hopes to do. All TV can't, and shouldn't, be reduced to the level of "Blue's Clues" (or "The 700 Club," for that matter).
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