A 'War' of Words

In June, when a federal court tossed out the FCC's attempt to label ''fleeting expletives'' on live shows (e.g., ''Holy s---, I can't believe I won this award!'') as indecent, Martin issued a tantrum of a statement in tired and familiar language. The judges who overruled him — or, as he pointedly put it, ''the New York court'' — were ''divorced from reality''; he added that unless the FCC was allowed to rule with a firmer hand, ''Hollywood will be able to say anything they want.'' You know how the rest of this goes, right? ''New York'' and ''Hollywood'' are on the side of unfettered evil; on the other side is, naturally, ''America.'' Choose your team carefully.

A few years ago, this might have played better with its intended constituency. But today, a new divide is emerging that doesn't fall so naturally along partisan lines. There are people who want to childproof all of mass culture. Then there is a group of adults who don't want their entertainment options, at home or anywhere else, curtailed because somebody else's child might be watching something that his parents might not want him to see. It's ''Think about the children!'' versus ''You made 'em, you raise 'em'' — and that's not a red-state/blue-state issue.

It's shocking, in 2007, to hear the chairman of a federal commission complain that Hollywood can ''say anything they want,'' and not just because of the indecent grammar. Aside from its carefree ignorance of the First Amendment, Martin's statement underscores just how bewildering and, in a way, antiquated the notion of the airwaves as a public entity has become, because of course ''Hollywood'' can say whatever it wants — anywhere except on network TV. The government has no control over what's released in movie theaters or on DVD, what arrives in books or on CDs, or what's piped into homes or phones via iTunes or YouTube or MySpace — and I imagine that most Americans, Republican and Democrat, don't want a cultural commissar of any kind making entertainment decisions for them or their families. Perhaps it's time to ask why TV should be treated any differently — why, in fact, the government has any business regulating it at all. Many people would welcome a real discussion about how the television industry can serve both the legitimate needs of parents (who themselves have widely varying viewpoints about what's appropriate for their kids) and the rights of entertainment consumers. But there has to be a better way to initiate that conversation than opportunistic fines for rough language imposed by indecency police. Meanwhile, it wouldn't hurt if PBS rediscovered its spine and decided to stand behind The War — every single word of it — even if that means another trip to court.

You Might Also Like

• Movie Review The War (1994) | Lisa Schwarzbaum
• Movie News Elijah Wood grows up (1994) | Ty Burr
• The Soap Box KEVIN COSTNER'S DARK 'DAYS' | Alan Carter
• News Summary Robert Iler pleads guilty to mugging charge | Gary Susman