When is enough enough?

So, on American Idol last night Simon flipped off Paula Abdul as she was contesting his opinions on a contestant - this is the 2nd time this year that I've seen him give the camera the bird.

[Broken External Image]:http://www.drudgereport.com/simon.jpg[Broken External Image]:http://www.drudgereport.com/simon1.jpg
http://www.drudgereport.com/ai.htm

Now, this is my question - when is enough enough? No, not enough of this 'atrocious vulgarity' but enough of this policing of the airwaves and the belief that the FCC needs to protect us from our own humanity. I don't see the police pulling someone over for the daily middle finger I see while driving around, and I don't need someone to sit there and censor what is "reality tv".

Sometime someone at the FCC and the heads of the big networks are going to start to wonder why in the hell HBO's and Showtime's original series do so well and make those companies so much money and attract so much acclaim - it's because it's more like REAL LIFE people! Dramatic real life, maybe, but more real than what we are allowed to see on AI, the nightly sitcoms, etc.

I watched Deadwood last night, HBO's new western original series, and really enjoyed it. It has a curse word almost every other word, but when you do some reading about the show you realize that the writer/director put in over a year's worth of research before starting to film. He found that the way that western's are depicted are not always the way they were. This is the Wild West, where murder, stealing, gambling, prostitution and drugs were all a part of life - what makes you think that cussing wasn't a part of it? Why wouldn't Calamity Jane use c*** in her vocabulary?

Another example is me sitting down to watch "The Office", the original series on BBC. There is quite a bit of language that we in America would never dare allow uttered on an American show. Yet this show won the US's Emmy for best Comedy - it's a best selling DVD set. And still we Americans think that it is brash comedy and not the kind of filth we need to be showing on our airwaves?

This country has an obssession with violence, how wrong it is to be showing our youngsters, etc - yet it is in every Hollywood summer blockbuster. And then when The Passion came out there's lines of church groups outside of theaters with small children. This is a movie that has some of the most grotesque images and violence that has ever made it to screen, but because this is a story about Jesus then every child should see it and it's ok. But put that same violence in a movie about WWII and God Forbid, here comes the cavalry coming for ya!

To me the biggest problem with TV today is that it is getting to be so crappy because they aren't showing what people want to see, and are policing people from seeing what it is that they are actually interested in. Show whatever the hell it is you want to show on TV at anytime - I'll decide for myself what it is that I will and will not allow myself to watch.

Ok, done ranting - now discuss