Censorship or Regulation?
I'll be among the first to decry censorship,
and I think I understand the whole thing pretty well. At the same time, I'm neither Old Left, the sort who can't see past their principles, nor New Right, who don't seem to have any. I think the people who put the Constitution together got a lot of things right, and one of them is that the State has a duty to regulate commerce. And let's face it, artistic freedom so often boils down to nothing more than license to produce outrageous movies etc. for purely commercial reasons. Of course any attempt to regulate this swill will be met by fascists screaming about democracy.

I count myself among the membership of the Society for the Eradication of Television (SET); I do not have a TV in the house that is capable of picking up broadcasts of any sort. I do have an old set and use it occasionally for videos about woodworking, Buddhism, etc. Even more rarely do we put in a movie.

I have in my library The Blob and Killer Klowns from Outer Space. The Blob is an early example of art as commerce, or should I say art prostituted for commerce. Steve McQueen, 1958. It's kind of a hoot but also, well, gross ... and it does not tell a story that needed to be told.

Killer Klowns is a total hoot, a parody on The Blob (the opening scene is identical) and on monster movies in general. It is a parody that needed to be done. It's art in my book.

I was in a hotel the other night and had a suite with two TV sets. I did toob for a little while, but GAK!! what drivel!! Television can educate, enlighten, enhance, inform, and I've actually seen it done! Alas, it was rare.

OK. Back to the question. Censorship or regulation? I'm not going to say I have the answer. But I have the question and it won't go away.