I’m commenting here to tie this back to a previous post about media, the value of content and so on. The piece Jeff started the discussion was pretty straight forward and well written as usual. Good content and opinion. However, the ensuing discussion is what is of particular interest. It is what happens around the original piece that is most interesting and that is what becomes “content”. The original article drops to the background and the story really is the discussion. Compare that with reading the newspaper. Boring.

Thank you for making it plain that you are a run-of-the mill intolerant American anal-retentive socialist troll. You’re not about decency. You’re certainly not about protecting the children. What you are is a small minded, dirty minded, sex-obsessed perpetual adolescent who lacks the intestinal fortitude to get a full castration and rid himself of those evil, dirty thoughts.

I know your type. You don’t want kids watching porn because it would kill the porn industry. Once our young people learned how lifeless, how phony porn is, they wouldn’t pay a penny for the crap. And public nudity? Why that would put skin mags out of business.

Why, if we became comfortable with our bodies we might even start accepting other things.

I had kids and I caught them watching porn on the Internet, the first thing I’d ask them is, “Do you think she actually agreed to do this, or was she coerced in some manner?” They said they thought she was coerced I’d ask, “What happened that makes you think she was coerced. What did he say or do? What did she say or do?”

Any parent with Internet access in the home will catch their kids watching porn on the computer, can’t be avoided. Porn, especially the “realism” crap, gives a twisted and very inaccurate picture of how sexual relations work. I should hope any good parent would take the opportunity to correct mistaken impressions.

Besides, when nude the ladies move with a grace and assurance they just can’t match when clothed. Be the public display offensive to you, stay home.

You don’t like my characterization of conservatism. Fine, write your own, you have a blog.

My “After Capitalism, what?” is a speculative piece, not a policy prescription. How do new ideas get vetted if someone doesn’t first float them?

Now, of course, you take any idea that excessive wealth imbalance means that those who support an adjustment must be socialists. Not so, I usually cite the example of the UK where they managed to break up the undue influence of the landed gentry through a policy of death taxes and higher marginal tax rates. All the while Britain remained a democratic, capitalist country (although it did have some governments which imposed limited state ownership of failing industries).

My warning that excessive imbalance can lead to social unrest is based upon historical examples. I’m not advocating anything, just warning of possible risks.

The conservative axiom is “it’s mine, I earned it”. If you don’t think this favors the wealthy then look at the stats. You may think that even if it’s uneven that’s the best way for things to be organized. That’s your privilege, but why you would support the billionaires at your own expense remains a mystery to me.

If you chose to write a rebuttal on your web site, send me a heads up. I think we have imposed on Jeff Jarvis’ hospitality enough already.

You don’t know me from Adam, but you’ve decided that I’m a “run-of-the-mill, intolerant European socialist”. Have you read any of my essays, they’re all on my web site?

Did I defend the European central government? Did I even mention a central government? What do social services (which are decided by each country individually) have to do with the issue? Did I mention the economic system of any government? Does providing a free higher education mean that the country embraces socialism?

When I was in college it was free, right here in good old NYC.

Where does the first amendment come into all of this? If I remember correctly the reason this thread got started was because Jeff Jarvis was complaining about overreach by the FCC in violation of the first amendment. I seem to recall agreeing with him.

I’ll close by saying that step 4 is always that the closed minded ideologue goes off unchanged. Ideologues are immune to any attempts to alter their world view. Every once in awhile one of us “intolerant European socialists” decides to waste a bit of time “debating” the closed minded, knowing full well that we will end up being slandered.

That you can’t see how large the gap is between what you think the US is like and how it has been managed over the past decade is one of the reasons that the GOP keeps pulling the wool over people’s eyes. Perhaps your defensiveness is a sign that you are starting to realize that everything isn’t as rosy as painted by your leaders. One can only hope.

It’s also nice to see the profound kat back as well. Kat you might want to check on the number of people from the US that retire to Mexico. It’s true that they have a more privileged position in the society than the average Mexican, but one of the motivations of many is because they can live comfortably on their meager retirement income.

It is possible for one to notice the faults of the US at the same time as the strengths. It is also possible to notice that there are places in the world that do some things better than in the US. Blind patriotism is just that, blind.

Both of you need to get out more. Try learning something about universal health care, free higher education, child care services for working mothers, eight weeks of vacation time, extensive unemployment and retirement insurance benefits and the possibility of women to get elected to high public office.

Various countries in the EU have all or some of these features. Stop waving the jingoistic flag, it’s unbecoming.

Using the same survey:
Life Satisfaction Rises (2002 vs 2007, % change)
U.S. 65 65 0%
Canada 67 71 +4%
Brazil 43 63 +20%
Mexico 58 76 +18%
Argentina 45 59 +14%
Venezuela 50 60 +10%

Notice that Mexico still scores higher than the US. Perhaps there is something to midday siestas after all.

It is only by comparing across countries that one can see how one’s own society is doing. The unwillingness of conservatives to consider that some aspects of life may actually be better elsewhere is part of the persistent cultural blindness.

First you take issue with people’s life choices as to family and marriage and now you seem to be denying their own opinions of their contentment. Perhaps you need to get out more.

Obviously, parents have the right and responsibility to decide what amount of nudity, language or violence is appropriate for their children. The ideal system would allow a parent to know precisely what sort of content a television program will contain and filter it for their home as they see fit (without affecting the rest of us.) The old broadcast standards are just a very outdated, quite poor implementation of this ideal (for example, you find racier programming on later at night on broadcast.) As the ideal becomes more practical, we should move toward it.

It’s similar to nutrition labels on food. You should have the right to buy and consume whatever food you wish, and you should be provided with the information you need to make an informed decision.

I don’t fret much about what “the rest of the world” thinks, given the natural envy any superpower would likely draw, that their press is typically as monolithic center-left as ours, and that our own outlets like CNN present America in a negative light. I think it is axiomatic that children are among life’s greatest sources of happiness, and that does not require one to be religious to believe this — even the left is always talking about how important children are.

What is different now is that technological means of distribution have made it possible for many more people to participate in pop culture and interact with a wider audience than ever before. So perhaps all that is happening is that things that were local or regional can now be observed elsewhere and this leads to the perception that there is some sort of widespread moral decay.

We no longer have bear baiting demonstrations or public executions, so perhaps standards have improved and people like us have just lost a sense of perspective.

As for Europeans being less happy, I’d like to see your source.

Here’s a typical source that I frequently quote and they (Deutsche Bank) find the opposite. For example, from chart 10:
The UK scores at 40, Italy at 50 and the US at 30 on something called the “Happy Planet” index. Read the report, I don’t think the bank has an ax to grind. I could site several other similar studies, I spend a good deal of time discussing improving happiness instead of GDP.

http://www.dbresearch.com/PROD/DBR_INTERNET_EN-PROD/PROD0000000000202587.PDF

To you, a low marriage and birth rate is seen as a moral defect, but that’s because of your religious/moral viewpoint. In Western Europe religion plays a much smaller role and the same measures do not apply. You make the mistake of thinking that your social framework is the only “correct” one and that thus who view the world differently are mistaken.

This is the kind of cultural blindness which gets Americans in so much trouble when they start to preach to the rest of the world. (I’m not talking about dictators who use cultural relativism arguments hypocritically.)

Why is it that I can turn on CBS and see bits and pieces of a nude corpse but seeing bits and pieces of a nude live woman in a bathroom is obscene? It’s ludicrous.

First, I’m a poor one to ask the question of since I didn’t own a TV until my kids were in high school. When I went away to college I stopped having access to a TV and didn’t bother buying one after I graduated and got married. I decided there were better things that we could all do with our time. They managed to keep abreast of the zeitgeist by seeing shows (occasionally) at friend’s and neighbor’s homes. The only time there was ever an issue was when a teacher assigned viewing a program as part of an assignment. Fortunately this was infrequent and the teachers were accommodating. So, my view is that TV is mostly a waste of time. I know that my kids saw some porn in the homes of some of their friends whose parents were a bit casual with the videos. It was never a big issue.

Yes, I now have a TV, I watch a half dozen mindless shows each week and my kids (who are now adults) seem normal and watch the normal amount of TV for people of their age. They do, however, read much more than average.

As for “porn”. I’ll separate that into two areas. There is the traditional meaning which is poorly produced material meant to promote sexual arousal in those viewing it. Young kids have no interest in watching this, it doesn’t work on them and the lack of plot, meaningful dialog or anything else that makes up a typical narrative show makes it boring. At most they giggle. Does it scar them for life to see it? There is no such evidence, despite what the Puritans want us to believe.

Now if you mean explicit or implied sex in a regular drama, then whether the show is suitable would depend upon the rest of the material. I certainly kept my kids away from watching violent shows. I don’t know whether watching violence promotes more violence or not, but why subject children to such stressful situations?

Now what you are conflating is nudity with sex. In much of Europe the attitude toward nudity is much more open than here in Puritan America. There doesn’t seem to be any decay of morality as a result. The FCC is complaining about nudity and equating it with sex, this is a reflection of their religious viewpoint and their desire to impose Puritan morality on government operations.

It would take a deeper thinker than I to explain why Christianity got hung up on “original sin”. More lives have been ruined by ignorance of sex and reproduction than have by watching porn.

You don’t get pregnant or STD’s from watching a video.

Jeff Jarvis got his dander up, and rightly so, over the FCC deciding to get all puritan again over some exposed skin on the boob tube. (I really enjoyed writing boob tube just then. It seems oh, so appropriate.) This…

The only difference (so far) is that he had to fight a civil war to gain control, while the Religious Right has done it through the use of more subtle propaganda and voting buying techniques.

Cromwell lasted 12 years, so perhaps there is hope for the US as well. What is it about nudity (or even sex for that matter) that so upsets people. Do they bathe in the dark?

When societies were mainly agricultural kids knew all about the cycle of reproduction at a very early age. It doesn’t seem to have done them any harm and unlike the Victorians the churchmen of the the time didn’t demand diapers on horses.