We'd all like to think that our politicians have "better things to spend political capital on" but in most cases, that isn't true. Have you heard of pork barrel spending and pushing one's own agenda? Are we now going to say that politicians are all honest, good people, who only spend time on issues that are "worthwhile"? Does Terry Schiavo ring a bell to any one? And I beg to differ on your definition of censorship. Ratings are censorship, insomuch as they seek to prohibit certain people in society from viewing or listening to certain material... I don't know about being "owned," either, to a later poster.
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Originally Posted by MysticCat
Any elected official worth paying attention to has many, many better things to expend political capital on. They wouldn't waste time on a silly ABC Family series.
And in case you didn't know, TV show ratings and CD ratings are not censorship. Censorship means that the government or someone else with authority (such as a religious leader) is actually suppressing content deemed by the goverment (or religious body) to be objectionable for whatever reason, thus preventing people subject to their authority from seeing the "offending" material or imposing penalties for defying the censor's decision. That's not the case with TV show or CD ratings.
Recording companies themselves decide whether to put Tipper Stickers on CDs and what warning to give, and the sticker doesn't keep anybody from buying the CD. Similarly, networks themselves decide what TV Parental Guidelines to put on their shows, and those guidelines don't keep anyone from watching the shows. The only possible censorship involved with TV or CD ratings is parental censorship.
With nudity on broadcast TV, you might have a point. But the reality is that nudity broadcast on airwaves that are legally considered to be publically owned does not receive the same First Amendment protection as, say, a lame show on ABC Family (which is cable, not broadcast) purporting to be about Greek life.
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