The Triumvirate of Morality

If this is true, it's a low down dirty shame.

Jeff Jarvis over at BuzzMachine has discovered from a simple Freedom of Information Act request that one of the FCC's largest fines ($1.2M to FOX for the later-cancelled Married by America) came as the result of only 29 letters, all of which can be traced back to just three form letters. Fines like this recently lead ABC affiliates to forgo airing Saving Private Ryan [subscr. req] (which it had aired already before). Turns out the infamous wardrobe malfunction wasn't temporary silliness but perhaps the harbinger of a neo-Hays Code.

UPDATE: ABC caves again [reg. req.].

UPDATE THE SECOND: Frank Rich weighs in [reg. req.]:

As American soldiers were dying in Falluja, some Americans back home spent Veteran's Day mocking the very ideal our armed forces are fighting for freedom. Ludicrous as it sounds, 66 ABC affiliates revolted against their own network and refused to broadcast "Saving Private Ryan." The reason: fear. Not fear of terrorism or fear of low ratings but fear that their own government would punish them for exercising freedom of speech.

UPDATE CUBED: Tom Shales has a rant in the WaPo [reg. req.] against FCC chairman Michael Powell:

He's the Torquemada of the insane campaign now being waged against "obscenity" on the airwaves.

There was according to legend a face that launched a thousand ships. This is about a nipple that inflamed a thousand nut cases. Janet Jackson's brief breast exposure during halftime of this year's Super Bowl has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, a wave of hypocritical hysteria with which Democrats as well as Republicans are only too happy to be associated, and a state of affairs that boils down to open season on the First Amendment, the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.

[Via Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly]

UPDATE GAJILLION AND ONE: Jonathon Alter at Newsweek/MSNBC/Universal cites the intrepid pajamullah Jeff Jarvis in his own essay on the subject.