Clear Channel Communications, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, has been totally freaking out since Janet Jackson’s Superbowl peep show caused some people at the FCC to realize that they’re supposed to regulate the airwaves instead of just weaken ownership rules. Clear Channel recently fired Bubba the Love Sponge, a Tampa radio personality who earned the largest single FCC fine in history in 2001. Bubba--listening to whom is a fond childhood memory of our own Ian Vandewalker . . . say it--was fired for indecency, which is deliciously ironic, since that’s also what he was hired for.
This week, Clear Channel canned plans to acquire the rights for a syndicated morning radio show featuring the title character from Mel Gibson’s controversial biopic, The Passion of the Christ. The reason? You might think it’s because the movie is too violent, and Clear Channel deeply fears the FCC’s vaguely hinted at crackdown on decency. But it turns out that’s not the real reason. Clear Channel spokesperson Peter Simonsky explains: “We decided that, in order to make as much money as possible, we’d better not allow a scandal about standards of decency. So we realized that we really have to reduce bad language and sexual content. We thought we would have to reduce violence too, but it turns out that it’s not bad to broadcast violent content, just bad language and sexual content, which is interesting because if you were just trying to rationally figure out which kind of content is more harmful for people to be bombarded by, you might naturally come to the sensible conclusion that violence is a lot worse than sex and bad language. But, as it turns out, according to the precedent set by years of American broadcasting, you’d be wrong. Anyway, when we realized that violence is okay, we thought we could put the Jesus deal back on. Then we realized that they say ‘Jesus’ a bunch of times in that movie. Of course, that’s swearing, and that really is bad, so the deal’s off again.”
President Bush, apparently encouraged by approval from conservatives of his support for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, has thrown his support behind another constitutional amendment aimed at pleasing the religious right. White House spokesman Scott McClellan said Thursday that Mr. Bush was told by a thoroughly accountable fifth-grade private school teacher where in the Bible the prohibition on homosexuality was, in Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. “The President became very excited, saying, ‘There’s some really awesome rules in this Leviathan book! Look at this one about showing the priest your clothes if they get mildew on them! Can we get that through Congress?’ Some of the White House staffers had to calm him down and steer him away from the passages about ostracizing those with infectious skin diseases. We finally got him to settle on chapter 19, which is kind of a miscellaneous hodge-podge of crazy rules that have no relevance for today’s society, so it’s unlike the rest of Leviticus in that it’s miscellaneous. We said we’d let him pick one, but he really wanted these two, and since they’re right next to each other, we thought, ‘What the Hell.’”
The verses in question read, “Do not cut the hair at the sides of your head or clip off the edges of your beard. Do not cut your bodies for the dead or put tattoo marks on yourselves. I am the Lord.” Some constitutional experts are concerned that if the language of the last sentence were to make it into the constitution, tension might come about between that and the First Amendment, which guarantees the separation of church and state. Constitutional scholar John Zelotte says, “The success or failure of the amendment banning gay marriage is really what to look for to pave the way for the addition of Leviticus 19:27-28 to the constitution. If the Constitution can both guarantee equal protection under the law and make homosexuals second-class citizens in one and the same document, then surely the contradiction involved in apparently violating the separation of church and state will be no problem. ” Zelotte added, “Now what I’d really like to see is a crackdown on sex with women during their period (Lev 18:19), because that’s just gross. Also, we should definitely institute the death penalty for people cursing their mother and father (Lev 20:9), because I am really sick of the stuff my kids say to me. They get it from TV, I guess.”