TV and the Soft Eshoo Bill

Or think of it this way: Is a loud commercial really much more offensive than nudity at the Super Bowl and F-bombs at the Golden Globes? If the networks ran a loud promo for "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," is that really more offensive than the recent lap-dance scene at a strip club on "Family Guy"? (You might have missed that classy Fox episode, the one where an old man asks into which private part of the stripper he should insert his dollar.)

Take a poll and you'll see which offense is of greater concern to the public. Or just ask a parent -- any parent.

In fact, some members of Congress have a voting record that demonstrates that off-kilter offense meter. Twelve Democrat sponsors of Eshoo's CALM bill (including well-known veterans like Fortney Stark and John Conyers) were part of the tiny fraction of "brave" legislators to vote against the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act in 2006, which increased the maximum indecency fine on huge entertainment conglomerates tenfold, from $32,500 to $325,000 per violation. (It passed 379 to 35.)

In fact, Eshoo's bill may be nothing more than, well, noise. It doesn't really change anything that wasn't already changing. Her bill originally demanded that television advertisements could be no louder than the average maximum loudness of the programs they accompany. She changed her bill to instead adopt guidelines already being developed by the TV industry, which she said will accomplish the same goal. Given the industry's similar promises to develop standards to curb indecency, we can all begin to laugh (quietly) now.

And where are the usual "free market" lobbyists who bang the cans against government imposing decency regulations on broadcasters? They seem to have lost their cans on the CALM bill. It shouldn't go unnoticed by the public that these professional libertarian purists in Washington seem to wage war only when their funders in the TV industry instruct them to do so.