All Roads Also lead to Rove

But Love has pitched his mansion in
The place of excrement;
For nothing can be sole or whole
That has not been rent

--Crazy Jane Talks With the Bishop, William Butler Yeats

___________

This week's Time magazine comments on a recent appeals court ruling which struck down Federal Communications Commission fines charged against broadcasters for indecent and profane language, citing the ubiquity of such language in our current indecency climate (''How Bush Became the Curser in Chief.'')

Wrote the court, "In recent times, even the top leaders of our government have used variants of these expletives in a manner that no reasonable person would believe referenced 'sexual or excretory organs or activities.'"

''The decision cited Bush's remark to British Prime Minister Tony Blair last summer, in front of a live mike, that Syria needed to 'get Hizballah to stop doing this s___,' as well as Cheney's hearty invitation to Senator Patrick Leahy, 'Go f___ yourself.'"

GWB and Cheney should not be the standards of verbal excellence regarding what is acceptable speech.

''Bush ran in 2000 partly on the promise that he would restore dignity to the White House, appealing to social conservatives appalled over the Monica Lewinsky scandal and, broadly, the sexualization of American culture.''

Yet these men are now fellating our country, metaphorically speaking.

If their actions do not speak of moral rectitude, why would their spoken words be any more acceptable? They may hold power, but they are not moral arbiters, unless morality has become conflated with pecuniary profitability.

Clarity, and therefore, a consistent morality, is elusive for hypocrites. The current FCC and court definition of indecency is speech which references ''sexual or excretory organs or activities.'' The poet Yeats knew a while ago that all are but bodily functions, neither fair nor foul, nor exclusive of the whole.

The article points out that morality was ''part of the social-issues glue Karl Rove has counted on to hold together the conservative base, in spite of policy foul-ups and exploding deficits.''

But it was a selective morality, and by virtue of its selectivity, failed to qualify as a moral system at all. It has devolved into a tattered band of pet issues gaming under the banner of morality--issues like anti-homosexual unions, anti stem cell research, anti medical marijuana usage. Protestations which have the patina of a Christian rectitude, but which are embedded in a party otherwise characterized by such swill as to raise it to the level of a grand tragic comedy.

Aside from the abysmal inadequacy of these men to set the standard for decency in any form, isn't there a little thing called the First Amendment that guarantees Americans freedom of speech, and non-interference of government in its expression?

Does the Constitution guarantee free speech, except when it is indecent and offends the delicate sensibilities of the FCC? How can the government square with free speech and also FCC regulations clearly violating that privilege? Ranger's brain is confused.

Ranger clearly believes that as in the terrorism arena the administration wants it both ways with the FCC issue (isn't that urge something the fundamentalist base frowns upon?) We export democracy, but deny freedom of speech on the airwaves.

WTF?

--by Jim and Lisa