Overturned fine is a loss for decency

The hurrahs emanating from television land last week were puzzling, even if they were typical for this age of irony. In the wake of a federal appeals court decision overturning $550,000 in fines against CBS Corp., for Janet Jackson's breast-baring halftime show in the 2004 Super Bowl, an official from the Media Access Project said it was "an important advance for preserving creative freedom on the air." Here is the first thing I find puzzling: Why is Jackson's shocker considered creative freedom worth fighting for? As described on its Web site, the Media Access Project began in the early 1970s as an advocacy group working to allow the views of civil rights advocates and anti-war protestors on the public airwaves. Somehow, the baring of a female breast for nine-sixteenths of a second has become the ideological descendant of... [read full story]