Stop Censoring America's Best and Brightest

I recently sent this to Oregon Public Broadcasting in the hope they would share it with decision makers at PBS. Bleeping out words from an almost operatic piece from the pen of non other than Leonard Bernstein just seemed way beyond the pale. After all, this is clearly not a program aimed at a young market.

I've seen shows over the last years -- this is a big hint as to the most likely culprit -- which have pixeled out the back sides of beach goers in the Caribbean as well as the brests of women in famous works of art. But they won't stop there, they now bleep out any expletives or phrases that refer to Christian figures that are not, let's say, worshipful or statement of religious history. In other words, "Oh, God!" is bleeped but "God made the world" isn't.

Imagine listening to a member of a prior Presidential administration telling you about this or that historical experience when we once again narrowly averted disaster. If such a leader would say something like "I couldn't believe he'd do that. I mean Christ, what was he thinking?" even a past President would now be censored on PBS.

And try to watch a show about our children fighting for this administration in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hell, every other word is "fuck" so you get something like, "I couldn't BLEEP believe the stupid BLEEP BLEEP threw the BLEEP thing across the BLEEP road and nearly BLEEP hit the BLEEP sergeant between her fat BLEEP BLEEP."

Yes, it's time for a change...

Please pass this message up the PBS chain as appropriate -- I have no idea who to address my frustrations to.

I have noticed an overwhelming amount of verbal censorship in programs I watch on OPB/PBS. I am an adult, I don't need some bureaucrat sitting in some office on the other side of the country deciding what my ears should hear and what they shouldn't. Now that someone has made the decision that programs should censor something that might offend a certain religious minority in this country, even that is bleeped out.

Right now I'm watching a 90th Birthday Celebration of Leonard Bernstein's music. Personally, if he as one of this countries most respected and venerated composer/lyricists feels that to make his point he needed to use some for of expletive, then I as a free adult American should have the right to listen to his work as he intended. To censor such work, as well as the words of historical personages on such programs as American Experience shows that certain people feel they must parent every American.

I'm sick and tired of religious people telling me what I can hear. I neither agree with their justification for their censorship nor with their seeming right to inflict upon non-believers their religious moral framework. For me, Freedom of Religion should mean that I should be allowed to chose my own religious sensibilities.

By now, most Americans who really care so much about their precious ears being sullied by the words of America's best and brightest, and believe it or not, some of the darlings of the Neo-Conservative Movement have been taped using a four letter word or two, have been more than happy to go out and buy a V-Chip equipped TV or whatever more modern device they chose to bring television into their homes.

Therefore, isn't it time to lighten up on the pedantic policing of information broadcast to the nation's adults?