Arizona, Ever Weirder I

Apparently, there has been a plague of wardrobe malfunctions and R-rated talk in Arizona public schools and colleges.  So Republican state legislators are coming to the rescue.  As Inside Higher Education recently reported, the Arizona state legislature is currently considering a measure that would place all public classrooms under FCC guidelines for obscenity, indecency, and profanity.

GOP Senator Lori Klein sponsored what has been nicknamed the "G-Rated" bill.  Klein made a little media splash last summer by insisting on bringing her "cute" little loaded pistol into the Arizona Senate chamber a couple of days after the mass shooting in Tucson.  She later aimed the .380 Ruger at a reporter's chest to demonstrate its laser pointer.  On a different note, as state chair of the  Herman Cain for President committee, she dismissed the allegations of sexual harassment that would end up derailing his campaign, explaining that in politics, "we want a virgin to do a hooker's job."  This sounds like a legislator who really knows all about obscenity, indecency, and profanity.

The bill, SB 1467, establishes penalties for speech or conduct that violates FCC guidelines--a short suspension for first-time offenders, a longer suspension for a repeat offender, and termination for those evidently habitual offenders.  I can't find any explanation for why Klein would introduce such legislation, but it jives with previous Arizona Republican efforts to make the state a haven for white conservative Americans by banning ethnic studies programs or rooting out teachers who don't speak proper American (see Bad Combo of Fear and Desperation in Arizona for more on these measures).

The bill, as others have already pointed out, is unconstitutional, along with being just plain ridiculous (see Lukianoff's take here, or Safier's here).  Let's see, how would my courses fare according to the FCC guidelines on obscenity?

"An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest."  We'll just skip for now the issue of how one might determine "community standards," and assume that the films in my Latin American Cinema class that included nudity and graphic sexual scenes would have offended a swath of people in the Grand Rapids area.  Under this law I would have been an habitual offender, and therefore terminated.  I guess I could have selected movies using some sort of Leave it to Beaver standard, but then I wouldn't have performed my job of introducing students to a representative sample of current Latin American cinema.

"The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law."  I think my courses pass muster on this one, unless someone were to take issue with the human rights reports I occasionally use that reference or describe rape.

"The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value."  I might be in trouble on this count, but it depends on who gets to decide what material has value.  We're already seeing school boards banning classic works that board members happen to find distasteful, or that don't conform to their hagiographic approach to history.  And this gets us into the issue of operationalizing and enforcing the law.  Would I have to pass my syllabi through some community board for approval?  Would there be a hotline students could call if they were upset with the language of a lecture, the content of a poem, or if a movie got them all hot and sweaty?

Equally troubling, the language is so broad that the teachers could be in violation of FCC guidelines outside of the classroom: "If a person who provides classroom instruction in a public school engages in speech or conduct that would violate the standards. . ."  The law doesn't confine the censorship to only the classroom, it leaves it wide open.

I suppose that language could easily be fixed, but the premise remains flawed, and hypocritical.  For a party that's always calling for limited government, Arizona Republicans sure seem to want a great deal of government control over what constitutes knowledge, and how that knowledge gets taught and learned.

Letter to Senator Jim DeMint

I write in opposition to your legislative proposal to cut all federal funding to NPR--an effort to punish that media outlet for firing Juan Williams. NPR is one of the few media sources that does not spout bigoted anti-Muslim rhetoric, and to end federal support for NPR is not a blow for "free speech," but rather an effort to silence a news source that does not permit slurs in the public square. You are, in effect, celebrating the right of commentators to blather inane statements that incite an unjustified fear of a category of people based on the actions of the few, conceivably a version of someone shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater. In effect, you are contributing to a growing and increasingly ugly domestic crusade against Islam.

I am not one of your constituents, but your proposed legislation directly affects me and millions of fellow Americans. I deeply regret your contribution to a US image abroad that we are hypocrites, preaching liberty abroad while trumpeting religious intolerance at home. And I strongly resent your attempt to hamper our ability to find news and political commentary that does not contribute to the anti-Muslim hysteria.