Here's a funny new anti-American meme going around here. Jeez, it seems like the only thing people ever talk about is the United States. Anyway, the Academy Awards are a big deal here, they show them live on TV and all that crap. I couldn't care less, myself.

So it seems that due to the fallout of Janet Jackson's breast, they're going to put the Oscars on five-second delay rather than showing them absolutely live. (This is common media practice. All radio and TV call-in programs are on five-second delay, for example, so when the crazy Nazi yells "Fuck the faggot Jew niggers!", which happens more often than you'd like to think, they cut it off so it doesn't get broadcast. Nobody ever complains at Larry or Bill or Charlie or Rush that this is censorship. Check out the level of unmonitored chat rooms on the Net. That's what you'd get on talk radio without the delay.)

We don't want no breasts or nobody saying nothing like "Fuck" at the Oscars. This is national TV and the Hopelessly Squares have to be kept happy. If you want breasts and people saying "Fuck", watch the MTV Awards or the Playboy Playmate of the Year Awards or the Let's See Who Can Yell "Fuck" The Loudest Awards. Or just go down to your vid shop and rent a few pornos.

Anyway, what they're saying round here is that this five-second delay is censorship, see, because there are all these Hollywood actors against the war, and they'd criticize Bush, and so the government is making sure that no one says anything against Bush, so they're going to censor the Academy Awards for political reasons.

Yeah, right. Jeez, you'd think Bush didn't have better things to worry about than whether Sean Penn gets coked up and goes on a Chomsky-quoting binge live from L.A. You'd also think that it was that easy for the government to openly violate the First Amendment.

Note well: The Motion Picture Academy is a private organization and they can censor anybody they want to for whatever reason. The TV network is also a private organization and can also censor anybody it wants to for whatever reason. (They were the ones who decided on the five-second delay for the Oscars, not the government.) It's also been longstanding policy that the Federal Communications Commission can regulate TV and radio broadcasts for such things as obscenity.

But the US government cannot censor political speech. If they try, they won't be able to get away with it. The press and the courts and the people with their votes would stop them. Proof of this are all the lawsuits filed whenever anything that even smells like the government's violating the First Amendment comes up.