Rooney's Ass

Fox is refusing to air a commercial on the SuperBowl in which octagenarian Mickey Rooney -- in an ad for an over-the-counter cold remedy -- briefly shows his ass while in a sauna. Fox says that its "standards and development department" concluded that the commercial should be "deemed inappropriate for broadcast television." But that euphamism does nothing to disguise the simple fact that Fox is afraid of the FCC's unprincipled "indecency" campaign that started a year ago with Janet Jackson's "nipplegate" affair. That a major national broadcast television network cannot distinguish a breast from buttocks and titilation from advertisement is a sad testament to the terribly coercive media self-censorship resulting from the lack of any predictability to the FCC's politically motivated enforcement policies.

 Posted by glenn