A Seventh Grade Civics Lesson From Michael Powell

Here's the first paragraph of Michael Powell's Op-Ed piece in the Times:

Time to take a deep breath. The high pitch at which many are discussing the enforcement of rules against indecency on television and radio is enough to pop an eardrum. It is no surprise that those who make a handsome living by selling saucy fare rant the loudest - it drives up the ratings. The news media further fan the flames, obsessed with "culture war" stories that slot Americans into blue-state and red-state camps.

Saucy fare sellers and the news media are the villains. Check, and check. Despite making several salient points, all seven of my favorite hackles were raised at the following statement:

But we are not the federal Bureau of Indecency. We do not watch or listen to programs hoping to catch purveyors of dirty broadcasts. Instead, we rely on public complaints to point out potentially indecent shows. In recent years, complaints about television and radio broadcasts have skyrocketed, and the F.C.C. has stepped up its enforcement in response. Advocacy groups do generate many complaints, as our critics note, but that's not unusual in today's Internet world. We are very familiar with organized protests when it comes to media issues, but that fact does not minimize the merits of the groups' concerns.

In fact it does. An organized protest (like a letter or email writing campaign) is designed to get people to participate who otherwise wouldn't. Joe Grabasandwich, who would never sign a petition to censor "Will & Grace" on his own, suddenly finds himself doing so based on the salesmanship of the person handing him the petition. The result is that you have a petition filled with names of people who have no strong objection to the thing being protested. Were the FCC to query each of these people individually, they would receive many more, "Huh? Oh yeah, that thing. Um, yeah, I guess I'm against it" responses than the strong language of the petition might suggest. This should warn the governmental body being petitioned that the group organizing the protest might have some personal, gigantic, disproportionally emphasized axe to grind, and that the group's concerns might not be as meritorious as they'd have it seem. I contend that conservatively-minded petitions tend to appeal to morality and, hence, guilt, when trying to get people to sign them. Progressive petitions tend to appeal to intellect. A petition from a liberal or progressive group is more likely to involve a real, substantive issue, and is likely to include names of people who are reasonably familiar with the issue and have actually formed an opinion on said issue before having a petition shoved in front of them. You might even say that this is the source of a large number of the Democratic Party's ills: they insist on appealing to intellect instead of bizarre, Christian moralist guilt.