Seriously?

by David Safier

No, I'm not kidding. SB1467 would make FCC broadcasting standards the touchstone for what can be taught in the classroom. If the FCC says you can't broadcast it, Arizona says you can't teach it.

This law, by the way, would apply to Pre-K through Grad School. Yes, it includes public community colleges and public universities as well as preschools and everything in between.

Want to have some fun? Read the FCC guidelines on obscenity, indecency and profanity. As with all rules of this kind, the guidelines are amorphous and open to all kinds of interpretation. An example:

The FCC has defined broadcast indecency as “language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities.”

That's why we have courts, to draw, redraw and re-redraw those ill-defined lines.

So, what happens to Catcher in the Rye in high school English classrooms? How about the repeated use of the N-word in Huckleberry Finn? What about quality contemporary juvenile fiction which makes for excellent classroom reading but almost always includes a passage or two you might not be able to read aloud on broadcast TV or radio? ("Broadcast," as I understand it, is separate from cable. These are CBS standards, not HBO standards.)

And I'm just talking about high school here. Community colleges and universities? Bye bye D.H. Lawrence, et al.

It's definitely cuckoo time for the morality police up in Phoenix.

SLOPPY BILL WRITING BONUS: If read literally, the bill would include not just what teachers say in a classroom but what they say in their private lives as well.

IF A PERSON WHO PROVIDES CLASSROOM INSTRUCTION IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL ENGAGES IN SPEECH OR CONDUCT THAT WOULD VIOLATE THE STANDARDS ADOPTED BY THE FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION . . .

Shouldn't the bill include something about the speech happening during school hours or when in contact with students? Otherwise, it's a friggin' violation of personal freedom, and Republicans frown on that kind of thing.