h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Take a look at this to rile up your anti-authority feelings.
The US Government is planning to withdraw funding from a large number of shows for closed-caption transcripts for the deaf and hard of hearing.

Full list below:
http://www.nad.org/openhouse/action/alerts/captioningcensorship/list.html

The decision of which shows to block was apparently made by a small panel of citizens who had never met before, were unelected and had no authority to make these changes, and did not even know that what they were saying was being recorded and soon to be used for national law. The American public have not been given a chance to have their say in what shows should not be available, or indeed whether there should be such a law at all.

Above that, some have accused the government of censoring non-puritanical shows, in line with current religious status of the US executive. There are others who argue that this is unfair because it runs completely against Bush's platform of family values, by disallowing parents the ability to choose which shows to watch.

The effect of all this is basically that twenty eight million (that's 28,000,000 or *JUST UNDER HALF THE POPULATION OF THE UK*) people in the USA are unable to watch any programme that has not been pre-approved by the government - now *that's* censorship.


Here is the view of the National Association for the Deaf:
http://www.nad.org/openhouse/action/alerts/captioningcensorship/pr.html

Maybe they think that deaf people are hypersensitive and shouldn't be exposed to horrific channesl, like....er.....Cubix.

Maybe they think that we should all be protected from that stuff. In which case why not announce your intention to ban or crack down on them?

Maybe they should go back to their asylum now.

oh dear...

"Protection" is the best euphenism I've heard for quite a while - and I've, uh, heard quite a few euphenisms in my time, baby...