Ratings

Greetings from the third most dangerous city in America!

It seems to me that this blog has gone through several incarnations. I started it as a way to put some of my Zen studies on line to share with a small group, but it very quickly morphed into postings of various news clips and other things that interested me. It didn't get autobiographical until late July, when I left for Budapest, but it started to become less of a diary, and more issue-oriented, around the time of the Red Sox-Yankees series and the Presidential election. IMHO, this blog is still in a stage of recovery from those twin competitions, and right now seems to be a goulash of news, humor, autobiography and Zen teachings.

One of the fun things about being spontaneous is that I don't know which way it will go next.

You Are a Life Blogger!

Your blog is the story of your life - a living diary. If it happens, you blog it. And make it as entertaining as possible.

What kind of blogger are you?

Meanwhile, the New York Times is presenting contradictory accounts of the effects of the Bush Administration on American television. Frank Rich, in his weekly Sunday tirade, pointed out that 66 ABC affiliates, including Atlanta, refused to broadcast "Saving Private Ryan" last Veterams Day for fear that the FCC would punish them for exercising freedom of speech. The American Family Association found that the movie's soldiers used the word "shit" 21 times, and encouraged (some would say threatened) the affiliates not to air the film. The stations that refused to show the movie included not just Atlanta, but Boston, Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore. "Saving Private Ryan," with its expletives undeleted, was nationally broadcast by ABC on Veteran's Day in both 2001 and 2002 without incident, and despite the protests of family-values groups.

"What has changed between then and now?," Rich asks. "A government with the zeal to control both information and culture has received what it calls a mandate. Media owners who once might have thought that complaints by the American Family Association about a movie like 'Saving Private Ryan' would go nowhere are keenly aware that the administration wants to reward its base. Merely the threat that the FCC might punish a TV station or a network is all that's needed to push them onto the slippery slope of self-censorship before anyone in Washington even bothers to act. This is McCarthyism, 'moral values' style."

Familiar Frank Rich stuff. However, the Times also reports that the four big broadcast networks, as well as Hollywood production studios, say the nightly television ratings bear little relation to the message apparently sent by the voters. The choices of viewers, whether in Los Angeles or Salt Lake City, New York or Birmingham, are remarkably similar. And that means the election will have little impact on which shows are put on television.

With "Desperate Housewives" and "C.S.I." leading the ratings, television shows are far more likely to keep pumping from the deep well of murder, mayhem and sexual transgression than seek diversion along the straight and narrow path. In the greater Atlanta market, where nearly 58 percent of the voters opted for Bush, "Desperate Housewives" is the top-rated show. So if it is true that the public's electoral choices are a cry for more morally driven programming, why are so many people, even in the markets surrounding Bush bastions Atlanta and Salt Lake City, watching a sex-drenched television drama?

Criticism was heaped on ABC last week for its opening on "Monday Night Football," which included one of the stars of "Desperate Housewives" dropping a towel and jumping naked into the arms of a football player. But even while ABC was apologizing for the segment, cable news and sports networks like ESPN (which is owned by ABC's parent, Walt Disney) were incessantly replaying the offending scene. It is a contradiction played out again and again in popular culture, where for all the backlash against everything from Murphy Brown's single motherhood to Janet Jackson's exposed breast, the boundaries of what's acceptable keep being pushed by the increasingly graphic shows on cable.

But what about violence? According to a Kansas company's yearly ranking based on crime statistics, Atlanta was rated the most dangerous city with populations ranging from 100,000 to 499,000 (third place overall). Macon ranked ninth most dangerous in cities ranging from 75,000 to 99,999 population. Camden, New Jersey, which was ranked third last year, took the dubious honor of first place overall from Detroit, which fell to second in this year's ranking, followed by Atlanta, St. Louis and Gary, Indiana.

The rankings look at the rate for six crime categories: murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. It compares 350 cities with populations of 75,000 or more that reported crime data to the FBI. Final 2003 statistics, released by the FBI in October, were used to determine the rankings.