Those Who Can, Do; Those Who Can't, Teach: While I was gone, Prof. Vu responded to my comments on his cenorship post.

His argument is basically that "teaching is a form of doing" and "doing things can teach people" and therefore my distinction is arbitrary.

In order for that to make any sense, though, I would have had to argue that ALL doing is wrong. I didn't. There are lots of things you can "do" on TV that nobody should be able to stop you from doing, and one of them is teach whatever you want (It's the old all Fords are cars, but not all cars are Fords).

My argument was that teaching should, in every circumstance, be protected, in exactly the same way it is protected on the street (ie except in cases of slander and libel and such).

And, contrawise, public broadcast channels should be held to the same decency standards as public places.

What I'm arguing is teaching people to do something wrong isn't the same as doing the wrong thing.

He says, "But in all seriousness, teaching is an act, and one that can have serious consequences. Suppose, for example, that a man 'teaches' that racial minorities are subhuman, explains in detail how to make a bomb and then encourages his listeners to plant the bombs in places where minorities gather. It makes no sense to say that this activity is 'protected' while a woman baring her breast is not."

I say it does make sense, absolutely and completely. Because, as horrible as it is, if we start placing limits on people's ability to teach that racial minorities are subhuman, then we've opened up the door for placing limits on people teaching other "immoral" things like "Questioning the government is good" and "Dissent from popular opinion" a generation from now.

People must be free to hold evil beliefs and advocate illegal acts. Advocating crime or evil or whatever is not the same thing as enacting evil. The line may be razor thin but it's vital, because it is the difference between Orwellian thought control and a free society.

He says, "If we set about deciding what can be banned and what can't be banned without sort of neutral principle (assuming such a neutral principle can even exist), we are left to the rather arbitrary standards of our own prejudices."

What I'm arguing for is a neutral principle. That principle is, if you can't do it in a public place, you can't do it on TV. Why should my naughty bits, which I would be arrested for exposing to children in a park, suddenly become okay to show just because network executives, a producer, a director, lighting people, camera people, and a whole bevy of others have conspired to carry the image to millions of children across the country?

Again, this doesn't necessarily apply to private cable channels, which are not publicly accessible. Those are like private clubs and residences.

But public broadcast channels should be held to the same decency standards as public places. Simply because it's a broadcast media doesn't automatically transform every wave of transmission into a form of "expression" that's covered by the first amendment.

Doing can make a statement--shooting President Bush would make a heck of a statement, but it really wouldn't fall under first amendment protection.

That's why the "appropriateness" has to be decided independently of the morality of the piece. And that distinction isn't that hard to figure out--we figure it out in public places, so we'll be able to figure it out on the airwaves.