In the '80s and '90s, being controversial was cool.  Listening to profane music ('90s), watching violent movies ('80s), and angering your parents was cool.

Today, people take R movies and MA TV shows for granted.  Has it lost it's shock?  I think today's media is probably less profane/sex-filled than that of 1999, it might be more violent though.

Did you see Brent Bozell throwing a conniption fit about South Park in front of the Senate Committee this week?  That alone makes it "still cool!"  I was in stitches watching that nasty old clown describe different scenes in South Park while Sen. Ted Stevens sat up there scowling!  Bozell's going on about "masturbating dogs to ejaculation" and "something called a Whore-a-Thon in which a woman shoved an entire chair up her vagina," and "a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from its buttocks...," and on and on.  I mean, on the one hand you've got a cartoon called South Park which depicts gross stuff with little construction paper cut-outs, and on the other hand you've got twenty million children in America with no health insurance."  I mean, what does more harm to children, Cartman the cartoon yelling "Oh G*ddammit!," or the rampant malnutrition in impoverished regions of the country? What's obscene?  You decide.  Brent Bozell has his opinion, I have mine.  The difference is, I can't rant my screed to Senator Stevens, Brent can!

The more media-nazis such as Brent Bozell get their way, the more the coolness factor in controversy will rise.  Lenny Bruce was the most controversial commedian/commentator in the early '60s, and who could be cooler than Lenny Bruce?  After all, Lenny Bruce said, "If you can't say ****, you can't say **** the government!"

Did you see Brent Bozell throwing a conniption fit about South Park in front of the Senate Committee this week?  That alone makes it "still cool!"  I was in stitches watching that nasty old clown describe different scenes in South Park while Sen. Ted Stevens sat up there scowling!  Bozell's going on about "masturbating dogs to ejaculation" and "something called a Whore-a-Thon in which a woman shoved an entire chair up her vagina," and "a statue of the Virgin Mary bleeding from its buttocks...," and on and on.  I mean, on the one hand you've got a cartoon called South Park which depicts gross stuff with little construction paper cut-outs, and on the other hand you've got twenty million children in America with no health insurance."  I mean, what does more harm to children, Cartman the cartoon yelling "Oh G*ddammit!," or the rampant malnutrition in impoverished regions of the country? What's obscene?  You decide.  Brent Bozell has his opinion, I have mine.  The difference is, I can't rant my screed to Senator Stevens, Brent can!

The more media-nazis such as Brent Bozell get their way, the more the coolness factor in controversy will rise.  Lenny Bruce was the most controversial commedian/commentator in the early '60s, and who could be cooler than Lenny Bruce?  After all, Lenny Bruce said, "If you can't say ****, you can't say **** the government!"


South Park isn't a huge deal, but I'm kind of tired of how obsessed with itself it is.  Starving children (and starving people in general) is much more obscene than "South Park", but that doesn't mean "South Park" isn't obscene.

I don't think it should be tanked for obscenity though (although it goes beyond my taste).  It should be canned for being on so long, when people finally tire of it.

I think that the Columbine Shootings, 9-11, the recent push from the government to "clean things up for the sake of the kids", and the Super Bowl Nipplegate Scandal, have made Hollywood somewhat nervous about making things contraversial. But then again, maybe it's just my feeling.