CleanTV - Not just clean, Utah Clean!

February 9, 2004 7:00 AM

CleanTV(currently in the early stages of construction) is this guy's new web site. It will log instances of "offensive" material shown on broadcast television, enable offended TV viewers to send email directly to local station owners and management, and/or send emails to the station's local and national advertisers. What happens to advertisers who ignore the email campaign and continue to sponsor shows that CleanTV deems offensive? - "If an advertiser continues to support offensive advertising, they will be targeted for local and national boycott. On the local level, newspapers are notified of the boycott and CleanTV volunteers will demonstrate at the advertiser's place of business until the advertiser decides to rescind their support of offensive programming."
posted by mr_crash_davis (17 comments total)

Ah, so what. The folks over at Commercial Closet go over programming with a microscope looking for hidden homophobia. I'm sure there are groups who scour the airwaves looking for hidden racism and sexism or whatever.

It's all the same fucking neurosis and need to control what other people get to see and hear. Maybe they can all get together for bowls of paranoia flakes.
posted by jonmc at 7:06 AM on February 9, 2004

Man, if we knew it was this damaging we would have sent a battalion of Janet Jackson breast video clips into the Middle East; we would have cleared out al-Qaeda in a week.

Normally I'd be upset about fringe "outrage" armies, but this guy is clearly a lunatic and the networks aren't going to get any major trouble from him. With protests about cancellations, the line is always "writing a letter is more effective than e-mail." So mass-spam organized e-mailing isn't really going to be much of anything.

The networks, as protests of show cancellations have proven, don't care how many sacks of mail come in. They care about sponsorships. And frankly there's enough sponsors out there who got bored of thinking psychotic Mormons are going to actually affect their profit margin to prevent anyone from caring.

The site's really funny, though. Points for the graphics. But GOP Team Leader is still more dangerous in my mind- those guys actually get their letters printed. This guy's just a religious weirdo.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 7:09 AM on February 9, 2004

Action Now automated email technology

Much better than all that old manual email technology some of us are still stuck with.
posted by DrJohnEvans at 7:44 AM on February 9, 2004

Okay, so what's to stop a number of like minded people complaing to the site and the advertisers about, say, The 700 Club or some other garbage of that ilk?
posted by damnitkage at 7:54 AM on February 9, 2004

In the old days when we wanted to get a lot of filthy jokes and smutty references, we had to watch a solid week of TV. Thanks to this guy, I got it all in about 20 minutes. Is Utah a great state or what?
posted by faceonmars at 7:58 AM on February 9, 2004

My favorite parts:
Monologue: "Demi Moore spotted giving (unintelligible name) a time-out (oral sex).

Barrymore shows Leno a picture of a dog and Leno says, “She’s a real bitch.”
posted by faceonmars at 8:02 AM on February 9, 2004

I suggest we boycott any channel that succumbs to Clean TV's boycott tactics.
posted by crunchland at 8:02 AM on February 9, 2004

re: Will & Grace:
Top rated show about two homosexual lovers (Will & Jack) and their mutual female friend Grace.

re: Queer Eye:
this new program about 5 gay men who are dedicated to exporting their lifestyle, culture, fashion, tastes to straight men. The show has a "cutesy" premise but in reality is another program dedicated to making the gay lifestyle seem a normal alternative among, in particular, an impressionable and mostly young audience.

Have they actually watched these shows??
posted by anastasiav at 9:19 AM on February 9, 2004

Ahh yes just what i want.. TV programmed by the lowest common denominator of mindless xtian activists to 'save the children"
posted by MrLint at 9:36 AM on February 9, 2004

TV programmed by : Control freaks. Some how they think they have a crystal ball. Why they must control, I know what/how/when you will do/be in your life.
posted by thomcatspike at 10:28 AM on February 9, 2004

I have this magic device at my house that controls what gets seen on the TV. It's called the remote and it has this feature that lets me TURN OFF the TV. This is so amazing that perhaps somebody should tell the Cleantv.net folks about it.
posted by shagoth at 11:03 AM on February 9, 2004

Holy shiznit, this guy's an obsessive wingnut! It's like he's in front of the tube 24/7, half up out of his seat and fingers twitching at the TiVo remote..."Did you hear that?! He said "Pootie Tang"! That's slang for "vagina"! Oh, the station's going to hear about this, believe you me!"

And then he goes and has a wank when nobody's looking, naturally. People like this give me a fullbore case of the icks.
posted by adamgreenfield at 11:50 AM on February 9, 2004

My favorite: Singer and guest Boy George asks Leno what astrological sign he was. Leno answers, I’m a feces.” Boy George is truly shocked and says, “I can’t believe you said that.”
Neither can I. Funny summaries, though I won't ever go back there.
posted by lathrop at 12:13 PM on February 9, 2004

Despite the fact that I may or may not agree with the censorship going on here, I think that the means with which they are accomplishing it is much better than other recent efforts. I'd MUCH rather see citizen groups trying to influence advertisers and businesses, then the government passing legislation forcing everyone to comply to some arbitrary standard.
posted by woil at 1:00 PM on February 9, 2004

I think most of the comments here are funny. If this guy wants to protest and boycott certain programming, isn't that his free speech rights? For sure if the viewpoint of the Clean TV organizer was the other way around (such as the suggestion regarding the 700 Club), most people here would be jumping to sign up. And how is this censorship, BTW, since we're talking private group and not government or corporate collusion?
posted by billsaysthis at 2:00 PM on February 9, 2004

billsaysthis, nobody's disputing his right to say what he wishes regarding media content, or his right to attempt to influence media executives' decisions.

What we're mocking - or I am, anyway - is his obsessive (and revealing) fixation on doodoocaca, his weird tone-deafness, and his misplaced and extraordinarily low threshold of offense.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:38 PM on February 9, 2004

Oh, and his illiteracy.
posted by adamgreenfield at 2:42 PM on February 9, 2004