Which is the true obscenity?

Many have decried the lowering of standards in the culture, invoking Senator Pat Moynihan's memorable phrase "defining deviancy down," and pointing to such well publicized examples as Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" during the 2004 Superbowl.





However, much less has been said, particularly by these cultural critics, about the fact of a well known self-proclaimed and highly influential "Christian preacher" such as Rev. Pat Robertson using his nationally televised soapbox, The 700 Club to call for the assassination of international leaders whom he dislikes. As the New York Times points out points out,

Pat Robertson, the conservative Christian broadcaster, has attracted attention over the years for lambasting feminists, "activist" judges, the United Nations and Disneyland.

Now Mr. Robertson has set off an international firestorm by saying on his television show that the United States should kill the Venezuelan president, Hugo Chávez, a leftist whose country has the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East.

"If he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it," Mr. Robertson said Monday on his show, "The 700 Club." "It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop."

Here is Robertson on CNN offering the government this advice. (And Here is Jon Stewart's brilliant take on this, which undercores the blatant hypocricy of those who would, on the one hand, see the brief televised flashing of a female nipple as a crime, while on the other, would defend the likes of Robertson spweing hate speech as freedom of expression.)

Unfortunately, Robertson gets to keep his soapbox, because the 700 Club is carried, via contract stipulation, by the Family Channel, which Robertson sold to Fox, which then sold the Family Channel to Disney. At the same time, the FCC, acting at the behest of mostly religious and cultural conservative, issued record fines against CBS, which broadcasted the Superbowl halftime show.

Incidentally, Hugo Chavez is still waiting for the United States Justice Department to get back to him after requesting that it investigate Robertson's calls for his murder.