I realize this is more formally politics than technology but these days all technology is politics and, having started to follow this story I'm unwilling to let it go.

In our last episode, I noted that the FCC's FUD regime had managed to scare a good number of television stations off from showing Saving Private Ryan. Today the NYTimes published a column by Frank Rich on the Private Ryan case and its implications.

Rich's op-ed notes hits several key points, including the fact that this is not just small-town stuff; stations in major markets like Boston, Detroit, Cleveland and Baltimore all cancelled. Rich labels this 'McCarthyism, "moral values" style' and I think he's precisely right. The media is hurtling down the slope of self-censorship and sacrificial lambs pretty much at the same speed it hurtled down the slope of blacklists and naming names forty years ago.

All this is in response to an absurdly tiny majority of complainers. See the BuzzMachine story on how three people managed to get the FCC to slap Fox with a $1.2 million fine.

Rich's column focuses to a significant degree on the relationship of the FCC's actions and the lack of a reality-based grounding for much of what the administration does. I am tempted to dance on the shores of the metaphorical Red Sea here, as I believe that Fox is reaping what it has sown. Even the venerable Times is guilty of complicity in the eradication of truth from the American public consciousness in the past four years, though it seems to have a capacity for self-examination and post-facto realization of error that Fox clearly lacks.

However, despite the visceral satisfaction I'd get from doing that dance, the molding of the debate and public consciousness is far too important a business to be left to petty vengeance. We're all going to drown in this sea, I fear.