We In today’s overly sensitive society, political correctness is everywhere.  Today everything is censored from books to movies, to magazines to even the way people talk and act.  While censorship in the media is important to regulate genuinely offensive material, the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) and other organizations are more likely to ban books like, The Lorax, for portraying the forest industry in a negative way (District of Columbia Public Library) rather than focus on the material in the media that is actually offensive and meant to hurt people.  Even if The Lorax was meant to a tad bit ‘edgy’ our overly sensitive censorship is ruining America’s freedom of speech.  Under the First Amendment, every American has the right freedom of speech.  Meaning they can show their viewpoints in peaceful ways.  The government trying censor what we say on television is a violation of our freedom of speech.  There should not be so much censorship in the media because It is up to the individual person to regulate what they watch and whether or not they deem it to be offensive.  What is considered offensive to some people may not be considered to another; and if America is truly a country that allows freedom of speech like it says in the First Amendment then government censorship should not play as big of a role as it does right now.

                        A lot of people say that censorship in the media is very important because it protects children from violent and disturbing programming.  What these people do not realize is that  what children watch should be up to their parents to moderate. Studies have shown that when children see only material that teaches approved values is a way of stunting kids intellectually because when children only see programs where everyone is happy in the end and nobody is hurt they begin to believe that everything in life is like that; that the world has no struggles and that everything in life will be fair and happy.  Now there is nothing wrong with it but eventually the kids will have to grow up and see the reality, nobody wants a grown man coming up to a kid going “ Hey kid, I lost my dog could you help me find him, ,last I saw him was in that van over there. And the kid going YES, thank you, I would love too help you find that dog, ive seen this in blue’s clues before I know what will happen!  Now I'm not saying that it is important to promote these violent and obscene\ programing to children they just need to know the reality of life.  Things do not always work out in the end and that people are not always going to do the right thing just because they should.  By censoring the material that children watch, they begin to get a sense of this reality before they experience it, so that reality would not hit them as hard or catch them too off guard when they realize first hand that things do not always go their way and that life is not fair.  Also, the responsibility of what children should and should not watch should not be up to government.  A great majority of it should lie with the parents.  With today’s modern technology parents have easy access to parental control blocks for the internet, parental control for TV programing and more.  

            In July of 2012, comedian, Daniel Tosh was performing at the Laugh Factory in California when he tells a joke about a subject that most people tend to be very touchy about, and greatly offended a woman in the audience with the joke and his rebuttal to her heckling.  While it was greatly known that Daniel Tosh has a very dark sense of humor and that he crosses the line of decency at many times, because of censorship in political correctness he was forced to issue a public apology on the matter.  What people need to understand is that they should not go to something or watch something if they know that there may be a very strong chance of being offended by something, because not everyone is offended by the same thing. People should be able to make their own decisions on what they should see and they should know what they are getting themselves into.  Everyone who has ever heard of Daniel Tosh knows his sense of humor so don’t go see him if there is a chance of getting offended. 

Political correctness like this is what ruins an artist’s creativity.  An artist does what they do express their displeasure towards the world through their creative means and for a stand-up comedian the way they express their negative emotions to the world is by making jokes about subjects they feel a connection too.  They make light of a situation or topic that they found to be hurtful, dark or disgusting and make it into something that people can laugh about.  They give people the opportunity to release the stress they have in their lives through laughter and when the media or people try to censor them, it gets in the way of their creativity that they use to allow other people the opportunity to release their endorphins and have a good time.  This is what censorship does to the creative aspect of artists everywhere; it restricts them to the point that they cannot fully express themselves without having someone take offense because of it.

            In today’s society censorship has gone out of hand.  People do not need the government to censor what they can and cannot watch because it is a violation of the First Amendment.  People have the right to be able to watch what they want and learn what they need to learn.  Parents have the responsibility to manage what their children see online, on television and through other forms of media, not the government.  Everyone has their own opinions about what they consider to be too offensive or not and that is a personal opinion that should stay an opinion and not be forced on others.  In comedy for instance, what one person might find offensive, might change another person’s life for the better.  Government censorship and political correctness should not influence the media as much as it does today.

This is a talk about political correctness i had to talk about for my forensics piece.... I forgot the entire thing and improved a 7 minute and 31 second speech about how much i hated writing a speech.  I lost every round

This is why dont do something at the last second!!!!!!!!!!

Keep it classy everyone

-Joe