Grandma's House

Even though they've done it twice before, several ABC stations are balking at airing "Saving Private Ryan" tomorrow night, siting concerns about FCC penalties. This is ridiculous. The stations went so far as to contact the FCC to make sure there would be no problem with airing the movie, but personnel at the FCC would not say one way or the other. They claimed that would constitute censorship. This is an important movie, as it quite accurately depicts what war, specifically World War Two, was like. There is no more foul language in that movie than what you would hear at any sporting event, especially if the home team was losing. Yes, there is a lot of bloody violence. That's what war is like. In one way it could be considered worse than your everyday video game. That way is the fact that the violence depicted in this movie really happened. It happened for a reason. Those men didn't kill each other just to be killing each other, as in gang warfare games. Of course small children should not watch the movie. There are a lot of movies and television programs small children should not watch. There is, unfortunately, a serious lack of parents who prevent them from watching the violence. That is no reason to refuse to show the movie. The television stations need to grow a pair and show the film. If the FCC were going to fine them, they should have done so already. Doing so now would be a serious error by the government.