It’s a (small) comfort that, no matter how threateningly goofball some of the homeland security sorts of proposals may seem these days, we can always count on the EUrocrats to come up with something even more chilling.
A leaked draft initiative from the office of by the European Commission’s Social Affairs Commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou suggests that all those annoyingly demeaning sexual stereotypes of men and women in European advertising and media could be easily defined, and thus permitted or banned, by EU law and courts.
That’s right — if someone decided that the ever-popular (in Europe) Baywatch was demeaning to women, there would be an EU legal and judicial mechanism to ban it from the airwaves.
Through a source, I obtained Diamantopoulou’s detailed and secret, single-spaced, 26-page draft. The document is well thought out, indicating a sizable amount of work had progressed within the European Commission to advance to this late stage. It was not the work of an aberrant or idle commissioner. Apparently, no member of the European media knew of its existence as it passed through the EC labyrinth of bureaucratic offices, reviewers and officials.
Article 4 of Diamantopolu’s proposal is simple but sweeping. It attempts to censor all mass media and advertising in the Continent. The Greek socialist commissioner said her office is seeking to “avoid throughout all forms of mass media notably all stereotypical portrayals of women and men as well as any projection of unacceptable images of men and women affecting human dignity and decency in advertisements.”
None of those terms of “stereotype” and “nacceptable” are actually defined — that would be done later by further regulation and the courts.
Swell. Benny Hill must be spinning (in sped-up fashiong) in his grave.