"Although I may find the type of programming seen during the 2004 Super Bowl and the 2003 Golden Globe Awards disgusting and disturbing, we must always work hard to defend the cherished freedoms so clearly outlined in our Constitution, including a healthy and free press"
About this Quote
Rogers is doing a neat piece of rhetorical tightrope-walking: he opens with a hard, visceral judgment ("disgusting and disturbing") and then pivots to a principled defense of the very system that allows that material to exist. The move matters. By leading with disgust, he signals solidarity with a culturally conservative audience still stewing over early-2000s flashpoints like Janet Jackson's Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction" and the Golden Globes broadcast that helped trigger the FCC's crackdown on "indecency". Then he refuses the easy endpoint: punishment, censorship, or a moral panic masquerading as public policy.
The intent is less to absolve the broadcasters than to discipline the response. Rogers is effectively saying: you can loathe the content and still be obligated to protect the infrastructure of liberty that produced it. That word "cherished" is doing extra work, wrapping constitutional rights in patriotic sentiment so the defense of a "healthy and free press" doesn't read as elite permissiveness, but as civic duty.
Subtext: this is a warning against the seductive logic of outrage. Those controversies were tailor-made for politicians to grandstand, for regulators to expand authority, and for viewers to demand a cleaner culture by force. Rogers stakes out an older liberal bargain: freedom is most real when it covers speech you wish weren't there. The line also quietly reframes the press as a vital public-health institution ("healthy") rather than a vulgar spectacle machine. In the early 2000s, when broadcast TV still felt like a shared national space, that was a bracing claim: the cure for bad speech isn't a stronger mute button in Washington, it's more speech and more restraint by choice.
The intent is less to absolve the broadcasters than to discipline the response. Rogers is effectively saying: you can loathe the content and still be obligated to protect the infrastructure of liberty that produced it. That word "cherished" is doing extra work, wrapping constitutional rights in patriotic sentiment so the defense of a "healthy and free press" doesn't read as elite permissiveness, but as civic duty.
Subtext: this is a warning against the seductive logic of outrage. Those controversies were tailor-made for politicians to grandstand, for regulators to expand authority, and for viewers to demand a cleaner culture by force. Rogers stakes out an older liberal bargain: freedom is most real when it covers speech you wish weren't there. The line also quietly reframes the press as a vital public-health institution ("healthy") rather than a vulgar spectacle machine. In the early 2000s, when broadcast TV still felt like a shared national space, that was a bracing claim: the cure for bad speech isn't a stronger mute button in Washington, it's more speech and more restraint by choice.
Quote Details
| Topic | Freedom |
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