Castration: The Next TV Frontier

Article here. Excerpt:

'The temperature has cooled, the leaves are turning colors, and the new fall television season has begun. Enter the mudslide. The Shock and Awe manipulators have been unleashed to air evermore graphic sex and grotesque violence -- and, predictably, a combination of the two. The first "winner" in this race to the bottom was the FX cable channel, another sure bet. On Sept.17, viewers of the appropriately named new series "Sons of Anarchy" were "treated" to a graphic castration scene, complete with hacked-off genitals shown lying in a pool of blood.

Completely tasteless programming is in, and FX bathes in it. The mastermind of all that Rupert Murdoch-backed villainy is an executive named John Landgraf, who pronounces his philosophical approach thusly: "One of our writers used to say, 'Bad men do what good men can only dream about.' There is a sense that what these characters are doing is allowing us to explore, in a safe context, our id and subconscious, what we might do if there were no restraints of society or conscience on us.'