Dead Tree Alert: Ready, Aim, Censor!

The newly redesigned print version of TIME magazine includes a newly redesigned version of my column, complete with an author photo, which is mercifully smaller than the one you're forced to look at on this blog.

The first installment of the new-style Culture Complex looks at a theme I first sounded out here at Tuned In: the shift in the TV-decency war from sex to violence, as the people who know how to protect you and your kids from TV better than you do try to ride the 24-era zeitgeist. Here's a taste:

Nipples are so three years ago. Janet Jackson's 2004 flash at the Super Bowl reawoke the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to decency issues and left producers scouring TV footage for too droopy bathing suits. A few fines and a lot of blurred-out prime-time flesh later, the bare-breast buzz has faded from the headlines.

But don't relax yet, River City: the guardians of decency are warning about new trouble, with a capital T, which rhymes with V, which stands for violence....

Buy it on newsstands today, or read it online, where, unlike in the redesigned magazine, you'll find that it looks more or less the same as it did last week. We like to do things the old fashioned way here on the Internet.