that just seems silly to me.
It's not silly at all, the FCC never takes a stance. They have been asked over and over again to define what is decent and indecent in these types of situations and they refuse to do so. Cause once they set the standard, then you have a precident to go off of in future instances. If they said that take a stance and say you can play this and its fine, then you have the precident of private ryan and other networks can say "well by your own standards this or that wasn't indecent cause you let them play private ryan, uncut." This way the FCC can pick and choose who they fine and why and you have nowhere to turn and say well you ruled that so and so was ok. Now if someone says "well abc played private ryan" the FCC can say "we never said they could or couldn't". They mostly fine when theres an outcry and a bunch of people write in letters, its not like they go out and do it on their own in most cases. It's the organized relgious factions and housewives from the mid west and such, they write in about Janet Jacksons boob or the gay teletubby. You ask the average joe and no one cared about janets boob, in all honesty I didnt even notice it at the time and my reaction as I am sure many peoples was "oh well, whatever". It wasn't until the news played that 2 second clip ad naseum on a prepetual loop for weeks on end that it became an issue, it's always implant one image in peoples minds over and over and over and make it an issue.