Censorship has been defeated many times. It was defeated in 1800
when Thomas Jefferson assumed the presidency and pardoned those
who had been convicted under the Alien and Sedition Acts. It was de-
feated each time a literary work was removed from the list of the
banned, when authors like James Joyce and D. H. Lawrence could see
their books freely distributed. It was defeated with each court decision
in the twentieth century in which official censorship measures were
overturned. And censorship is defeated each time a local school board
denies a request to remove a book from the school library or from the
course curriculum, and each time Americans tolerate speech on mat-
ters disagreeable or distasteful to them.

Our society has come a long way from the early days of television and
motion pictures, when censors or program sponsors strictly reviewed
scripts for compliance with rigid standards of acceptable expressions.
In the 1960s, for instance, several music groups that appeared on the
"Ed Sullivan Show" had to change the lyrics of any song that might
have offended or worried the producers, and the "Smothers Brothers
Comedy Hour" was abruptly canceled because of its politically irrever-
ent and critical content. Today, on the other hand, television programs
often need to generate some controversy in order to stay on the air. And
a constant challenge faced by contemporary music groups is to prevent
their lyrics from becoming too bland.

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