As the government debate over clamping down on broadcast ‘indecency’ ratchets up, John Doyle is getting a bit tired of hearing the crackdown described as a response to a genuine swelling of public outrage, rather than as a private crusade of the American ultra-right. After all, if the public were truly the main concern, why wouldn’t the hearings being held to confront the spectre of Janet Jackson’s exposed breast and Howard Stern’s potty mouth be held, well, in public? “Nothing that happens behind closed doors is genuinely in response to a populist concern. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be necessary to go behind closed doors.”