Wow. Really just wow. The amount of shit these people can spew to protect themselves is incredible. In particular, I am amazed by two of their practices. First, is their viewing board to determine a film’s rating. Second, their appeals process is such a joke. The MPAA specifically has people who are not experts but are ‘normal people’. Additionally, these people ideally have kids in a certain age range and serve for only a certain duration. I think its absolute crap to have ‘normal people’ who really take an unusually strong offense to specific things. They refuse to have experts since they wouldn’t reflect the views of their idea of the average person. Even then, I could easily see if they did have experts, they would be cherry-picked for how they believe specific content would be detrimental to children. Essentially sham scientists. These individuals who serve on the rating board also serve well past their stated term limits. This gives them plenty of time to get friendly and cozy with people in the MPAA and others who interact with it. People such as their appeals board.
Their appeals board is one of the worst examples of nepotism I think I have ever seen. An anonymous group of appeals members show up in a blacked out van and are assigned numbers to which they are referred to for the appeal’s process. The defendant gets no knowledge of who they are, and also, no chance to actually defend themselves or seemingly to speak. I can understand why the MPAA wanted to keep the appeal member’s identities secret. These people are films buyers for that represent huge regions in the film business. I mean, talk about a conflict of interest! Really, just feed the director to 12 lions in an arena, while handcuffed and gagged. You might even have a better chance!
It really can not be anymore glaringly obvious how biased and stacked the MPAA is to only let through the movies that the industry representatives want to have shown. It’s all just done under the guise of protecting families.
Going off of a tangent now, but all this reminds me of another example of just blatant, self serving interest, and this one is even part of the government! The Liquor Authority, at least in New York State. Follows a very similar model. Agents can come through at time they like and bust you for anything they choose. Then they decide the penalties. For any, and I mean ANY, infraction, they can charge up to $10,000 and revoke your license. Don’t like that? Well fortunately, there is an appeal process, go to the very same Liquor Authority that fined you in the first place! There, you will represent yourself against a representative of the Liquor Authority to an arbitrator who is from the Liquor Authority. And if you don’t like their rules at the end of the day, they’d probably tell you to not sell alcohol. The Liquor Authority has no external checks or oversight so anything they do, only has to be approved by themselves.
So maybe in the future, keep an eye out for these kinds of situations. If you get tangled, the best thing I could tell you to do is figure out how to beat them with their own rules.
Mass Media & American Life 
I think your outrage at the MPAA is very justified, and I heavily agree with your point that having “average” people determine the ratings of a film based on nothing but their own personal opinions is a terrible system. The thing that shocks me most about the appeals board is their refusal to allow precedent to factor into their decisions. It’s such a basic concept in any logical argument, and the fact that they won’t allow it points most directly to their corruption, in my opinion. I had no idea the liquor authority was like that…sounds like another instance of an institution wielding their power unfairly in a system that lacks checks of balances.
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I thoroughly enjoy your unbridled tangent on the Liquor Authority offices in NYS. If precedent isn’t a factor in determining an outcome, what exactly are they determining at the MPAA? I wonder specifically what controls they use to prevent a member from simply disliking a film and regulating it into oblivion. I wonder how many good whiskeys have been killed this way…
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