The industry code on violence of which the Power Rangers fell afoul was drawn up by express command of the regulator. Two earlier drafts were rejected for lack of its approval. Compliance with the code is a condition of licence. Just to be sure no one missed the point, the CRTC hailed the council's ruling with a sharp reminder to those services not covered by the broadcasters' code that it expects them "to review this decision and take action." This is that most insidious form of censorship, where all the wounds are self-inflicted.

When the code was adopted last year, CRTC chairman Keith Spicer assured everyone that, heh-heh, this wouldn't mean the end of Bugs Bunny. It's hard to see why not. Among its strictures is an outright ban on depictions of "gratuitous" violence. Care must be taken not to glamorize violence against women, visible minorities and animals. Children's shows may not take violence ("physical, verbal or emotional") as a central theme, or show violence as a means of solving problems. If that doesn't describe the plot of every Bugs Bunny show down to the last stick of TNT, I don't know what does.

Or if sadistic cartoon rabbits are okay, why aren't alien-fighting, gender- balanced robot-dinosaurs? Granted, the typical Power Rangers episode is a quite demented affair, full of flying bodies and amplified sound effects. But it's no more connected to real violence than a cartoon, and considerably less so than the shows I watched as a boy. Or, for that matter, Hamlet.

Indeed, for some, that's just the problem. "When you watch the show," a representative of a group called MediaWatch complained, "kids never see the consequences (of violence). They never see blood, they never see guts, they never see pain." Presumably if the show were directed by Sam Peckinpah, this fault would be remedied.

As it is, there is no evidence that any child has been traumatized by the program, or harmed in any way. For goodness sake, Anna Quindlen lets her kid watch it. The objection rather seems to be that, well, the kids like it too much. More than 300,000 watch it every day. Of these, a good percentage must surely have their parents' permission. Why are all these happy kids to be deprived of their favourite show? Because two (2) mothers complained to the CRTC that watching Power Rangers turned their otherwise angelic offspring into little monsters. Of course! It was the television!

Many forces have conspired to produce this ludicrous fit of nanny- statism. At bottom, it rests on the deterministic conviction that children, or indeed adults, are no better than laboratory rats, conditioned beyond resistance to mimic whatever they see on television. Or rather, some of what they see: While a vast industry is devoted to counting the number of "violent acts" the average child is exposed to by the age of 18, no one that I am aware of has done a similar study of the number of hugs, smiles, kisses and other kindnesses the same child sees. Television's influence is always uniquely malevolent.

There's no doubt that kids like to act out what they see on the tube. But that's the point: They're acting. One child quoted in the press - Jeff, 9, of Toronto - put it best: "The costumes and the weapons are neat, but I know they're not real and I don't try to be like them." Indeed, it's a safe bet the kids have a better grasp of the difference between fact and fantasy than their overwrought parents. Most kids fight; very few become sociopaths. If your child is so lacking in that basic human empathy that prevents us from hurting others, he's got a lot more problems than a TV show. Or if you're that worried about it, turn the wretched thing off.

The campaign against violence on television is born of a kitsch ideal of childhood, where children must be protected from their own fantasies. It is rooted in those old romantic verities: People are fools, technology is evil, everything is resolved through dialogue. What barbaric age is this, when Mighty Morphin Power Rangers can be driven from the screen while North of 60 lives to torment us all?