This is what's at stake, people.  "A Republic, madame, if you can keep  
it" indeed.

Four articles here:  Rall's article, Jeff Jarvis, John Robb, and the  
Boingsters.  Chock-full-oh-links.

Of particular note:  The GOP moving in lockstep, more dissent (THOUGH  
NOT ENOUGH!) among the Dems.  Check out the ayes and nays in the House.

--

FIRST THEY CAME FOR THE SHOCK JOCKS
UExpress
Wed Mar 10, 8:01 PM ET

	http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=127&u=/uclicktext/20040311/ 
cm_ucru/firsttheycamefortheshockjocks&printer=1

By Ted Rall

The Censoring of Howard Stern

NEW YORK--During the Fifties, actors and screenwriters sympathetic to  
progressive and radical causes found it nearly impossible to get work.  
Though they couldn't prove it, blackballed Hollywood talent knew why  
their telephones had stopped ringing. Somewhere behind the scenes,  
someone powerful, someone who believed that America was composed only  
of two kinds of people--communists and right-thinking souls like  
themselves--was working to silence them.

We tell our kids that America learned from McCarthyism, but a new  
version of the Red Scare is being born in this new century.  
Powerbrokers connected to what Hillary Clinton (news - web sites)  
clumsily called the "vast right-wing conspiracy"--the Bush-Cheney's  
neoconservative war profiteers, the Christian Right and their media  
allies at Fox News and Clear Channel Communications--operate out in the  
open. Their goal: to crush personalities whose influence and eloquence  
threatens their plan to recast the United States in their white,  
heterosexual, pro-business image.

Ironically two of the hard right's recent high-profile speech martyrs,  
Bill Maher and Howard Stern, are libertarians--a group whose distrust  
of big government traditionally prompts them to vote Republican. ABC, a  
subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company--a major political contributor to  
Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and other Republicans--canceled  
Maher's "Politically Incorrect" TV show after 9/11.

Now, over on AM radio, the Bush-controlled Federal Communications  
Commission (news - web sites) has targeted Howard Stern for trumped-up  
decency violations. In a classic tag-team move, Clear Channel  
Communications, the thousand-station-plus behemoth so closely allied  
with the White House that it organized pro-Bush "Rallies for America"  
during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq (news - web sites), declared  
Stern in violation of a brand-new "zero tolerance" policy for on-air  
indecency. "Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to  
protecting our listeners from indecent content, and Howard Stern's show  
blew right through it," Clear Channel Radio president John Hogan said  
before dropping Stern's popular syndicated program--Clear Channel is  
willing to lose money to promote its political agenda--from its  
stations.

Citing three separate FCC (news - web sites) sources, Stern says he  
expects to be hit by a huge fine--then fired. "It's over for me as a  
broadcaster," he said last week. "I'm checkmated. All they gotta do is  
fine [Infinity Broadcasting, Stern's employer] and then we're gone. And  
there's nothing we can do about it." On March 5, he added: "I'm  
guessing that sometime next week will be my last show on this station.  
There's a cultural war going on. The religious right is winning. We're  
losing."

If Clear Channel truly had a true zero tolerance policy on decency,  
Stern points out, it wouldn't have hired foul-mouthed right-wing  
Republican Michael Savage at its KPRC-AM in Houston. (Savage infamously  
shouted that homosexuals should "get AIDS (news - web sites) and die"  
on MSNBC.) The real reason he's being attacked, Stern says, is that he  
dared criticize George W. Bush.

"If you don' t think me going after Bush got me thrown off those  
stations, you got another thing coming," says the "shock jock." "My  
days here are numbered because I dared to speak out against the Bush  
administration and say that the religious agenda of George W. Bush  
concerning stem cell research and gay marriage is wrong. And that what  
he is doing with the FCC is pushing this religious agenda. And also the  
fact that the guy takes more vacation than any President ever...I don't  
think we can stop it, short of me calling up President Bush (news - web  
sites) and saying 'Look man, I'm going to support you, so don't do  
this.'"

The New McCarthyism doesn't always flow from the top down. The New York  
Times, which has published my editorial cartoons for 13 years through  
three presidents, suddenly excised them from its website on March  
1--leaving a Soviet-style hole on its comics page. In an Orwellian  
twist, it even deleted the archives.

"After two years [sic] of monitoring cartoons by Ted Rall we decided  
that, while he often does good work, we found some of his humor was not  
in keeping with the tone we try to set for NYTimes.com," stammered a  
Times Digital spokesperson to Editor & Publisher magazine when  
anti-censorship complaints began coming in. "We...recognize an  
obligation to assure our users that what we publish...does not offend  
the reasonable sensibilities of our audience."

To his credit, the paper's ombudsman wrote that he disagreed with the  
decision.

Those "reasonable sensibilities," a Times insider tells me, have less  
to do with tone than political content: as the most liberal cartoonist  
in a group of ten, my work drew a disproportionate number of emails  
from annoyed Republicans--adding to an already short-staffed  
department's workload. "It wasn't tone. [Times Digital] were sick of  
the hassle," my source says. "They kept other cartoons that were far  
more objectionable."

Cowardice, meet laziness. Time magazine was so afraid of the  
possibility of right-wing hate mail that it stopped running political  
cartoons after 9/11.

The Internet has become the tool of choice for the previously  
powerless. Email forwarding, hyperlinks and blogs--a genre dominated by  
right-wingers--allow anyone with a used Gateway computer and a dial-up  
connection to rally hundreds of likeminded individuals to point and  
click, instantly firing off fiery letters to the bosses of radio talk  
show hosts, cartoonists and columnists who offend their sensibilities.

"Here's the feedback form for Yahoo!'s opinion syndicate," a blog  
called "The Agitator" suggests. "Write and tell them it's time to drop  
Ted Rall's column." "No paper should ever run Rall again," howls Andrew  
Sullivan, a Time magazine columnist who also writes the country's most  
prominent extreme-right blog. "I urge all of our readers to write to  
the NY Times," urges another hate site. "Here is their Contact page. I  
wrote to the publisher this morning."

A few liberals try to censor conservatives, but most opponents of the  
First Amendment reside on the right.

Unlike Congressional staffers accustomed to the phenomenon of mass  
letter-writing campaigns, aging editors at old-school print outlets  
like the Times don't comprehend that they're being fooled and  
manipulated by fringe interest groups--most of whose members don't even  
buy their newspaper--into believing these orchestrated correspondence  
campaigns reflect genuine reader outrage. And so the bullies get their  
way.

The Right is running scared. Their wars and economic schemes are  
revealed to be as fraudulent as their fake president, whose poll  
numbers are plummeting as he turns to face uncharacteristically unified  
Democrats. Because they have no record worth defending and no ideas  
anyone will believe, the new McCarthyites have only one line of defense  
left: censoring their opponents. The question this time is, will anyone  
stand up for free speech?

(Ted Rall is the author of "Wake Up, You're Liberal: How We Can Take  
America Back From the Right," coming in April. Ordering information is  
available at amazon.com.)

--

Jeff Jarvis on the Stern and Freedom vs. American Taliban:

	http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_03_12.html#006516

The Daily Stern Extra

: RADIO SILENCE: Howard Stern is not talking today.

He started his show with a brilliantly edited montage of words from the  
news and from Congress yesterday about free speech and stopping it. He  
mixed it with music of protest and freedom.
And we heard a message he left for his producer, Gary Dell'Abate, in  
the middle of the night saying that he was headed into the station to  
make a show in which he doesn't talk.
Because, if the American Taliban has its way, soon he won't talk.
It is a strong statement, well done.

: Stern did this for the first hour and a half of his show.

: POWELL'S A CHICKEN: Stern said that for his ABC interview show, ABC  
contacted FCC Censor Michael Powell to invite him to be on Howard's  
first show. What better: Howard interviews Powell about broadcast  
standards. Powell refused.

Chicken.

: MORE ALLIES: FreeStern.com [1] has a great list of links to news and  
more.

: THE SEVEN DIRTY PARTS OF SPEECH: The House of Representatives tells  
us what is dirty: [2]

`(b) As used in this section, the term `profane', used with respect to  
language, includes the words `s***', `p***', `f***', `c***', `a******',  
and the phrases `c*** s*****', `m***** f*****', and `a** h***',  
compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases  
with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical  
forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund,  
participle, and infinitive forms).'.

Block that gerund! [via Lost Remote] [3]

: Says Gene Weingarten in the Washington Post:
If lawmakers feel it necessary to write obscenities in order to fight  
obscenity, who am I to make fun of them? Why, that would be as  
ridiculous as making fun of someone who tries to fight obesity by  
eating a rhinoceros.
In short, I am trying to be completely fair here to Doug Ose and the 29  
other harrumphing, schoolmarmish co-sponsors of this bill -- which,  
sadly, reads like the graffiti on the stall in the men's room of the  
American Association of Nose-Pickers and Sexual Deviants. Otherwise  
known as Congress.

[1] http://www.freestern.com/
[2] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:H.R.3687:
[3] http://www.lostremote.com/archives/000489.html

--

 From John Robb:

	http://jrobb.mindplex.org/2004/03/12.html#a4410

A religious right inspired bill to destroy wireless broadcasting and  
crush free speech is starting to work its way through Congress.  The  
concept of "indecency" can be stretched to apply to anything that the  
dominant party in Congress doesn't agree with.  Time to end this  
dangerous farce.  Wireless broadcasting should be treated the same as  
cable or the Internet (BTW, Jeff Jarvis is doing a great job on this  
issue).

The Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004, which passed 391-22,  
would give the Federal Communications Commission the ability to levy  
fines of up to $500,000 per violation, up from the current $27,500.  
Because many shows are syndicated and played on numerous stations  
around the country, fines could run into the millions of dollars.

8:05:42 AM    Comment_4 Trackback [0]

[1]  
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2004/03/12/ 
MNGP65JANJ1.DTL&type=printable
[2] http://www.buzzmachine.com/

--

 From the Boingsters:

	http://doc.weblogs.com/2004/03/12#houseFucksBroadcasting

House fucks broadcasting

Howard's [1] coming in this morning (we live beyond the fringe,  
reception-wise). Sounding like Lenny Bruce, [2] he is. Here's his list  
of "required reading". [3]

Here are mine for this morning: 1) The FCC's "Obscene and Indecent  
Broadcasts" page; [4] and 2) News that the House voted to raise fines  
[5] for "indecent" broadcasts to $500,000. The herd (Jeff Jarvis [6]  
calls [7] them "our American Taliban") voted 391-22 for the Broadcast  
Decency Enforcement Act. [8] (Here's the Senate's variant, still up for  
a vote.) [9]

Here are the Ayes and Nays. [10] One Republican and 21 Democrats voted  
against it. Bless 'em.

So when do they come after the Net? Again? [11]

Fortunately, we're just cockroaches here. [12]

More at Free Stern. [13]

Bonus link: First they came for the shock jocks, [14] by Ted Rall. Good  
read, even though he calls blogs "a genre dominated by right-wingers."

--

[1] http://www.howardstern.com/
[2] http://www.fadetoblack.com/foi/lennybruce/
[3] http://www.howardstern.com/hsc.nsf/requiredreadinglinks?OpenPage
[4] http://www.fcc.gov/parents/content.html
[5]  
http://www.nydailynews.com/03-12-2004/entertainment/story/172670p 
-150532c.html
[6] http://www.buzzmachine.com/
[7] http://www.buzzmachine.com/archives/2004_03_12.html#006516
[8] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:3:./temp/~c108T8zWsV::
[9] http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/D?c108:2:./temp/~c108T8zWsV::
[10] http://clerk.house.gov/cgi-bin/vote.asp?year=2004&rollnumber=55
[11] http://www.epic.org/free_speech/CDA/
[12] http://www.epic.org/free_speech/CDA/
[13] http://www.freestern.com/
[14]  
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/uclicktext/20040311/ 
cm_ucru/firsttheycamefortheshockjocks

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