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March 01, 2005

On MSNBC's Connected in the 5p ET hour today pointing to blogs on some stories below: the FCC, Godblogs, the Death Penalty, plus NYPD Blue and Jeff Ooi.

: Trey Jackson has video.

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Nevermind the man behind the curtain. I'm demonstrating blogging to some really important people. Guess.

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A small step toward civilization in America

: The Supreme Court outlawed executing minors... at last. Says Kevin Keith at LeanLeft says:

This is a great relief, shamefully overdue. The Times notes that all the countries that until recently executed juveniles have since outlawed the practice, leaving the US the last remaining country in the world to practice this barbarism - behind Iran, China, Pakistan and other garden spots. (Interestingly, with Iran’s change in policy the entire “Axis of Evil” now shuns juvenile execution while the US - until yesterday - still practiced it. The Bush administration supports juvenile executions, and Bush himself presided over the killing of at least 4 teenage offenders in Texas as governor. He now travels the world lecturing other governments on morality.) Since the death penalty was reinstanted in 1976, the US has killed 22 prisoners who were teens at the time of their crimes - one was 16 when the crime occurred....

Nothing makes the inherent savagery of the death penalty more clear than the insane drive on the part of its supporters to kill children.

One True Tami says:

Good going Supremes!

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Senator greases slope with KY

: Sen. Ted Stevens wants to control speech on cable, too.

The Alaska Republican told reporters at the National Association of Broadcasters' annual state leadership convention that the regulations should also apply to premium services such as HBO.

"The problem is most viewers don't differentiate between over-the-air and cable," he said. "Cable is a greater violator in the indecency arena."

Stevens brushed aside constitutional questions about whether the government has the right to regulate indecent speech on pay TV services.

March 02, 2005

Sen. Stevens: Pay TV should comply with indecency regs

By Brooks Boliek
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Ted Stevens, the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, told broadcasters Tuesday that pay TV services should have to comply with the same indecency regulations as over-the-air TV stations.

The Alaska Republican told reporters at the National Association of Broadcasters' annual state leadership convention that the regulations should also apply to premium services such as HBO.

"The problem is most viewers don't differentiate between over-the-air and cable," he said. "Cable is a greater violator in the indecency arena."

Stevens brushed aside constitutional questions about whether the government has the right to regulate indecent speech on pay TV services.

"I think that's wrong," he said. "I think we have the same power to deal with cable as over the air, because of the combination of the two."

Forget about putting the 10 Commandments in stone in government buildings. Can we just etch the First Amendment over the doors there? Dangerous, this guy.

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Can I hear you now?

: Just saw a post about an ear-wax vacuum. The perfect blog post, wouldn't you say. And thanks to the hat tips along the way, I got to follow the meme back from here here to here to here to here and finally to here. Good news travels fast, eh?

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What, no blogging strippers?

: Hugh Hewitt announces the first GodBlogCon: "Let the news ring out throughout the Christian Blogosphere! The first ever Christian Blogosphere Convention is on."

Well, I am a Christian. But I don't think I'll go. I'm a Howard-Stern-loving, gay-marriage-backing, prochoice, Clinton-voting, separation-of-church-and-state, cabernet-guzzling Christian. Something tells me that I'd fit in there about as well as I apparently would at the Kos Konvention. Though I will say that Hugh and I have disagreed online about religion -- and he has invited me on his air to disagree with him -- and he was most cordial; just because we disagreed he didn't call me an atheist ... the way some liberals we know want to call me conservative just because we disagree.

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Bad timing award

: I get to the office on the morning after our demiblizzard last night -- it was a breeze -- and then I get the email announcing the because of the snow, the office is closed.

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FCC follies, continued... and continued... and continued...

: As Gomer (or was it Guber?) would say: Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!

The FCC just decided that the F word in Saving Private Ryan is not indecent, obscene, or profane.

In fact, the FCC turned down three complaints -- on Will & Grace and Arrested Development, too. It's as if, once they got rid of Howard Stern, they could let up.

Except I'm still waiting to hear their ruling on Oprah Winfrey.

The latest wisdom from on high....

: In the Private Ryan case, the FCC says that it found Ryan not indecent in 2001 and 2002 but that 66 stations wouldn't air it this time "citing their uncertainty as to whether it contained indecent material, reportedly based, in part, on Commission indecency rulings subsequent to these previous broadcasts of the film."

Well, yeah: In the Bono case, the FCC decrees that the F word is not only indecent but also profane and says:

...we believe that, given the core meaning of the “F-Word,” any use of that word or a variation, in any context, inherently has a sexual connotation, and therefore falls within the first prong of our indecency definition....

We now turn to the second step of the analysis – whether the broadcast of the phrase at issue here is patently offensive under contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium and therefore indecent. We conclude that the answer to this question is yes. The “F-Word” is one of the most vulgar, graphic and explicit descriptions of sexual activity in the English language. Its use invariably invokes a coarse sexual image.

Pretty clear to me. That's why the 66 stations refused to air the movie. They felt a chill.

The FCC says that this movie would have no impact on children because children wouldn't watch. Oh, yeah, kids have never been drawn to war movies.

I always enjoy the FCC being forced to say dirty words:

The film... contains numerous expletives and other potentially offensive language generally as part of soldiers’ dialogue, some of which is cited by the Complainants. Such language includes: “f***,” and its variations; “hell”; “ass” and “a**hole”; “crap”; “son of a bitch”; “bastard”; “s***” and its variations, including “bulls***” and “sh***y”; “p***k”; and “pee.” For the purpose of this discussion, we will assume arguendo, that this material meets the first and second components to our analysis of whether it is patently offensive, in that at least some of the language is graphic and explicit, and is repeated throughout the course of the three and a half-hour broadcast of the film.

But here's my favorite part of the ruling, when the FCC argues itself out of this corner. It does so by arguing that Ryan is art.

So that puts the FCC in the position of being the national art critic. The FCC says what is art and what is not. The FCC judges the value of our speech. The FCC is no a censor, it's a f**king critic. Just what we need.

Deleting all of such language or inserting milder language or bleeping sounds into the film would have altered the nature of the artistic work and diminished the power, realism and immediacy of the film experience for viewers. In short, the vulgar language here was not gratuitous and could not have been deleted without materially altering the broadcast. In this context, we must proceed with caution and exercise restraint given “the high value our Constitution places on freedom and choice in what the people say and hear.”

But only what the FCC says it thinks we should say and hear.

That is Constitutionally indecent, obscene, and profane.

(I will confess I added asterisks because this is a segment now on MSNBC.)

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The Official Liberalometer Test

: I'm getting tired of this playground scuffle but, hell, I'll give it one more shot before the recess bell rings.

Armando at Daily Kos labeled me right-wing and I called him on it. So, as the self-appointed arbiter of All Things Liberal, he decided to put me to the test. He posted in the comments below; I replied; both here: Armando:

Jeff:

I took some time to more carefully reread your blog posts, which, truthfully, I had not done before, more of a skim job.

I have some issues:

In January, you really softpedalled the Armstrong Williams story, particularly burying the lead - the use of government dollars. Jay Rosen called you on it, and you sort of grudgingly accepted the point but let it drop. One post. Nothing more.

Why? Was it not important in your mind. How about the other journalists who were revealed as getting government dollars? Did you knowingly bury the story? I doubt it, but something led you to softpedal the story.

Then the Zephyr thing. Your kid gloves for Zephyr made no sense to me. Jerome was clearly falsely slimed by her. She flat out lied. She altered her story to try and explain but that's hardly an explanation for spreading a false smear in the first place. I won't speak on kos.

And then you act as if she is qualified to discuss ethics when by her own words she indicts herself as having attempted an unethical act. Trippi denied it as did other people. How can you act as if she could possibly discuss ethics in any context after that? That was disgraceful to your conference and a very poor show by you. Why Jeff did you not speak to THAT?

As for you silly criticisms of people defending themselves against outrageous false charges, I really don't know how you can defend your attitude there. Your outrage comes out pretty quickly for other folks as well as yourself. Have you considered how you would react if such charges were levelled at you? Why you took that tact, I can't say, but it certainly is nothing to be proud of (to be sure I am quite the hothead myself and find myself apologizing all the time for overreacting, but I think I can be honest and see that in myself and acknowledge a failing.)

Finally, your comments on some folks' reactions, including mine, to the Iraq election is pretty ad hominem wouldn't you say? Eeyore? I mean, I certainly could be wrong but I didn't reach my opinion on a whim or on a hope for failure. My gawd, would that I am completely wrong. That is my hope. But my opinion is an honest one and not completely unfounded.

In light of that, something I did not know when I labelled you Right Wing BTW, I am quite surprised that you take such umbrage at my opinion that you are Right of Center, intended descriptively mind you, not pejoratively. I thought you were Right Wing.

Now I think I would more properly call you Right of Center and very much more fixated on the sins of the Left than on the sins of the Right.

One incident in particular makes me think this - you describe the exchange between Yglesias and Powerline on Powerline's hate speech (and it is that Jeff) intelligent and civil. Well, it may be civil, but it is also brutal. Yglesias basically labels Powerline liars. Correctly in my opinion. So have I labelled them liars and purveyors of hate speech.

You criticize their "obsession" with Carter. The problem is not the obsession Jeff, as you MUST know. The problem is calling him a traitor. Is that not as offensive as calling Bush a fascist? Oh BTW, have you ever seen Bush referred to as a fascist in a front page post at Dailykos? You know the answer Jeff. No, you have not. Because that would be a ridiculous statement.

And yet your condemnation of dailykos knows no bounds. But Powerline is still a nice group of GOP bloggers, intelligent and civil. That, in my mind, is troubling. It seems to me that it is difficult to expect to be viewed as Left of Center based on that record. OR Centrist really. No, the evidence is indicative of a Media Gadfly mostly concerned with criticism of the Left.

Now you are a Democrat, and I'm happy to hear that. But I really don't think you have much of a complaint regarding being labelled a Right of Center Media Gadfly. I think it an accurate description. BTW, there is nothing wrong with that.

My response:

Gee, Armando, I didn't know you were the official arbiter of what's liberal. If I'd passed your test, would I have gotten a Liberal License? A Liberal T-Shirt, perhaps? A Liberal Membership Card?

On Williams: Gosh, I did say a lot about him but I didn't say it on the blog. I said it, for example, on WNYC. NPR. I think that is Officially Liberal. Right, Liberal Cop?

On Zephyr: Well, I think you may have some conflict of interest on that one, being a Kosite.

On the Iraqi election: There were plenty of Eeyores. You know, I was wrong about calling Juan Cole Pondscum. Professor Eeyore would have been a far better name.

As for Yglesias: I was referring to Matthew's criticism being civilized (as opposed to your and Oliver's one-word swipes). Surely Matthew passes your Official Liberal Test.

As for Kos: When your pal said what he said about the men killed in Iraq, he made us -- yes liberals -- look bad. We do criticize our own. We should.

Note, well, Armando that you did not make this judgment based on a SINGLE issue or stand. You made your Official Liberalometer Meter Reading based on whether I criticized your enemies or praised your friends.

I repeat: You and Oliver and Kos and company look upon the Democratic Party as your little club.

What did Groucho say again?

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