Next, they come after the internet...
: I've warned you that after the national nannies attack broadcast, they'll come after cable ... and then the internet.
Sen. Ted Stevens, the aging fool who vows to censor cable, now hints that he'll go after our medium.
But in all honesty, it's hard to tell whether he's targeting the internet... or whether he's just an ignorant, confused, old fool. He says:
We ought to find some way to say, here is a block of channels, whether it’s delivered by broadband, by VoIP, by whatever it is, to a home, that is clear of the stuff you don’t want your children to see.
Well, of course, VoIP is
voice over internet protocol -- that is, it's the next-wave phone -- and unless the addled fool plans to start censoring your phone calls -- who knows? he could get that in his cobwebby head:
no more phone sex! -- then it seems to be this dangerous dinosaur is just confused about one technology or another: Broadband. Cable. VoIP. Broadcast....It's all just so much newfangled whippernsapper stuff, you know. Oh, I do certainly believe that Stevens would censor the internet, given half a chance. But I don't know whether that's what he's trying to say here.
The rest of the transcript is sadly inarticulate. A few other goodies: On cable:
I intend to try and level the playing field. I take the position that at the time the Supreme Court made its decision about cable, cable was just one of the ways for public access to television products. Today 85 percent of the television that is brought to American homes is brought by cable and I believe that the playing field should be leveled. We have imposed this as a standard on local broadcasters. Under the law, we compel cable to carry those local broadcasters.
First, the right way to level the playing field is to acknowledge that broadcast is no longer ubiquitous and special and that the
exception to the Constitution carved out for broadcast censorship is no longer valid and all media should have First Amendment protection. The level playing field should be a field of free speech and control by the marketplace, not government censors. Second, must-carry regulations, love them or leave them, have
nothing to do with the FCC's indecency authority or the Supreme Court rulings in this arena. You're mixing apples and kumquats, Senator.
He says he wants a rating system for cable as the movies have. He says that without that rating system, they would have censored movies. Try that these days, bud!
He says he delayed markup of the bill because he's going on his honeymoon 25 years after getting married. Leave the Viagra at home, fella: If we can't have fun, niether can you. And...
As I said to that group downtown a couple of weeks ago, I’m not a prude, I like to watch the Sopranos once in a while. I turn them off once in a while, too, but I was sitting there the other night signing my mail and I had on this one program and all I heard was four letter words and participles. Now, when I served in World War II most of us didn’t have very good vocabulary, so that’s why we used those things, those four letter words, but they’ve got better writers than that. They can say the same thing without doing that.
Those nasty participles!
Senator, I want to introduce you to a fancy newfangled device: It's called a remote control. It has an off button and a channel button and you can hit either of them whenever you want. You don't want to hear them danged particples, fine, change the channel. Maybe I do want to hear those participles and the people who say them want to say them. So who the fuck are you to say what I shouldn't hear? And who the fuck are you, Senator, to judge how writers write and what they write? Our founding fathers did not envision that you should become the national nanny, the national editor, the national censor, the national critic, or the national grammarian. Run the damned government, man, and leave the culture to the culture. That is not, never has been, and never should be your job. Yet more:
I think that standard ought to come back in our life – no just to protect children, but let’s get off of this stuff of using, we see it everywhere now. As a matter of fact, many people that I know use four letter words and participles more than we did in the Army. I just don’t understand why we can’t be more of a civil nation. Ok? And, I’m getting old, so I can say those things. All right?
And if I want to say fuck I will say fuck.
He'd be sad and funny if he weren't so dangerous.
White male blogger II
: There are tons of comments on the post below (naturally; isn't that why Steven Levy chose this topic)? This one really irked me:
And sorry but I don't agree with Jeff Jarvis' rant about "so what if I'm a white male blogger." That's akin to saying, "So what if Harvard president Larry Summers says something derogatory about women's innate abilities in math and science... he's just trying to be provocative." Summers' comments do matter. They reveal his prejudices and his point of view. And he's in a unique policy-making position. And, yes, I'm a Harvard grad of the female persuasion. Eegads, did I really say that on my blog? Well what the heck... it's true. Now link to me, dammit!
Well, damnit, don't you see that by lumping me in with Summers you are doing to me exactly what Summers is doing to you: You are making assumptions about me just because of my gender and race. You go after Summers because of what he
says. You go after me because of what I
am.
If that's not a case of white female bigotry, it is at least a case of hypocrisy and sloppy thinking.
Harvard, eh?
: Oh, and here's my report card from Halley.
...
