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 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:
`(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]
: 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.
