Half of 15 minutes
: The good news: I was on World News Tonight in Jake Tapper’s story about the FCC and the jihad against free speech. The bad news: Because of college football, it appeared only on the West Coast. So it wasn’t seen where it matters: Washington. And I haven’t seen it yet either. Oh, well, those are the breaks. Now I’ll start ranting about America’s jock jihad.
The great indecency hoax: We are not a nation of prudes
: In his upcoming Sunday column, Frank Rich makes the argument I’ve been making for months and I’m damned glad to have company with influence: He says that Americans are not, in fact, storming the FCC demanding a crackdown on indecency; that’s all just a hoax perpetrated by a few well-organized religous nutjobs and a few political cynics at the FCC. Rich is also generous enough to point to my little FCC scoop.
Ever since 22 percent of the country’s voters said on Nov. 2 that they cared most about “moral values,” opportunistic ayatollahs on the right have been working overtime to inflate this nonmandate into a landslide by ginning up cultural controversies that might induce censorship by a compliant F.C.C. and, failing that, self-censorship by TV networks. Seizing on a single overhyped poll result, they exaggerate their clout, hoping to grab power over the culture.
The mainstream press, itself in love with the “moral values” story line and traumatized by the visual exaggerations of the red-blue map, is too cowed to challenge the likes of the American Family Association. So are politicians of both parties.
But Rich puts forth lots of facts and ratings showing that, in fact, we love Desperate Housewives in blue states and red; we are not prudes; we are being misrepresented by the prim ayatollahs and exploitive bureaucrats and lazy reporters and pundits. He ends here:
Those who cherish the First Amendment can only hope that the Traditional Values Coalition, OneMillionMoms.com, OneMillionDads .com and all the rest send every e-mail they can to the F.C.C. demanding punitive action against the stations that broadcast “Desperate Housewives.” A “moral values” crusade that stands between a TV show this popular and its audience will quickly learn the limits of its power in a country where entertainment is god.
I don’t always agree with Rich but you know that I love this column. I’m delighted that Frank Rich in The New York Times and Tom Shales in the Washington Post and Jonathan Alter in Newsweek are using their powerful platforms to question, not to just spread, the too-quickly swallowed conventional wisdom that we are a ntion of prudes. We are not. So here’s hoping that Rich is right and whether it is putting the chill on Saving Private Ryan and driving Howard Stern to satellite or gasping over a harmless if dumb network promotion or whatever comes next, the nannies will go too far and we will finally stand up as one and tell them to put a sock in it.
The objective
: Jay Rosen and other bloggers get some major quote love from Mike France in a Business Week column about whether there is a market for nonpartisan news. France hopes there is.
I talk a lot about the need for a new transparency of perspective and process in the news business — because I believe it will, in the long run, restore credibility. That doesn’t mean that every reporter on every story becomes a partisan. Not every story is red-v-blue; not every story is so simple. But where there is a perspective that’s relevant, isn’t it better to disclose it than not to?
A thousand points of control
: Go read Business Week’s terrific interview with Pierre Omidyar on his unique model for charity. Or maybe it’s not unique; it merely takes the model that works in commerce and media and politics and brings it to charity: Give the people control and they will use it. (Where have I heard that before?)
Omidyar is pioneering a third way, a philanthropy that’s fanatically bottom-up. It’s anti-vision. Anti-dictate. And, in a sense, Omidyar isn’t even choosing how his $10 billion is given away — or to what causes it goes. He wants you to do that.
See also an online Q&A with him here.
: This is what Jim Hake is trying to do with Spirit of America: Letting the people who know identify needs and letting the people who contribute answer them.
: Which reminds me: Please join in the Spirit of America Blogger Challenge and give something, anything. You can contribute via my team and the money will go to building and hosting an Arabic-language blogging tool. You’ll merely be changing the world. Or you can join my team with your blog or give via someone else’s team. Whatever. Just give, please. It’s important for Iraq and America and blogs and the world.
The unholiday
: I went a little farther than over the river and through the woods for Thanksgiving. We came to Toronto, where they’re not having Thanksgiving. It’s a turkey-free zone. And, no, I’m not defecting.
