Verdict in
: Not that we should care, but the Jackson verdict will be read at 4:30p ET.
: It’s funny: I was at this Annenberg roundtable thing about high-fallutin’ topics like press and democracy and no one was supposed to be interested in the verdict but, still, they put the trial up on the big screen above our heads even as I sat there on a panel pontificating about citizens and media. So we’re all tacky….
Input meets output
: Martin Tobias finds a neat little application that tracks the links people click on on your blog.
Our man in Tehran
: Hoder is reporting from Iran (on dial-up with his own domain blocked).
Using the innocents, continued
: I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want to redo the International Freedom Center to turn it from an flagellation fest into a celebration of democracy and freedom in America.
No, I want to eliminate it.
The memorial at the World Trade Center should say everything that needs to be said.
So in the place of the so-called Freedom Center, I want to see the truest expression of American freedom: commerce.
I want to see stores that sell scanty clothes, no burkas allowed.
I want to see restaurants that serve liquor.
I want to see movies that show anything, even sex.
I want to see bookstores that celebrate free speech.
I want to see stores selling products from all over the world: the fruits of globalization.
I want to see life there. Defiant, unapologetic life.
: Just to be clear (reacting to a comment): I am not talking about the memorial; I endorse the memorial. It is this — as Ed Cone put it — noise around that from the Freedom Center that is bothersome.
So don’t bother with the Freedom Center, not here. Let the memorial speak for itself. And hand the rest of the space back to the living. That’s what I’m trying to say, in my hyperbolic way.
Declaration of f’ing independence
: Esquire rips a web-page out of the Parents Television Council’s play book with a declaration of independence you can sign and send to the FCC with a click. Howard Stern is our founding father.
The history of the present Federal Communications Commission is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over the airwaves, bringing with it a tyrant’s notion of “decency.”
To prove this, let the Facts be submitted to a candid world….
The FCC should be reminded that all radios and televisions have a button. This is called an “off” button, and it can be used when citizens find broadcast content to be disagreeable. It strikes us as tiresome to have to repeat this old remonstrance, but whatever. Furthermore, there now exists all manner of filters and blocks that can be used by parents and guardians to protect children from content that is not suitable for them. We, however, are not children, and we will not be treated as such by our government….
…the radio host Howard Stern does not lack for literary merit. Rather, he is part and parcel of a long, ribald tradition of gloriously undignified art that includes Rabelais, Henry Miller, and James Joyce, all of whom discussed “fingerbanging” in one way or another.
The radio host Howard Stern does not lack for educational merit. Rather, he is charting the sexual mores of our great nation, much like noted anthropologist Margaret Mead did….
In every stage of his oppressions, Howard Stern has petitioned for redress. He has railed against the FCC on his radio show, urging the citizenry to vote against one George W. Bush. He engaged in a tense discourse with former FCC chairman Michael Powell on the air, pointing out that television talk-show host Oprah Winfrey also discusses anal and oral sex in detail but is not equally oppressed because she is beloved by the media aristocracy and gives away motorized carriages to her audience….
For when faced with the termination of his astonishingly high-paying job, when faced with censure from his very own employer, Howard Stern refused to do what most of us would do: He refused to make accommodations. Rather, he declared revolution. And this is a great and good thing. This is the very act that defines a hero. This is the very act that defines an American man.
And now as a free and independent radio host, he will be able to discuss masturbating to Aunt Jemima at his discretion. It’s possible that he will be discussing masturbating to Aunt Jemima to a total of four listeners. But this makes him no less a patriot. God bless Howard Stern, and God bless America, land of the free, home of lesbian porn stars and angry drunken dwarves.
I signed and clicked. In fact, be like the PTC: sign and click often.
: ALSO: Here’s a very nice vlog showing the absurdity of PTC complaints against Arrested Development.
