FunctionalAmbivalent

This Country of Ours

Three weeks into his Presidency, President Obama went to Elkhart, Indiana, to make a point for the TV cameras. To do it, he took questions from an audience made up of whoever wanted to come see the President. After eight years with a President who would only face crowds of pre-screened loyalists asking vetted, positive questions, the new guy faced a first-come-first-served crowd in a city that voted against him 55-45.

My favorite moment was when an Elkhart resident named Tara Nisley screwed up all of her courage, stood up to the microphone and asked an impolite question of the most powerful man in the world.

"You've come to our county and asked us to trust you, but those that you have appointed to your Cabinet are not trustworthy and can't handle their own budget and taxes," she said.
...
"I made a mistake," Obama said.

There are moments when I love this country so much I could just bust, and this is one of them. Just regular folks taking the President to task on what's important to them, not to the pundits or the pollsters or the strategists in Washington. And the President has to take it, because that's the way this country works.

And Tara Nisley is my new hero.

The Goal Is, of Course, To Keep Everyone Afraid of Something

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell, a Republican veteran of the 2000 Florida recount debacle, fights the Fairness Doctrine using scare tactics:

Speech limits might not stop at radio. They could even be extended to include the Internet and “government dictating content policy.” McDowell raised that as a possibility after talking with bloggers at the Heritage Foundation in Washington D.C.McDowell spoke about a recent FCC vote to bar Comcast from engaging in certain Internet practices – expanding the federal agency’s oversight of Internet networks.

Look, the Fairness doctrine is stupid and a violation of free speech, there's no question about that. But the chances of it being applied to the Internet are zero, and no one knows that better than an FCC Commissioner.

The legal logic of the Fairness Doctrine -- the only thing that got it through the courts in the first place -- is that the broadcast spectrum used by TV and radio stations belongs to the public and must be used for the public good. Attempts to apply the fairness doctrine to communications not using the public airwaves -- mostly by Republicans, mostly concerning sex and dirty words -- have never got any traction in the courts.

McDowell knows what he said isn't true. The Comcast "content" decision he cited as precedent was, in fact, a ruling endorsing the free flow of content -- in other words, exactly the opposite of what McDowell implied. He made his statement in front of a group of conservative bloggers, and this little bit of fiction was clearly designed to keep them in a state of agitation.

Funny how often conservatives make stuff up to keep the base on-message, isn't it?

Pulpit Full of Trouble

Current law says that a church can't endorse political candidates. If it does, it can lose its tax-exempt status. That would effectively kill most churches.

So, in May, Pastor Gus Booth stood in the pulpit of Warroad Community Church in Warroad, Minnesota,  and announced:

If you are a Christian, you cannot support a candidate like Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton for president.

Then he sent a letter to the Internal Revenue Service telling them that he had broken the law.

Pastor Booth is, obviously, a troublemaker. I, obviously, disagree with what he said. In fact, I think it's a stupid and counterproductive thing to say. But if there's a Pastor Booth defense fund somewhere I want to contribute, because the ban on politics in the pulpit has long struck me as a most egregious violation of the First Amendment.

It seems to me that speech from the pulpit should be triple protected. First, it should be protected because all speech should be protected, period. Second, it should be protected because even people who think government ought to be able to ban, for example, naughty photographs think that political speech should be absolutely protected. And third, given that we're a country founded on the free exercise of religion, a pastor speaking to his or her congregation ought to be able to say anything at all without fear of government penalty.

There is an argument to be made that churches shouldn't be tax deductible because that is government support of religion. I don't subscribe to that argument, myself, but in any case it's not relevant here. In this case, the law would penalize a church for saying a particular thing. Pastor Booth, explaining his action, gets things just right.

"The government is trying to censor me and other religious leaders," Booth told ABC News. "I may be taking on the IRS, but the IRS has taken on the Constitution unchallenged since 1954. I feel like the only law that should dictate what I am allowed to say is the First Amendment."

And the First Amendment dictates that that Pastor Booth can say whatever he pleases, and if you don't like it get up out of the pew and walk out of the service.

Often enough, the people fighting for the First Amendment are people who aren't, in most ways, admirable. Larry Flynt might have made a good case, but he's not someone you'd associate with in other circumstances. I, personally, am relieved that there's someone like Pastor Booth who's willing to step up, in the finest Christian tradition, and raise a ruckus. His congregation, which is presumably supporting him in his troublemaking, deserves all of our gratitude as well. The whole bunch of them, clean-cut Minnesotans up on the shores of Lake of the Woods, is raising exactly the kind of hell we need more people to raise.

The Video Clip That Changed How I Feel About Government Censorship of Television

And one other thing: Am I the only one disturbed by the close resemblance, after years of plastic surgery, between Roseanne Barr and elderly newspaper columnist Margaret Carlson?

They Know It Was Designed To Be Titillating Because They,Themselves, Were Titillated

Professional prigs at the Parents Television Council have complained to the FCC about a CW show that showed a naked model with her body blurred so that it was not visible. Invisibility is apparently not a defense, at least in the eyes of PTC President Tim Winter.

Winter said the scene was not “simply a matter of artistic freedom. Rather this is about a television network intentionally pushing the envelope to establish a new acceptable nudity standard for the broadcast medium.” He opined that the entire scene was “gratuitous and undoubtedly intended to titillate.”

CW has yet to comment on the complaint, but here's what they should say:

Fuck off.

They won't, of course. But they should.

As to the coherence of Winter's argument: of course the scene was a matter of artistic freedom. The job of television is to attract an audience and the job of creative people is to find ways to do that. Keeping government out of that creative process is the very definition of "artistic freedom." As to it being "gratuitous," well, it's a television show, for heaven's sake. About models. On CW. What else could it be but gratuitous?

If you don't like it, change the channel. Maybe even turn the TV off. But one way or the other, get therapy. You're offended by nudity you can't see.

Verizon Wants To Be Your Big Brother

According to the New York Times, Verizon has decided it can control the text messages that Verizon subscribers can request on their cell phones.

Saying it had the right to block “controversial or unsavory” text messages, Verizon Wireless has rejected a request from Naral Pro-Choice America, the abortion rights group, to make Verizon’s mobile network available for a text-message program.

The other leading wireless carriers have accepted the program, which allows people to sign up for text messages from Naral by sending a message to a five-digit number known as a short code.

Text messaging is a growing political tool in the United States and a dominant one abroad, and such sign-up programs are used by many political candidates and advocacy groups to send updates to supporters.

Verizon is a common carrier. That means it provides the wires -- metaphorically -- and has no control of over what travels over them. Clearly, Verizon is under the impression that it should have the power to tell grown-ups in a free society what they're allowed to communicate over the cell phones they pay for.

Thus is Verizon an enemy of  your freedom. If they're allowed to block one kind of message, they're allowed to block any kind of message.

As it happens, my family's cell phone contract with Sprint is up this month. What do you think the chances are that I'll consider Verizon for even one second?

Tip-off from best blog buddy New MexiKen.

UPDATE: Verizon takes enough heat in the marketplace that it decides to let NARAL communicate with those who request communications. However, the issue of whether common carriers can decide for their subscribers what messages to let through remains:

But legal experts said private companies like Verizon probably have the legal right to decide which messages to carry. The laws that forbid common carriers from interfering with voice transmissions on ordinary phone lines do not apply to text messages.

In reversing course today, Verizon did not disclaim the power to block messages it deemed inappropriate.

Expect more trouble in the future.

More On Ahmadinejad

Reason Online makes the same point I made, but better -- which may be why their writers get paid. They also highlight the authoritarian urges of the base:

Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) tried to juice up his bottom-tier presidential campaign by announcing he'd "introduce legislation in Congress to disqualify Columbia University from any future federal support." Another Republican contender, Mitt Romney, grandstanded even more shamelessly, proclaiming that the Iranian shouldn't have received an entry visa in the first place. If you suspected that Silver and Hunter represent just a tiny sliver of the electorate, Romney's statement should give you pause. Romney isn't an ordinary flesh-and-blood candidate, after all; he's a machine calibrated to say whatever is most likely to emerge from a focus group of Republican primary voters.

And those Republican voters don't understand that freedom is power, not weakness.

Freedom Works. Again. You'd Think the Uber-Patriots On the Right Would Learn.

There were those on the right wing who would not have allowed Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to speak at Columbia University, that there are people or ideas so offensive that they do not deserve to be heard. The invitation to speak at Columbia, many on the right sputtered, gave legitimacy to Ahmadinejad and the terrorist-supporting regime over which he nominally presides.

It is naïve to ignore the uses to which Ahmadinejad will put his invitation. Over the past years, Ahmadinejad’s confrontational rhetoric and policies have resulted in diplomatic isolation and economic hardship for Iran. These developments are unpopular among Iranians. It is beneficial to Ahmadinejad and his regime, then, if he can claim to the Iranian people that his leadership is not hurting their country. If he can demonstrate that he is treated abroad as a respected leader, he will be better able to counter his critics at home. Columbia’s invitation thus gives political assistance to Ahmadinejad.

As always, the sanctimonious censors are wrong. Far from conferring legitimacy on Ahmadinejad, Columbia provided a forum in which he could demonstrate that he is an almost clownish liar and bigot. For example:

In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like in your country...In Iran we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who’s told you that we have this.

The derisive laughter heard through much of Ahmadinejad's presentation demonstrates that the power of free speech is not just in the beautiful, inspirational things that are sometimes said, but in the exposition of the ridiculous and offensive as well.

When I was in the ad business, I had a boss who liked to say, "The quickest way to kill a bad product is to advertise it." That's true of ideas as well as products. Had the right wing succeeded -- had Columbia backed down and dis-invited the President of Iran -- a terrific advertisement for just what's wrong with the Islamic world would have been prevented. The propaganda victory would have been theirs, not ours. Ahmadinejad would have received his political assistance, all right, by demonstrating that America so hates Muslims it won't even let one speak in public. Instead, he demonstrated to Muslims around the world why he is not fit to be their spokesman.

Because Columbia stood up to the pressure of authoritarians like Rush Limbaugh and the rest -- people who seem to understand little about why the First Amendment came first -- the bad guys suffered a loss and the good guys scored a victory. In my book, that counts as a pretty good day.

Maybe now we can get the right to think of freedom as a strength and not a weakness.

Let Me Just Take Advantage of the Loophole In the Law That Permits Use of the Word "Moron"...

New York's City Council is considering a law that would outlaw use of the word "bitch". There is no sane person in the world who thinks that law would pass Constitutional muster, but the politicians waste time drafting and passing it anyway so they can preen in front of their constituents.

The Reason We Have Rights That Supercede the Will of the Majority Is That Lots of People Are Incredibly Stupid

According to this report, about half of Americans support a revival of the odious Fairness Doctrine. As if that weren't bad enough, 34% believe the government should have the power to enforce "fairness" on Internet websites.

Can you imagine the censorship bureaucracy we'd have to set up to enforce that?

Another interesting point:

Liberals support the measure by a 51% to 33% margin while conservatives are opposed by a 48% to 40% margin.

That's because liberals believe increasingly that the media are biased in favor of conservatives and want to use the government -- which they temporarily control -- to enforce quantitative parity. It's difficult for me, personally, to imagine anything less liberal than the kinds of Free Speech intrusions the Fairness Doctrine causes, but then there's a big difference between what "liberal" means and what has come to be defined by "Liberal" in the political sphere. Which is to say: There's nothing particularly liberal about the Democrat left.

The Republican opposition to the Fairness Doctrine may have something to do with Conservative belief in small government, except that Republicans don't believe in small government when big government works to their advantage. I'm guessing Conservative disagreement with the Fairness Doctrine has a lot to do with talk radio, which is an overwhelmingly Conservative medium and sees the Fairness Doctrine as an existential threat. The Rush Limbaughs of the world have thus dedicated enormous amounts of airtime to ginning up a vigorous opposition to the Fairness Doctrine.

The issue of freedom of speech should not, of course, be decided based on one's political affiliation. We should all be dedicated to the First Amendment even if it means we're sacrificing some temporary political dvantage or that we occasionally run into speech that offends us. But that's not how we work anymore; each side seems equally willing to sacrifice basic rights so long as it works to their short-term benefit. The result of that, of course, is a constantly diminishing pool of rights for all of us, and increasingly powerful and oppressive government.