Your Daily Indecency News: The House passes an indecent indecency bill, 391-22, upping maximum FCC fines to $500,000, up from $27,500 per station & $11,000 per individual. A single "fuck" on the radio can now cost you a half-million dollars. Also, the FCC handed out a new quarter-million-dollar fine, because some dude was talking about Ron Jeremy on the radio. William F. Buckley, apparently still alive, calls it all "brilliant" and "impressive." Marie Osmond suggests signing up her "safe" new radio show. I think I'll go get a drink.

03/12/2004 09:18 PM  |  Comment (16)

Two Spaniards Post Over at Tim Blair's Site

03/12/2004 08:51 PM  |  Comment (1)

The Autistic Monkey Vote: Amy Alkon:

I'm no Democrat, and I loathe Kerry, but I'd vote for an autistic monkey before I'd vote for Bush.

03/12/2004 08:41 PM  |  Comment (35)

Dept. of Bad Third-Base Coaches: Angels Win, Cubbies Lose.

03/12/2004 08:40 PM  |  Comment (4)

What the Hell … Screw Hockey!

03/12/2004 08:39 PM  |  Comment (6)

Hey! Check out the Shifty Arab Dude!

03/12/2004 08:39 PM  |  Comment (1)

Check Out Fought Down Over at Alt-Country Tastemaker Site Miles of Music: Where you can buy four records & get a great deal on shipping. Layne has recommendations. MoM also has a nice mini-review of us, including the winning phrase: "hard honky-tonk for the punk rocker in you."

03/11/2004 11:05 PM  |  Comment (0)

So, Who Wants To Get Their Tails Kicked at Fantasy Baseball?: I'm in this $10 CBS Sportsline league called The Barn Burners, along with Howard Owens, and we need some fresh meat to kill. Automated draft, 5x5 scoring (whatever that means). My team, The Replacements, stomped everyone to dust last year; and the successor Corvids are ready for a two-peat. Send an e-mail to Howard, since I don't understand this "Internet" stuff, and join the pointless fun! Speaking of which, I hope Commish Tony can find a moment in his busy girl-impressing schedule to set up my Pasty League #2.

03/11/2004 09:50 PM  |  Comment (6)

Spanish Embassy Address, for Flower-Senders and Vigil-Attendees: Via InstaPundit, it's
2375 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20037
tel: 202.452.0100

The L.A. Consulate is at:
5055 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 960
Los Angeles, CA 90036
tel: 323.938-0158/0166

I assume that the L.A. office, too, will hold a silent vigil tomorrow; I don't have time to look for confirmation, but if anyone finds it please post in the comments.

03/11/2004 04:10 PM  |  Comment (1)

L.A.'s Other Main Public Radio Station Cancels a Program for Saying 'Fuck': From the LA Weekly:

L.A. Theater Works’ recorded-play series, The Play’s the Thing, is the latest casualty in a national cabal against dirty words.

On February 13, KPCC 89.3 FM pulled the series because of the words "fuck" and "shit" spoken by characters in a February 7 rebroadcast of Oliver Goldstick’s off-Broadway hit, Dinah Was (about singer Dinah Washington). In October, president of Southern California Public Radio Bill Davis warned L.A. Theater Works Producing Director Susan Loewenberg that the station would drop the broadcasts "immediately and permanently if LATW persists in delivering programs to KPCC with obscene or indecent language." Loewenberg says she repeatedly sought clarification of policy from the station over whether potentially offensive plays should run with a listener advisory or be bleeped. She says she never heard back and that Dinah Was ran twice in two years with the listener advisory.

03/11/2004 04:00 PM  |  Comment (5)

PEN Condemns Ruth Seymour: The free-press organization is calling for Loh's reinstatement. Excerpt:

PEN is deeply concerned that KCRW's management preemptively silenced a voice without the FCC first taking action.

PEN USA has long warned against such self-censorship. Stephen Rohde, PEN Vice President of Freedom to Write Domestic, and a constitutional lawyer, said, "KCRW, normally a place for innovative and charismatic programming, has denied its audience an independent, inventive voice out of fear that the government might reprimand the station. Given all the circumstances, the FCC might well not have taken any adverse action at all. But now, KCRW has taken the most draconian step all by itself."

03/11/2004 03:45 PM  |  Comment (0)

What Horror: Condolences to my Spanish friends, and your lovely wounded capital.

03/11/2004 02:20 PM  |  Comment (0)

If You Are Going to Read Anyone on the Gay Marriage Debate, I Suggest Reading Jonathan Rauch: A federalist champion of liberal science and democracy, who writes carefully and happens to be gay. In addition to this column at Reason Online (which has been on a roll lately), he's got another good one in the new issue of The Atlantic.

03/11/2004 11:39 AM  |  Comment (0)

Pretty Darn Decent Angels Preview: From the Batter's Box baseball blog. I agree with about 90% of it (Ortiz will be #5; Scioscia never "lost the clubhouse" last year, and we're going to win the World Series), but these are obviously minor quibbles.

03/10/2004 08:33 PM  |  Comment (1)

A Tale of Two Prison Sentences

03/10/2004 08:30 PM  |  Comment (1)

Minnie Mouse, Welfare Queen: From RiShawn Biddle:

Few have panhandled for taxpayer dollars as successfully as Disney during Eisner's reign. It has received at least $4.5 billion in subsidies, low-interest loans, land grants and "joint venture" investments from governments in Florida, Pennsylvania and Hong Kong. It even managed to get a handout from the French government—not exactly a fan of things American—which sold 4,800 acres just outside of Paris to Disney at a 90 percent discount so the company could build Euro Disneyland.

Disney has gotten even sweeter deals closer to its home base in Southern California. In Glendale, just a short trip from its Burbank headquarters, Disney's 125-acre Imagineering campus and studio development is being financed with the help of the city's redevelopment agency. Further away in Anaheim—home of Disneyland—the company got the city fathers to fork over another $550 million on new roadways and create a special tax district in exchange for building its now-floundering California Adventure park.

It has even become adept at getting financial help from Washington in the indirect form of copyright protection. To keep Mickey Mouse, Pluto and other characters out of the public domain, it successfully lobbied Congress for the Sonny Bono Act, which extended the life of its copyrights from life plus 50 years to life plus 70—restraining free speech in the process. Funny since Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin draw heavily from works that have long ago become fodder for public use.

Disney doesn't exactly need the welfare cheese. Last year, it generated $27 billion in revenues from its sprawling collection of studios, theme parks, television networks and the ESPN cable channel. But Eisner has admitted some of its projects wouldn't work out as stand-alone private sector operations. "Disney's America wasn't economically viable without government subsidies," he wrote about one such plan in Work in Progress, his 1998 biography. […]

These deals have worked out for Disney. For the municipalities themselves? A mouse trap. Disney abandoned the Philadelphia project in 2001 after years of delays, leaving the city on the hook for $55 million, according to one estimate. In January, Osceola County issued bonds to repay $35 million to Disney's Reedy Creek for guaranteeing bonds on the turnpike extension on Disney's property.

03/10/2004 02:38 PM  |  Comment (5)

Good Nick Gillespie Column on the New Obscenity Police

03/10/2004 01:23 PM  |  Comment (0)

E-mail of the Week:

Matt,

I like your blog and your articles in Reason, but ever since you advocated that bloggers should support Blog Ads nearly every site I visit now has them. Worst of all, the content of the ads! Practically all of them are ads asking for money for campaigns. No hot women, no cool gadgets, no deep fuzzy warm feeling, no overtly appealing food steaming with flavor; No, the ads are boring, dull and worst of all paid for by political campaigns.

Look, I know that campaign season isn't forever, but it lasts longer than
Hockey season and I fucking hate Hockey season. Two minutes of fights and shots of the penalty box and I am stabbing my television with the remote control. The Blog Ads actually make me want to stop reading blogs and return to reading the NY Times and other papers exclusively. * GASP *

So I hope you are happy. You got what you asked for. And may we never meet each other within viewing range of hockey highlights and a remote control - for your sake.

Toodles,

[name deleted]
Chicago

03/09/2004 05:18 PM  |  Comment (15)

You Like New Baseball Stadiums, Right?: Then check out Kevin Mickey's pix of the handsome new publicly financed ballpark in San Diego (whose corporate name I absolutely refuse to utter … dogfood brownshirts!!). I'll hopefully be seeing Game Two at, um, Gaslight Park, in addition to the home openers at Chavez Ravine and Vlad's Impaling Shack.

03/09/2004 05:12 PM  |  Comment (6)

Salon, MoveOn, The Guardian To Join Forces, Expand Coverage: Here's your interesting political journalism item of the day:

NEW YORK, March 9, 2004 -- Salon.com will announce this week a series of ambitious editorial initiatives, including the opening of a new Washington D.C. news bureau as well as strategic partnerships with MoveOn.org, The Guardian of London and the new progressive radio network, Air America, MediaChannel has learned from a memo sent to Salon board members. […]

In January Salon Media Group secured a $200,000 investment from Wenner Media, publisher of Rolling Stone magazine to collaborate on coverage of the upcoming presidential election. This funding helped set up the Washington Bureau headed by columnist and former Clinton aide Sidney Blumenthal.

Blumenthal will spearhead the Websites newest editorial initiatives. […]

According to the memo, Salon will publish on Wednesday an inside account of how intelligence was twisted in the rush to the Iraq war. The author of the article, "The New Pentagon Papers," is a retired lieutenant colonel, Karen Kwiatkowski, a Near East specialist, formerly assigned to the Office of Special Plans in the Pentagon.

On Thursday, Salon will publish the first of several advance excerpts from "House of Bush, House of Saud," a new book by Craig Unger "that explores the relationship between the two dynasties." According to the memo.

According to the Salon memo, Unger "will expose shocking new details on the flights approved by the Bush White House that carried members of the bin Laden family and other prominent Saudis out of the U.S. to Saudi Arabia after September 11. Salon will publish for the first time the manifest of the passenger list and identify one passenger as a suspected al Qaeda funder who was aware ahead of time of the September 11 attack."

Salon has also agreed to the first trans-Atlantic media partnership of its kind with The Guardian of London. "Salon and The Guardian will exchange news stories daily to be posted on each others' Web sites. The Guardian has 8.5 million monthly Web readers, including 2 million in the U.S," the memo states.

Salon will also contribute daily to the new progressive radio network, Air America, providing "The Salon Story of the Day," for what promises to be an audience of millions of listeners. Air America will feature programs hosted by Al Franken and other personalities.

03/09/2004 03:31 PM  |  Comment (13)

Request for Open-Source Travel Tips on Singapore: I have two good friends -- let's call them "Shannon" and "Justin" -- who are traveling to Asia at the beginning of April. They are staying over in Gray Davis' promised land of Singapore for approximately one day and a half. They are a lovely couple, and enjoy most fine activities, including but not limited to seeing nice stuff, drinking alcohol, and being caned like curs in the street. Just kidding about the last part! I know that at least three of you have lived in Singapore at one time or another ... what should my friends do?

03/09/2004 11:43 AM  |  Comment (8)

CalPundit Becomes Washington Monthly Pundit: Kevin Drum, one of the most consistently thoughtful and fair-minded Demo-bloggers out there, will now be paid for his efforts by the venerable neoliberalism-incubating magazine. Congrats to both.

03/08/2004 11:39 AM  |  Comment (13)

You Like That Emily Jones Gal? Well, Think About Throwing Her Some Coin: She has need. Perhaps to buy a chainsaw.

03/07/2004 09:36 PM  |  Comment (1)

'KCRW — A Tradition of Excellence': KCRW, the Santa Monica-based public radio powerhouse that fired humorist Sandra Tsing Loh for the one-off mistake of failing to ensure that the word "fuck" was bleeped from one of her 7:25 am commentaries, holds itself in a breathless regard that has to be heard regularly to be believed. For those of you outside of Southern California, here's a prime example of how Ruth Seymour's Baby sees itself, in the form of a Summer 2002 Santa Monica City College write-up. Here's how it begins; you'll want to click the link for more pomposity & various color pictures:

There are certain cultural symbols which define a city. The Eiffel Tower is Paris. The Statue of Liberty is New York. San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge are one and the same. In a megapolis as diffuse and diverse as Los Angeles, symbolic definition is problematic: the Hollywood sign, the Venice Boardwalk and Watts Tower all vie for supremacy as the city’s lodestone but none of them satisfy the requirements necessary to fully capture the symbolic essence of L.A.: the Hollywood sign is too shallow, too flat, too uni-dimensional, signifying only the thinnest veneer of Tinseltown; the Watts Tower too idiosyncratic, its creator, Simon Rodia, having suffused himself in his work so much that the Towers ultimately fail as a stand-in for extended civic symbology; and the Venice Boardwalk: well, it’s just way too kooky. Perhaps it takes something as diffuse as a radio signal to truly represent this city—radio waves beaming out through Southern California, listeners tuning in on freeway overpasses, living room couches, office mail rooms and along the grand boulevards which bisect the city like so many arteries criss-crossing the body of a behemoth—yes, perhaps those very radio waves are the perfect symbol of this extremely odd city, and if there is one radio station which truly captures the spirit of Los Angeles, defining the city as the evolving giant that it is, that station would have to be KCRW, a community service of Santa Monica College.

03/07/2004 09:19 PM  |  Comment (12)

Why Is Luke Thompson's Review of The Passion Worth Your Attention? Among other reasons, because he struck up a conversation before the show with an elderly couple sitting nearby. Named Bob and Sally Dornan.

03/07/2004 01:09 AM  |  Comment (1)

Sandra Tsing Loh Speaks: For those of you who haven't followed the story, L.A. writer/humorist Sandra Tsing Loh was fired abruptly from America's richest National Public Radio outlet, KCRW, for having pre-recorded on her regular commentary a word that was supposed to be bleeped, but was not. That word was "fuck." Here's how KCRW General Manager Ruth Seymour explained the zero-tolerance firing; first to Cahty Seipp:

"You’re not doing her any favors with this story," she said. "No one will touch her after this. You cannot say 'fuck' on the air, period. We could lose our license. She's obviously having problems."

And if Sandra says she's angry, how do you think we at the station feel? Apart from endangering the license, we could well incur a heavy fine. We really are serious with her, that with such a trivial, self-serving piece, she put us all in danger.

"It is the equivalent of the Janet Jackson performance piece and there is not a radio or TV programmer today who does not understand the seriousness involved to the station."

Here are two other factoids for you: 1) The engineer, who was co-responsible for the cock-up, was not significantly punished. 2) According to Cathy Seipp, Ruth Seymour herself presided over an F-bomb at KCRW, during a May 29, 2002 interview with Dennis Hopper.

It's sort of like Helmut Newton. Every woman lifts her skirt and takes her top off, thinking that's what she's supposed to do when she's in front Helmut Newton with a camera. And when you were around Warhol, you were supposed to fuck on the couch and do all these crazy things and he recorded it. I mean, seriously...

The word was not bleeped -- nor is it bleeped yet on the KCRW website -- and Ruth continued chatting with Hopper in a relaxed and unshocked manner.

There are people who have reacted to this by saying "oh, well, Sandra Tsing Loh is annoying anyway," or "what does she expect! You can't be too careful nowadays." To which I say: Check what remains of your dried-out soul, robot. No, this isn't a Major Pressing Issue in the grand scheme of things. But free expression is something I'd hope that journalists, at minimum, would be keen on expanding, not contracting. If one of the strongest (and most self-important) media institutions in Los fucking Angeles is either caving to imagined FCC pressure, or fanning the flames of paranoid FCC fantasies just to fire someone who's worn out her welcome, then that is bad for anyone who works for Southern California media. Or consumes it.

In the meantime, read Sandra's funny L.A. Times post-op. I hope it sticks in Seymour's craw. Excerpt:

[N]ot only is it not archived on the KCRW website, there's no record there that my show ever existed. Not even a vaguely worded "Technical Difficulties/Away on Assignment/Cosmic Gone Fishing" sign. At KCRW.com, it's eerie how quickly the Internet hole has closed over "The Loh Life," its glassy surface scattered with a cheerful potpourri of fresh music picks. And I was on for six years! Isn't it a marvel what they can do with the touch of a computer button nowadays? Sometimes? […]

KCRW's implication I'm somehow a loose cannon is perplexing. I'm so scary I have to be locked out? Just in case I were ever again to wildly prerecord a segment four days ahead of time, discuss the edits with the engineer and leave the text with him. There's also that troubling notion of "preemptive distancing." I guess those are the tense times we live in. You have to aggressively protect yourself from the potential threat of possible future harm of a quasi, unspecified nature.

03/07/2004 01:02 AM  |  Comment (22)

Hi! What are you doing down here?