Congressional Hearings on Shock Jocks

This makes me so incensed, I'll have to come back to it. Needless to say, it is the beginning of the end for free speech in America, and things will only get worse if Bush is re-elected.

I'm torn between my belief in free speech and my sadness at the decline of civility in America. I know civility/gentility can't be legislated, but I wish there were some way of leaving the constitution intact while discouraging rudeness.

I listen to Howard here in NYC every once in awhile. A few years ago I thought he was edgy and funny and looking to push our uptight buttons, but (and I am the first to admit there is some fogeyness creeping in here, maybe I am getting too old for this stuff.) he now seems rather painfully sophomoric.

=="Oh, good." I grumble, " Another show devoted to the subject of penis piercing. What else shall we discover that we don't already know.?" ==

The twenty-year old men working around me think he is "a comic bomb."*, they are devoted fans.

Maybe it's because I'm usually eating when he is on........


Anyway, what I came by to say was free speech on the airwaves of the US is about to end, not because of people like Howard Stern, but because of people like Powell at the FCC allowing giant corporations to string networks across the country that then allows them to control the truths or untruths that are broadcast. My conservative friends groan when I say this but there is no liberal media in America. There is the conservative and the mostly conservative and the silent.

Joe

* actual quote, completely missing the historical irony.

This news chilled me. That clear channel (or whatever the network is called) canceled his show was one thing, that congress is thinking about legislation is another thing entirely!

Non Sequitur, a comic strip by Wiley, is dealing with a censored radio personality right now. The radio guy is an interviewer and the his boss is criticizing him for critical thinking.

I have mixed feelings. I, often, listen to Howard on my way into work. About two weeks ago- he played the sounds of a man raping a woman from some video. I did turn it off as soon as I realized what was going on.I was sick to my stomach. It was so disturbing to me that I didn't sleep well for two or three nights.
On the same idea- about a year ago I watched a movie on Lifetime. The movie was a story about a girl who was being molested by her step father. They actually showed the man on top of her (his boxers were still on). I still loose sleep about that one.

i'm a longtime stern listener. he's been battling the FCC, and losing radio markets, for years. a few years ago there was a similar mass-cancellation of his show in parts of canada.

IMO (i'm obviously biased) i don't think he does or says anything that can not also be found on prime-time television, in one form or another.

mike powell & friends will get their wish granted by november '05, when stern claims he will retire from radio for good... at which time i'll have to figure out how to get to work without hearing his voice for the first time in 18 years

ClearChannel caved like a house of cards because of perceived political pressure from Congress and offered Howard Stern and some others up as sacrificial lambs. Sucks for his fans in Rochester,Miami,Louisville,San Diego, and Pittsburgh. You can always tell when it's an election year.

I don't want the government deciding what I can and can't listen to. If you don't like what you hear you can always turn the dial. Free speech if only comfortable speech isn't free at all.

Yeah, it sucks big time.

angry stern fans can check out
http://www.savehoward.org

There's a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon, between censorship and responsible broadcasting.

Howard Stern has been publicly degrading, abusing, and proxy-raping every woman, for I don't know how many years.

Would this be permitted by Us, the People, if he did it in a public square? Of course not. We'd be outraged. We'd kick him the hell outta there.

So why is he allowed to do it on the radio and on TV? Aren't those the "public squares" of this century?

I don't believe in government-initiated censorship, but I sure believe in a population having the intestinal fortitude to say "No" to the violent garbage being inflicted on them by sadistic pigs like Stern, Springer, Gibson, et all.

There is a way. They call it the audio tuner and the remote control. Personally, I think that those shows pander to the lowest in all of us. But in a free society, it is really very easy to get the shows off the air, without having the government stick its big nose into everything. If nobody listens, the shows will be cancelled. Obviously, there are people who like those shows.

katya8--

I agree with your thoughts and admire your clear, cogent presentation.

Agreed.

Sheesh....sorry, but I don't agree with katya8 at all. Proxy-raping every woman? You've got to be kidding. Let's not forget that there is another way these shows would be cancelled: If people weren't begging to get on them. Stern does nothing more than hold a mirror up to America's face to show them a piece of themselves they are obviously uncomfortable seeing, and he presents it in a humorous way, however low-brow. If the US doesn't want to accept that they are becoming a nation of lunatics, then I pity them for the road they are going down.

Absolutely not.

But, I wouldn't complain if Stern's infantile crap-fest he calls a show was cancelled tomorrow.

cav,
just about everybody has an opinion on stern -- good or bad -- bcos just about everybody listens to him.

Does anyone know exactly what the "Bubba the Love Sponge" show was about/what was said?
Anyone hear it?

Noddy24.........thank you, for those kind words