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Friday, March 12, 2004
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 Friday, March 12, 2004
started 3/12/2004; 12:57:44 AM - last post 3/12/2004; 6:48:28 PM
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Doc Searls - Friday, March 12, 2004 
3/12/2004; 4:57:44 AM (reads: 5245, responses: 1)
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Like Stern only legal and funnier 
| | While it's still okay to mix the profane and the profound, it remains a crime that nobody has given RageBoy's EGR Weblog an award for a damn thing. Even though it's funny as shit and perhaps the most artfully done (or overdone) blog in existence. Also, certainly, the smartest and most likely to bite you on the ass. Or worse. With or without reason. Pun intended, for witness his unprovoked and unreasonable assault on Virginia Postrel today. And there's this result of a recently discovered unburned bridge: |
| | Oh dear, it's so sad to see the fate that has befallen one of my former consulting clients. I told them they were scum, I told them they were carrion vultures and venal miscreants. But did they listen? Of course not. And now God has punished them. Good. Saves me another long climb up the bell tower. Must be old age. That assault rifle is getting heavy. |
Remembranes
| | Ran into Michael Bauer in Denver a few days ago. Michael once made me blow food out of my nose by using the word "celeprosy." Not sure I ever gave him full credit on that one. It showed in a couple of UpFront items in Linux Journal a few years back. |
House fucks broadcasting
| | So when do they come after the Net? Again? |
| | Both say Howard's martyr-talk is nothing new. Nor is heavy-handed speech regulation by the FCC. Rick says, I continue to be amazed by the assumption that broadcast talent have "freedom of speech". I do? Wow I didn't know that. |
| | I'd like to hear, however, how threats of half-million dollar fines for undefined "indecency" infractions serves the cause of free speech — or anything other than a repressive agenda by a government cowed by noisy Puritans. |
| | If Howard gets fired because he's too expensive for stations to hire, or because people don't listen, or because he can't sell advertising, fine. But if he gets fired because stations are afraid they'll get fined just for running his show, that's a dead canary in the coal mine. |
Zero-basing the new music industry
| | Music was a vital part of human culture long before anyone was able to mass reproduce and sell recordings of it. And music will survive any number of upheavals in the systems for selling recordings that developed in the last century. |
Treasure Buried
| | It is with a measure of pride that I plug the showcase, because one of featured performances is this one: |
| | BURIED
Conceived by Colette Searls, University of Maryland-Baltimore County
An original puppet performance about the casualties of war mixing actors with animated objects and humanoid puppets. Buried takes us into a world where spirits enter objects, long-scattered bones rejoin, and abandoned possessions reach out to the living. |
| | Colette, my firstborn, is brilliant, funny, deep, beautiful, and does amazing work. If you're in town (as I intend to be), catch the show. It's on Monday, April 12 and Tuesday, April 13, 7:30pm, at the Kennedy Center Terrace Theater. |
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Daniel - Re: Friday, March 12, 2004
3/12/2004; 10:48:28 PM (reads: 512, responses: 0)
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You and I have similar fears of big brother (in my case from both the left AND the right) but we part ways when it comes to our appreciation of Howard Stern as a cultural icon. For me, defending Howard Stern’s right to free speech is a little like when I was younger on the farm and we had to spread manure out on the fields. You knew it was the right thing for the farm in the long run, but you sure wanted to take a shower when you got done.
Maybe Bush and the “right-wing conspiracy” ARE out to silence Howard and the lefties. Maybe they have taken advantage of an explosive situation and “lit the match”. But who provided the gas? From where I sit it looks like the “celebrities” and media folks that have just taken the whole “shock” thing too far. What happened to talent? What happened to hard work to put together something creative? These days it seems like all you need to do is expose yourself, have a long discourse about someone’s sexual history, have a healthy vocabulary of four-letter words, or shout at the top of your lungs.
Whether its Howard or Janet or reality TV, I think people are beginning to get tired of the whole thing. Sure there are your “puritans” who are genuinely offended but there are a lot of other people who are just fed up.
Maybe the RWC IS taking advantage of that situation now to try to eliminate the opposition and if so, that may be wrong. But we may also be seeing the natural process of a society determining where the boundaries lie. In the U.S. people should have the right the question boundaries and limitations but U.S. citizens also have the right to DEFEND those boundaries if that is what their conscience or religious beliefs dictate (or heck, maybe just because they like it that way).
And regarding “boundary probing”, keep an eye out for people who test the boundaries just for kicks or just for their own personal gain. They wrap themselves in the flag and shout “free speech, free speech!” but all they’re really worried about is keeping themselves in the spotlight.
Also remember that while a circle is a bounded object, there are an infinite number of points inside it; point being that you don’t ALWAYS need to be pushing limits in order to be creative. Sometimes it is necessary and courageous to break the “rules” and sometimes it’s necessary and courageous (and maybe even creative) to obey them.
Just my 2 cents.
Daniel
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