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Re: Thursday, March 18, 2004
What matters isn't that anybody finds stern disgusting, funny, both or neither. What maters is that free speech is under attack by people who have no trouble flattening the first amendment because they don't like something somebody might hear on the radio or see on TV. In the fight for free speech, lots of people are repressed, sure. But Stern is where the action is right now, because current moves by the FCC to fine his show put the hypocricies of "indecency" laws and their selective enforcement in sharp relief. Also because he has millions of listeners, many of whom, for the first time in their lives, are becoming acquainted with free speech as an issue. There is nothing in my posts meant to imply that anybody is an uptight idiot, or anything else, if they don't "get" Howard Stern. Some of what Howard does turns me off too. Again, that's not what matters, and it's not what I'm talking about here. The subject is free speech. Yes, I can understand why parents might not want kids to have access to Stern's material. What I object to i restriction of that material by the government and not by the parents. Hey, I believe most of what's on TV is either useless or toxic to our seven-year-old. So we don't let him watch it. And when we're driving in the car together, we generally don't tune in the Stern show. Restricting the kids access to either, or anything in The Media, isn't *that* hard. And yes, I'm all for letting the market and culture sort this stuff out. Which is why I don't want the government doing it for us.
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