Musings from Brian J. Noggle

As I was reading a nice hefty copy of the printed Chicago Tribune last Sunday (since I was in Chicago, donchaknow), I came across a story entitled “Critics: Is broadcast TV worth saving?” with “Some question its relevance” as the subhead (if you’re quick, you can see an online copy of the article here but be advised it goes to the pay archive on the 15th).

Here’s what those critics say:

Yet some critics say the system is irreparably broken and growing more irrelevant in the face of competition from cable and satellite services, even as the federal government has moved to prop up the broadcast industry.

Yessiree, free broadcast television is irrelevant because we middle class writers and critics can instead spend $50 or more a month of our extensive writin’ and criticizin’ salaries on the licensed luxury of paying some company to pipe entertainment into our homes. Of course, when projecting our own experience of life onto the whole wide country, perhaps we ought to take into consideration those people who cannot afford digital-quality audio and sound (except when technical difficulties interrupt service, sorry, no prorated refund). Don’t the Critics normally champion the underprivileged?

Let me see if I can sum up the reasons the Critics want broadcast television to die:

• Selling the rights to those portions of the electromagnetic spectrum would raise money that the government could then fritter away as it normally fritters away money, typically in ways the Critics like.
• Broadcast viewers are disenfranchised because broadcasters target programs to the audiences advertisers want. That is, the broadcasters have some greedy commerce considerations.
• Broadcasters don’t act in the public interest, or in a public way that can be measured, at least by the arbitrary standards assigned according to the Critics’ preferences. Acting in a public way is hard to measure, I would guess, unless of course by in a public way they mean like NPR and PBS, who properly use government money to promote a proper-thinking point of view.

  Because “accessible to anyone in the nation owning a rooftop antenna and a TV” and “Even today, most Americans get their news from broadcast TV” are not enough.

• The Fairness Doctrine, which allowed advocacy groups to provide a counterpoint to station management (FREE AIR TIME! GET YOUR FREE NUTBAR AIR TIME HERE!), was eliminated. This probably isolated the Critics and their fellows, relegating them (but not regulating them) to unwatched, public interest minded outlets (see also NPR, PBS).

  How did the article put it at the very end, the pièce de résistance?

  “Where there is no fighting or opposition in viewpoints,” said Herbert Chao Gunther, chief executive of the nonprofit Public Media Center, “there is no democracy.”

  Got that? The linchpin of democracy was the unlegislated mandate called the Fairness Doctrine.

I think that about sums up this article. The FCC, an appointed body, not an elected body (as George Carlin often points out), should replace the current system, which allows any yahoo with a receiver to pick up entertainment and news broadcast for free, with a license-fee-based system that the industry loves, where that yahoo has to buy or rent the receiver (a television set) and then pay a monthly license fee of some sort to the cable company or dish company to keep the signal coming to the receiver. Apparently everyone the Critics know has a subscription system, and the Critics cannot imagine differently.

This same middle-class myopia allows policy squawkers to banshee the very thought (blasphemy!) of taxing Internet sales, not realizing (or caring, perhaps) that the duty-free world of Internet commerce unfairly burdens those who do not have a secure Internet connection and/or a credit or debit card with an artificially inflated percentage of sales taxes. But that’s a rant for another day.

Caught this headline on the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Web site. Of course the article clarifies that the Sisters of Mercy Health System St. Louis, a nonprofit health conglomerate (can nonprofits be conglomerates, or is that word reserved for the greedy corporations?).

Not the, you know, Sisters of Mercy. Although it would have made the article much more interesting indeed.

Fark provides a link to a story in the Washington Post about some artists who, metaphorically, paraded around looking like nutjobs in front of the U.S. Capitol.

Buried in the story is this nugget:

Although the objects under the duct tape turned out to be harmless, Olaniyi and Patel have been charged with interstate transportation of an explosive device, a charge that can be used in a hoax.

And, apparently, in situations where no explosive devices exist. Unless, of course, the explosive device in question is their van.

Luckily for the kids in Casinoport, they didn’t cross any lines with their chickens-in-a-box devices.

/. points to a story about how Minnesota parks are cracking down on the esoteric hobby of geocaching. Buried within the article, we get this nugget:

They worry that hundreds of people tramping through their woods will damage plants and habitat.

Dang! I thought parks were to give people the opportunity to tramp through plants and habitat. This quote would seem to assert that parks are really designed to keep park officials employed or to maintain habitats for flora and fauna.

Until such time as the flora, fauna, and park officials pay to preserve these parks, instead of gigging my paycheck for it, I say, “Honey, have you seen my tramping shoes?”

Here in Casinoport, four high school students are getting the pamphlet thrown at them for a senior prank. Ill-advised youngsters ran into their high school cafeteria while wearing masks and carrying boxes with chickens in them to release said chickens. They’re getting misdemeanor disturbing the peace (or maybe “Disturbing the 10-Piece Bucket”) charges. What an outrage!

You mean it’s not yet a felony to wear masks in public or carry chickens in boxes? Legislators, take note! We need to make an example of these young men, assuring that they’re stigmatized for life and that they forever have to tell this particular story when checking that little “Yes, I have been convicted” box on job applications. And if they’re convicted felons, they can’t vote against you! Win/win!

Remember, when have senses of humor are outlawed, only outlaws will have a sense of humor. And in case it’s a law exempt from ex post facto, allow me to assert “I am serious.”

It’s old news by now, but a UK firm has started making beer-flavored ice cream.

All of the calories, none of the buzz? Do they think I like the stationary bike, or what?

Fark (and other sources) are reporting about the New Zealand guy who’s building a cruise missile in his garage from parts he bought, essentially, in electronics catalogs from around the world, and get this, New Zealand Customs didn’t stop the legal parts trafficking!

Let the uproar begin. So this yahoo fancies himself Tom Swift or the modern equivalent, who instead of building a time machine or rocket to get to Saturn, builds a cruise missile or a Ptomekin-class nuclear submarine. It ain’t easy to do on one’s own, and if he can do it, more power to him. However, the Hysterics-That-Be will undoubtedly want to clamp down on mail order now and maybe even curiosity among the civilian populace.

Remember, Captain James T. Kirk once built a gun out of the surrounding environment (while nearly shirtless, no less). But in the end he didn’t kill the guy in the awkward lizard costume out of civilized behavior.

Perhaps society and its emissaries (of which government is but one, and a subserviant one at that) should work on promoting civilization and not worry so much about taking away our individual pointy objects. Civilized people don’t use them on one another without good reason. Or reason, anyway.