[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsnA0ix9hZU[/youtube]
Yeah, that’s the way ya do it: substitute NBC for MTV.
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The little faggot with the earring and the makeup
Yeh buddy, that’s his own hair—
The little faggot got his own jet airplane
The little faggot he’s a millionaire
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You may recall the lyrics above were sung in the original 1985 release from Dire Straits, but you wont hear them very often these days. At least in restaurants, and in Canada. Seems the folks at the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council who recently banned the song, received a complaint that the song’s use of the word “faggot” was offensive to gay men, as well as racist for the line, “bangin’ on the bongos like a chimpanzee,” and of course sexist, for saying “chicks for free.” (The slur against yoyos, however, went unnoticed.) It simply doesn’t matter to anyone with a two digit eye-cue that the song is not written in the first person. So. Thank God someone in the great white north is looking out for us. But then, we have our own flea-infested watchdogs.
After nearly two years of “review,” the FCC announced a 4 to 1 vote for approval of the merger of cable monster, Comcast, with teevee conglom and film mutant, NBC. The lone dissenter was senior Democratic commissioner, Michael J. Copps, who said he thought the deal “confers too much power in one company’s hands.”
“The Comcast-NBCU joint venture opens the door to the cable-ization of the open Internet. The potential for walled gardens, toll booths, content prioritization, access fees to reach end users, and a stake in the heart of independent content production is now very real.
As for the future of America’s news and journalism, I see nothing in this deal to address the fundamental damage that has been inflicted by years of outrageous consolidation and newsroom cuts. Investigative journalism is not even a shell of its former self. All of this means it’s more difficult for citizens to hold the powerful accountable.”
And Josh Silver lays this right on Obama‘s front portico like a flaming bag ‘o shit:
President Obama is being squeezed by a corrupt Washington that is run by industry lobbyists, fake grassroots groups, massive political spending and PR machines that make the most basic public interest protections impossible to advance. But rather than tell that story, dig in, and fight like a true leader would, Obama has chosen to hire corporate-friendly advisors, compromise on the most crucial substance, and attempt to eke out weak, symbolic, half-victories gift-wrapped in flowery oratory and spin. It’s a losing strategy that has become brutally transparent.
Senator Al Franken, no stranger to the battleground of television’s titans, fought a losing battle against the merger:
“The Commission is supposed to protect the public interest, not corporate interests,” Franken said. “But what we see today is an effort by the FCC to appease the very companies it’s charged with regulating. With approval of this merger, the FCC has given a single media conglomerate unprecedented control over the flow of information in America.”
One step forward; two or three steps back.
Censorship of art, like censorship of information, has been alive and well in the world since the first cave art at Lascaux; you just know there was some knuckle-dragger who was offended by the “unnatural” depiction of the bison. But. You may be surprised to learn that way before the CBSC banned Money For Nothing from the frigid Canuckian airwaves, Mark Knopfler was already singing a different tune. As far back as 1985, (the year the song was released) Knopfler had substituted the word “queenie” for faggot in concert:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDpMqKSrr7Y&feature=related[/youtube]
Artists, and rarely the occasional intelligent politician, change their minds as ethics and morality evolve and change. It happens.
But there’s an enormous difference between an artist’s freewill choice to produce art the way he likes, and a government’s choice to police it’s channels of public communication the way it likes— and allow them to tailor what— and how— information is meted out to its citizenry. Not to mention government allowing all media to increasingly become concentrated into the hands of the designing minds of a few conglomerate con-men.
Hold onto your butts. This is going to get ugly.
I want to think about Comcast but all I can think about now is why it’s planet number 606 when decimal worlds happen every 10 planets? Shouldn’t it be either 600 or 610? What happened to those missing planets? Why would they skip them?? Why didn’t anyone ask the damn contact commission!? Is it not an obvious question?
Argh!
Carry on. . .
The fact that America still allows political debate is a healthy sign. However, the televised dramatization thereof, simply to garner advertising, is entertainment for many but also provides an unhealthy incentive for those unbalanced souls who identify with the extreme right political positions as hate. And, where can any of us really find reasoned political information?
The vast, vast majority of Americans (both poor and middle class) still have to feed their families, raise their kids, deal with disease and physical ailments, and react to the unremitting daily barrage of information, most of which is opinion rather than fact, and then accept the political realities voted in by the same majorities.
The political satire I find here is a creative art, and is not sold in bulk for advertising dollars. Satirizing the right is great theatre, as their publicly advertised political positions don’t ever comport with their behavior. Liberals are generally the opposite, where, good or bad, their positions and behavior are consistent, and generally favor working families.
Our real problems as a country are a civil justice system out of control, voluminous national debt, rampant materialism, crumbling infrastructure, quality of education and terrible fiscal management (bloated budgets as well) at all levels, all of which is really all due to ineffective leadership. Smart and honest leaders aren’t in the cards as the cost of election is too high for those idealists.
We are between a rock and a hard place with the defense budget and entitlements straining against an antiquated tax code, where big corporations pay little any more. If they paid a fair share, and the tax income was intelligently applied, things could begin to right themselves.
Meanwhile, kudos to this site for exposing the disingenuous rhetoric of the right, always protecting big money under the guise of supply side economics. There is so much capital on the sidelines right now that if that theory worked there would be little unemployment, which would increase taxes and reduce unemployment entitlements.
Great timing, huh? Just a few days before the SOTU, which I’m sure the White House was looking forward to having KO cover;
A couple a days after Volker, the one outsider/insider with any influence on economic policy, was replaced with the guy who just sold MSNBC to Comcast in a deal approved by the Administration;
A few days after replacing O’s interim chief of staff, the guy who got as much done in 6 weeks in a lame duck session as Rahm accomplished in two years, with JP Morgan’s chief lobbyist, probably required by O’s buddy Jamie Diamond as the price for his support in 2012 (need we mention that both GE and JP Morgan got huge bailouts from the American taxpayer via the Fed?)–
And all this occurring within a few weeks of O’s post-shellacking meeting with the corporate overlords at the White House.
Looks like we’ve just taken a quantum leap into Chris Hedges’ Brave New Dystopia.
first citizens united and now this–we had better collect all the information we need now, before it’s put through the corporate filter.
I said this was going to get ugly; I had no idea it would start so soon. Keith Olbermann unceremoniously just finished the last Countdown show. Looking for answers.
Not to mention government allowing all media to increasingly become concentrated into the hands of the designing minds of a few conglomerate con-men.
Exhibit A would be the combined name of the 3 once separate huge companies that have been ‘conglomerated’ into one: Comcast-NBC-Universal
Exhibit B would be Time-Warner-AOL.
Um, the WordPress Evil Admin Fairy must’ve turned comments off on this post; my apologies to the hoards of frustrated commenters. ;~]