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Today's
Stories
April 3 / 5, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Anti-Depressants
a Problem? We're Shocked
Jeffrey St. Clair
How Neil Bush Succeeded in Business
Without Really Trying
April 2, 2004
Dave Lindorff
Barbaric
Relativism: the Press and Fallujah
Kurt Nimmo
Wherever
Bush Goes, Osama is Bound to Follow
Emma Miller
The
Role of the West in the Rwandan Genocide
Dr. Susan Block
Same
Sex Marriages: Just Say "No" to Prohibition
Norman Solomon
Media Strategy Memo for George & Dick
Sacha Guney
The Meaning of the Elections in Turkey
Christopher Brauchli
The
Disturbing Case of Cpt. Yee
Website of the Day
Mercenaries, Inc.
April 1, 2004
Ron Jacobs
Dying in Vain in Iraq
Harry Browne
No Smoke, Plenty of Fire: Ireland's Pubs Go Smokefree
Chris Floyd
Towel Boy: Bush Hits Workers with Chemical Weapons
Nicole Colson
Inside America's Concentration Camp: Tortured at Guantanamo
Charles Arthur
Haiti's Army Cracks Down on Workers
Laura Flanders
Elaine
Chao: a First Daughter for the First Son
March 31, 2004
M. Junaid Alam
Israel:
Suicide Nation?
John L. Hess
Condi
Under Oath: But What About the NYTs Reporters?
Fernando Suarez del Solar
A Year
Since My Son's Death in Iraq
Sofia Perez
Spain's
U-Turn on Iraq is Real Democracy in Action
David Vest
Stick 'Em Up: Put Cheney and Bush Under Oath
Tanya Reinhart
As in Tiannamen Square: Justice and the Yassin Assassination
Mike Whitney
Time to Dump the Pledge
Donald Kaul
Martha Stewart's Lesson: Never Talk to the FBI
Milt Bearden
Mired in the Tracks of Alexander the Great
Marjorie Cohn
The Illegal
Coup in Haiti: How the Kidnapping of Aristide Violated US and
International Law
Website of the Day
New Pentagon Papers Dropped at DC Starbucks
March 30, 2004
William S. Lind
An Occurrence
in Pakistan: the Battle That Wasn't
Ron Jacobs
Assassinations, Hate Mail &
Justice
Mickey Z.
Tommy Boy Friedman Does "Imagine"
Neve Gordon
Strategic Motives of the Yassin Assassination
Mark Scaramella
The Founding Scam: Insider Trading is the American Way
John Chuckman
The Countessa of Empire: Condi
Rice's Idea of Democracy
Greg Moses
Live from Pasadena: Silhouettes of New Order
Rai O'Brien
What Kind of Democracy to Expect if the Opposition Takes Power
in Venezuela
Bill Christison
The
9/11 Commission: Dangerous Harbinger for the Future
Website of the Day
Ghost Town: Riding Through Chernobyl
March 29, 2004
John Maxwell
Crisis
in the Caribbean: a Miasma Foretold
J. Michael Springmann
Email
Spying & Attorney Client Privilege
Robert Fisk / Severin
Carrell
Coalition
of the Mercenaries
The Black Commentator
Haiti's Troika of Terror
Doug Giebel
Candide in the Wilderness:
How Bush Policy Was Made
David Krieger
The Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Bargain
Mike Whitney
Rejecting the Language of Terrorism
Richard Oxman
The Pitts: a 9/11 Burrow of an American
Family
Kim Scipes
The AFL-CIO in Venezuela: Deja Vu All Over Again
Michael Donnelly
End Game for Northwest Forests
Norman Solomon
The Media Politics of 9/11
Kathy Kelly
Last Lines Before Vanishing
Website of the Day
Swans: Can Money Buy Everything?
March 27 / 28, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Dave Lindorff
Spineless of US Journalists
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
March 26, 2004
Christopher Brauchli
There's
a Chill Over the Country
Robert Fisk
The Man Who Knew Too Much: the Ordeal
of Mordechai Vanunu
Joe DeRaymond
Democracy in El Salvador? Think Again
Mike Whitney
Lessons on Apartheid from Ariel Sharon
Mickey Z.
Somalia and Iraq: Looking Back and Ahead
Chris Floyd
The Pentagon Archipelago
CounterPunch Photo Wire
Cheney's Close Shave?
John Breneman
Bush's Comic Bomb
Website of the Day
Dick
is a Killer
March 25, 2004
Lee Sustar
Who
is to Blame for Lost Jobs?
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Offshore Banking Centers
Roger Burbach
Lula vs. the IMF: Brazil Begins
to Throw Off the Austerity Planners
Jimmer Endres
Elections Without Politics: The Military Budget Is Not an "Issue"
Larry Tuttle
Acting in Your Name: Identity Theft and Public Interest Groups
Toni Solo
Misreporting Venezuela
Dan Bacher
A Memorial Wall for Iraq War's Dead and Wounded
Saul Landau
Is
Venezuela Next?
Website of the Day
The Spiral Railway
March 24, 2004
Gary Leupp
General
Musharraf's IOU
Richard Oxman
Shakespeare
for Kerry
William Lind
The Beginning
of Phase Three: 4G Warfare Hits Iraq
Rep. Ron Paul
Iraq One Year Later
Michael Dempsey
Killing Rachel Corrie Again
Alan Farago
The Bad Math of Mercury: Bush's War on the Unborn
Benjamin Dangl
and April Howard
Media
in Cuba
John L. Hess
No Lie Left Behind: Judy Miller Does Dick Clarke
Greg Weiher
Two Cheers for Dems: "We're Not as Bad as George"
Eva Golinger
An Open Letter to John Kerry on Venezuela
Grayson Childs
Where's Cynthia McKinney?
Steve Niva
Israel's Assassinations will Only
Fuel More Suicide Bombings
Website of the Day
The Bushiad and the Idiossey
March 23, 2004
Phillip Cryan
The
Drug War's Next Casualty: Colombia's National Parks
Ron Jacobs
They Shoot Men in Wheelchairs, Too?
Dave Lindorff
A Spanish Parallel: Scare Tactics and Elections
Mike Whitney
Richard Clarke and Teflon George
Brian McKinlay
Bush's Lil' Buddy in Trouble: John Howard Starts to Wobble
JG
Driving Mr. Koon: "Jim Crow Lives Next Door"
Phyllis Pollack
Gettin' Jigga with Metallica: the Battle Over the Double Black
CD
Ahmed Bouzid
Sharon's One-Way Track
Sean Carter
The G-Word Goes to Court: One Nation Under [Your Logo Here]
M. Shahid Alam
World's Greatest Country: Do the Facts Lie
March 22, 2004
Mazin Qumsiyeh
On Extrajudicial
Executions
Uri Avnery
The
Assassination of Sheikh Yassin is Worse Than a Crime
Gilad Atzmon
Sharon's Rampage
Mike Whitney
Guilty Until Proven Innocent: the Story of Captain James Yee
Jason Leopold
Firm With Ties to Cheney Faces Criminal Indictment in Cal Energy
Scam
Greg Moses
Stop
Walling and Stalling: a Report from Houston's Peace March
Phil Gasper
San Francisco: 25,000 March for an End to the Occupation
Lenni Brenner
Report
from NYC: Old and Young Parade for Peace
Julian Borger
The Clarke Revelations
Steve Perry
Karl Rove's Moment
Website of the Day
Enviros Against War
March 20 / 21, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Gay
Marriage: Sidestep on Freedom's Path
Jeffrey St. Clair
Intolerable Opinions in an Age of Shock and Awe: What Would Lilburne
Do?
Ted Honderich
Tony Blair's Moral Responsibility for Atrocities
Saul Landau / Farrah Hassen
The Plot Against Syria: an Irresponsibility Act
Gary Leupp
On Viewing "The Passion of the Christ"
William A. Cook
Fence, Barrier, Wall
Phil Gasper
Bush v. Bush-lite: Chomsky's Lesser Evilism
Ron Jacobs
Fox News and the Masters of War
John Stanton
Which Way John Kerry? The Senator's Inner Nixon
Justin Felux
Kerry and Black America: Just Another Stupid White Man
Mike Whitney
Greenspan's Treason: Swindling Posterity
Augustin Velloso
Avoiding Osama's Abyss
Lawrence Magnuson
Eyes Wide Open: Is Spain Caving in to Terrorism?
Kathy Kelly
Getting Together to Defeat Terrorism
Tracy McLellan
Scalia & Cheney: Happiness is a Warm Gun
Kurt Nimmo
Emma Goldman for President!
Luis J. Rodriguez
The Redemptive Power of Art: It's Not a Frill
Mickey Z
The Michael Moore Diet
Jackie Corr
When Harry Truman Stopped in Butte
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
The Great Trial of 1922: Gandhi's Vision of Responsibility
Poets' Basement
Stew Albert & JD Curtis
Website of the Weekend
Virtual World Election
March 19, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Zapatero
to Kerry: Back Off, Senator, Our Troops are Coming Home
Ann Harrison
So
Protesters, How Well Do You Know Your Rights?
William MacDougall
Fortress Britain's War on "Economic Migrants"
Greg Moses
Sold American: Cowboy Nation Gets Ready to Vote
Cynthia McKinney
Haiti and the Impotence of Black America: Roll Back This Coup,
Mr. Bush
Norman Solomon
Spinning the Past; Threatening the Future
John L. Hess
"Missing" Evidence and the NYTs
Vicente Navarro
The
End of Aznar, Bush's Best Friend
Website of the War
Naming the Dead
March 18, 2004
Gila Svirsky
Rachel
Corrie, One Year Later: She Never Lost Faith in Decency
Christopher Brauchli
Drilling a Hole in the Sanctions: How Halliburton Made $73 Million
from Saddam
William Kulin
Report from Iraq: Just Another Baghdad Car Bombing
Mike Whitney
Resistance: a Moral Imperative
Rep. Ron Paul
Broadcast Indecency Act: an Indecent Attack on the First Amendment
Josh Frank
The Nader Question
Jack Random
They Lied & They Lost: Madrid and the Lessons of Democracy
Greg Bates
What Makes a Nader Voter Tick? A Survey
Sam Hamod / Alfredo Reyes
Contempt of the World: Hastert, Bush and Cheney on Spain
Gary Leupp
The
Madrid Bombings: the Chickens Come Home to Roost
Website of the Day
Privatizing Armageddon: Buy Your Own Doomsday Key
March 17, 2004
Marjorie Cohn
Spain, the EU and the US: War on
Terror or Civil Liberties?
David MacMichael
Untruth
and Consequences
Michael Donnelly
Wear the Green, But Skip the Green Beer
Tom Stephens
"Steady Leadership": Let the Buyer Beware
Wayne Madsen
Sen. Kerry, Let Me Help You Out
Karyn Strickler
Who Owns the Sierra Club? Anonymous Donors and Rigged Elections
Peter Linebaugh
Bush:
Blanc Blanc
March 16, 2004
Lenni Brenner
James
Madison: the Anti-Clerical Father of the Bill of Rights
Scott Boehm
Madrid
Diary: How to Change World Order in Four Days
Alexander Lynch
From Franco to Aznar: the History
Behind the Spanish Elections
Sam Hamod and Alfredo
Reyes
The Truth About the Spanish Elections: Aznar Was Going Down Anyway
Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg
You Wouldn't Do a Dog This Way:
Executing David Clayton Hill
Mike Whitney
The Case for a Nuclear Iran
Robert Fisk
The Bloody Price of the "War
on Terror"
Bill Christison
The
Aftershocks from Madrid
CounterPunch Photo Wire
The Passion of St. Teresa
Website of the Day
Join the War on Art!
March 15, 2004
Harry Browne
Terror Nothing New to Europe
Mike Whitney
Justice
Not Murder: the Tragic Symmetry of Terrorism
Lidice Valenzuela
Haiti: a Coup without Consultation
Greg Moses
Lessons
from the Texas Primaries: Looking for a Coalition with Legs
Mickey Z.
Depraved Indifference: C-Sections, Patriarchy & Women's Health
Asaf Shtull-Trauring
AWOL
in New York: From Refusenik to Organizer
CounterPunch Wire
Gen. Gramajo Executed by Bees!
March 12 / 14, 2004
Gabriel Kolko
The
Coming Elections and the Future of American Global Power
Saul Landau
Oh, Jesus...It's the Movie!
William Blum
Neo-Con(tradictions)
William S. Lind
Why They Throw Rocks
Rahul Mahajan
The Meaning of Madrid: War on "Terrorism" Makes Us
All Less Safe
Neve Gordon
Demographic Wars
Kurt Nimmo
Kerry and the Progressive Interventionists
Mickey Z.
The "New" UN Blames the Poor
Mike Whitney
War Games: the American Media Leads the Charge
Helen Scott and Ashley
Smith
Aristide's Fall: What Led to the Coup?
Justin E.H. Smith
Loïc Wacquant: Against a Sociodicy
of the American Prison
Brandy Baker
Him Again? Al Gore Needs to Move On
Robin Philpot
Nobody Can Call It a "Plane Crash" Now: the Report
on the Assassination of Rwandan President Habyarimana
Mokhiber / Weissman
The Meat Monopoly Takes a Rare Pounding
Dave Zirin
She Turned Her Back on the War: an Interview with Toni Smith
Daniel Wolff
The Lord's Pier
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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Weekend
Edition
April 3 / 5, 2004
Talking Dirty
Obscene
But Not Heard
By BEN TRIPP
Obscenity has once again reared its ugly head
like a massive, rock-hard cock. The question is to what degree
people in power shall decide what's acceptable for the public
to see and hear, and whether such official oversight will be
abused to maintain partisan control over the popular discourse.
I was going to say the intercourse of social and political ideas,
but I don't want people to think I'm only interested in this
topic for the sake of cheap laughs. Three guys went out for
a night of heavy drinking and split up around two in the morning.
"How drunk were you?" was the big question a couple
of days later. "I was so drunk," said the first guy,
"I crashed my car through my neighbor's garage." "That's
nothing," said the second guy. "I was so drunk I passed
out with a cigarette and burned my house down." The third
guy rolled his bloodshot eyes. "I got you both beat. I
was so drunk, I blew chunks." "That's nothing special,"
the other guys said. "We both puked for hours." The
third guy shook his head. "You don't understand. Chunks
is my dog." That's cheap laughs.
So far, I haven't used any obscene language,
which is germane to my point. Such expressions as 'massive,
rock-hard cock' or 'blew chunks' are not inherently obscene.
The first could describe a large, muscular rooster, while the
other is a colloquial term for the sudden aspiration of food
particles. Now if I'd said something like "I fist-fucked
Grandma in the ass", there could be little room for interpretation.
Obscenity, as it is generally understood, refers to that which
is indecent or lewd. The term also does duty (not dooty, which
could be regarded as vulgar, but not obscene) as an expression
of general offensiveness, as in, "President Bush's environmental
record is an obscenity." And he's a cunt, but that's beside
the point. Is the joke about the three guys obscene? Yes, it
is, because the entire gag revolves around the double meaning
of the phrase "I blew chunks." Note that the proper
name 'Chunks' could not be capitalized in its first instance,
lest it give the punch line away. The joke is indeed lewd, because
its effect relies upon the auditor discovering that the third
guy has committed the act of fellatio upon a dog. Fellatio is
an obscene act (at least if it's done properly) and so is sexual
congress with any member of another species, except certain aquatic
mammals.
Why do I so glibly pronounce oral sex
performed on a dog to be obscene? This is where things get confusing,
as obvious as the issue appears on the face of it (no pun intended).
After all, I'm liberal enough in my views to believe that obscenity
is an inherently difficult concept to define or enforce. For
instance if I call the president of the United States 'a cunt',
which is generally accepted to be an obscene term for female
genitalia, I'm likely to get thrown in jail. But not for using
the salient four letters together, which merely form a commonplace
Anglo-Saxon term that has fallen on hard times since English
got Frenchified with respectable long words for short subjects.
It may share roots with such words as 'queen' (cwene,
meaning 'woman') and the Latin cune, or 'wedge' (I leave
the inference to you). Wherever it came from, 'cunt' is now
an obscene word. Yet, at least in writing, it's not enough to
get you in trouble, unless maybe it crops up in 'My First Dictionary'.
Rather I'd get flung into the hole (a colloquial term for prison,
you filthy-minded thing) for directing the word at a person of
such importance as the president of our nation: public use of
pejoratives against persons can get you put away. Especially
male persons.
If I called Hilary Clinton a cunt, half
of male Americans would probably send me money. After all, the
word has a meaning, besides its function as a term of abuse.
It refers to the sexual organs of a woman, and can also mean,
in a nasty kind of way, the rest of the woman as well. To call
a butch fellow like the president such a thing is to attack his
masculinity and generally demean him; no legal action there.
But it's an aggressive word. It suggests violence, as do so
many misogynistic terms. It could be regarded as 'fighting speech',
which ain't protected by law. It could be construed, especially
by the fuckheaded wankers currently running the nation, as a
threat. On the other hand I could call the president a 'cocksucker',
which I presume is not technically true (cock in this case referring
to the business end of the male genitalia, not Gallus gallus,
the common barnyard fowl), and the other half of male Americans
would probably send me money (cash only, care of this publisher).
Except males who suck cocks. They would regard the association
infra dig, particularly if they're skilled at it, perhaps from
practicing on Chunks. In any case I wouldn't go to jail for
calling the president a cocksucker, or, like everyone else in
his administration, a fuckheaded wanker, asshole, prick, shit-lunching
pederast, or poopy head. Obscenity, then, must be separated
from the notion of verbal assault.
Are you offended yet? That's grand,
because it is in just such a reactionary state of mind that the
real purpose of obscenity comes into play. After all, if we
don't find something to be offensive, it's also not obscene,
is it? Everything is point of view. In the United Kingdom (our
only remaining ally in the War On Terrible), the word 'cunt'
possesses about the same amount of power as the American usage
of the word 'motherfucker'. It doesn't mean much, it's just
an expletive. But call someone from Iran, for example, a motherfucker,
and he will take it quite literally and plunge a shiv into your
neck. It's a deadly insult, surpassing even the potency of 'cunt'
in American English. Obscenity, as the law dictates, is only
obscene in context.
If I'm sitting around the prairie campfire
with my rugged cowboy buddies after a long day in the saddle,
and one of them happens to say "don't be a motherfucking
cunt, Earl", nobody decries the use of the obscenity, although
Earl may shoot the speaker as a matter of form. If the same
cowboy makes the same remark on national television, he will
get fined $500,000 by the FCC and possibly be thrown in jail.
Chances are Earl will still come after him. This is why I so
seldom hang out with cowboys any more, although they sure can
suck cock. What is merely a useful insult in one context, for
instance to add emphasis to a statement, in another context is
grounds for severe punishment. It has to do primarily with audience.
Sexual language or behavior, regardless of the medium by which
it is transmitted, is not inherently obscene if the audience
is reliably adult.
If Big Bird exposes himself on Sesame
Street, it's obscene: the audience is composed of presexual children
and retarded adults who aren't encouraged to breed. If someone
flashes a breast on late-night HBO, it's not obscene, because
the performers and broadcasters are making a reliable assumption
that most of the audience is composed of grown-ups, and the kids
that watch HBO late at night are weirdos anyway so seeing a little
tit is the least of their worries. In this same way, Janet Jackson's
infamous and magnificently pierced nipple, televised during halftime
at the Superbowl, was obscene. Why? Everybody has nipples.
But Janet Jackson's presentation is overtly sexual, and the
nipple rather emphasized this fact. At least it emphasized it
for me, but I'm highly suggestible that way. If she busted it
out (so to speak) during a National Geographic special in order
to suckle a wee infant, we might let it slide. After all, black
people are so close to nature. The obscenity was all in the
context. Her nipple was viewed by children, presumably, and
certainly football fans, who are basically children, regardless
of age. Real adults, mature and intellectually complete, watch
baseball. Or better yet turn off the TV and have sex instead.
Three themes emerge: first, obscenity has no substance. It
is an abstract measure of language or behavior deemed to transgress
the margins of the norm, and differs from culture to culture.
Second, the notion of obscenity has no function except as a benchmark
by which to identify language or behaviors from which society
as a whole wishes to protect persons innocent of this L. or B.,
such as children, elderly nuns, or the Attorney General. Third,
for a thing to be obscene, it must reach the audience deemed
incapable of surviving exposure to it (and it's often exposure).
Is cigarette advertising therefore obscene?
No, not unless there's some split beaver in the actual ad.
Cigarettes aren't obscene, they're deadly. That's why it's okay
to show mortal peril, violence, and cruelty in children's movies:
mortal peril, violence, and cruelty aren't obscene. Procreation
is bad, killing is fun. No use splitting hairs or beavers over
this subject, although it's a favorite of the call-in guests
on talk radio: like it or not, boobs are obscene, guns are not.
Nobody's legislating obscenity in the sense of abomination against
all that's good in this world, only the naughty bits. So don't
cop this semantic linguistical ontologism with me. It's all
just a big skull-fuck. I mean that in the least obscene sense
of the term, of course. Obscene is what the people with the
most influence say is obscene, and furthermore it's only what
they choose to regulate as obscene that is obscene.
Obscene is what they call, when they
say "obscene", obscene. Obscene is not as obscene does,
it's obscene is as obscene is said to be by one who isn't doing
it. I'm running out of the word obscene here. So what difference
does all this make? Keep the naked asses on late night TV and
don't use the word 'cunt' on drive-time radio and we're pretty
much free to do as we please, right? No. The real danger in
policing obscenity lies in the people policing it. Put a puritanical
type of person in charge of government regulation of morality,
for example (obscenity is just a transgression of morality as
expressed through the premise of 'good taste' versus 'bad taste'),
and if the previous arbiter of obscenity was fairly loosey-goosey,
maybe even glanced through the occasional smut mag himself, suddenly
the rules have changed. Thousands of people who were working
the edge of acceptable before, find themselves way over the line.
Another mechanism by which this happens is when the person working
the edge of acceptability happens to cross some other, unrelated
line the obscenity czar has drawn (politics and religion are
two favorites, followed by race). Then the penalties for obscenity,
heretofore withheld, are suddenly loosed upon the unfortunate
filth-pedlar mendicant.
This is what happened to Howard Stern,
but not Janet Jackson. Ms. J. knew going in that there was going
to be a stir when she revealed her mammary, jiggling like a dish
of flan in the faces of millions of sports fans. She gambled
that America might have a burst of tolerance, and lost. Howard
Stern, on the other hand, was saying what he always said, and
for reasons that may or may not have nothing to do with what
he did say, the FCC suddenly hit him with such a palpable penalty
that his employer (Clear Channel, which owns 1200 radio stations
nationwide) cut him loose. They suspended the number one radio
guy in the world. The guy whose penchant for peri-obscene, transgressive
radio is what earned him that number one spot, suddenly accused
of being "vulgar, offensive and insulting" by the company
that traded in his vulgar, offensive, and insulting program for
over a decade. He was ejected, ironically, not for one of his
own crude ejaculations, but because one of his phone-in listeners
used an obscene word (actually a racial epithet rhyming with
'trigger'. If you guessed 'heathen chinee', you're wrong.)
What changed? Word is, Stern's recent turn against the Bush
administration may have had something to do with it.
Clear Channel is pro-Bush and sponsored
rallies in his favor. Nothing else had changed in the Clear
Channel/Stern/FCC triumvirate except Stern's opinion of the Man
in Command. He used to support the Despotic Dauphin of DC on-air,
so anything else Stern chose to broadcast, such as the rape of
nude midgets, was ay-oh-kay with Clear Channel. But then Stern,
coming to his senses, realized Bush was a corn-studded loaf of
dog ordure and spoke out against the administration. That's
when the hammer fell. I'm not saying Clear Channel killed their
number one cash cow (cow comes from the same Indo-European prefix
'cu' as the words 'cunt' and 'coochie') simply because his politics
changed. However there is no other obvious reason for the sudden
move; certainly the least likely explanation is obscenity.
So what we have - whether or not the
FCC and Clear Channel were using Stern's skirting of obscenity
laws to silence his criticism of the people in power - is an
atmosphere in which that's what everybody thinks happened.
So score one for the puritans, and another point for the Bush
administration. Who among you is without sin? Let him cast
the first naughty word. You'll get your narrow ass kicked.
Obscenity has always been the foremost front in the culture wars;
one man's obscenity is another man's favorite topic, as Benjamin
Franklin never said. But when obscenity, that most elastic concept,
becomes a front in the war for political domination, then you
have brand-new problem. Because speech is still protected, mostly,
by the First Amendment to the Constitution. Hate speech is excluded,
along with libel and certain forms of verbal belligerence as
noted above, but in general speech is free and cannot be governed
against. Obscenity, meanwhile, is ever-growing in its definition,
and we are all of us every day transgressing its boundaries.
Just about anyone can be accused of obscene behavior or language.
Ever used obscene language in mixed company?
George Bush himself, confronting Wall
Street Journal editor Al Hunt one drunken evening in Dallas (Bush
was drunk; Hunt was dining at a restaurant with his wife Judy
Woodruff and their toddler son, all three of them well under
the limit), shouted "You fucking son of a bitch. I won't
forget what you said and you're going to pay a price for it!"
He was reacting to an unflattering prediction Hunt made about
George's old man. Aside from being obscene, it was also verbal
assault, but that's another subject. I'm sure the four-year-old
was impressed. The point is, nobody can escape the snares of
an obscenity rap, not even me. And unless you're looking to
sell books or music as a result of the notoriety, such accusations
are a big ole hindrance. You can lose your job, like Howard
Stern, or become a pariah with great boobs, like Janet Jackson.
It's no fun either way. And what with the instant-replay technology
of today, everything's under the microscope. Obscenity can be
found anywhere, if you try hard enough. Look at 'Finnegan's
Wake', by James Joyce:
"Afartodays, afeartonights, and
me as with you in thadark."
Do I see the word 'fart' buried in that
first nonsense word of his? Aha! Not to mention the rest of
it sounds smutty. Burn the book! Burn the author and all the
naked boobs! Down with radio and sex and salty language! Obscenity
is everywhere. We are all naked under the clothes, stewing in
excrement behind our lurid flesh, our brains filled with filthy
words and indecent pictures, our groins bubbling with lewd instincts.
Destroy them all, I say, wipe our minds clean and stuff Jesus
in the cracks to keep out the indecency! Maybe not. Once you
dig into the concept of obscenity, we're all in trouble, because
it's obscene to be alive in the world, hung with sex organs and
soaked in glandular secretions as we are, shambling bipedal pillars
of base-minded meat. Obscenity is essential to human nature.
It's the wall at our backs.
The government has some role to play
in restricting the wide dissemination (is that an obscene word?
Out with it!) of that which is popularly found to be obscene.
Otherwise it will be all-anal action all the time on ESPN before
you know it. But beware the subtle shifting of standards and
boundaries in the obscenity game. There are no rules, only opinions.
If the people at the top decide to use obscenity, which is nothing
more than human nature when propriety has stepped out of the
room, to restrict what else we endeavor to do, then we are doomed.
I'm so worried, I could blow chunks.
Ben Tripp
is a screenwriter and cartoonist. Ben also has a
lot of outrageously priced crap for sale here. If his
writing starts to grate on your nerves, buy some and maybe he'll
flee to Mexico. If all else fails, he can be reached at: credel@earthlink.net
Weekend
Edition Features for March 20 / 21, 2004
Jeffrey St. Clair
Empire of the Locusts
Gary Leupp
The Yassin Assassination: Prelude to an Attack on Syria
William A. Cook
The Yassin Assassination: a Monstrous Insanity Blessed by the
US
Faheem Hussain
Some Thoughts on Waziristan: Once and Always a Colonial Army
Elaine Cassel
Is Playing Paintball Terrorism?
Larry Birns / Jessica
Leight
Disturbing Signals: Kerry and Latin America
John Ross
Bush Tells the World: "Drop Dead"
John Eskow
A Memo to Karl Rove from the Hollywood Caucus
Alan Maass
Who Are the Real Terrorists?
Joe Bageant
Howling in the Belly of the Confederacy
Dave Zirin
Reasonable Doubt: Why Barry Bonds is Not on Steroids
Craig Waggoner
Who Would Mel's Jesus Nuke?
The Kerry Quandry
Joel Wendland
Marxists
for Kerry
Josh Frank
Scary,
Scary John Kerry
Matt Vidal
Spoilers, Electability and the Poverty of American Democracy
Poets' Basement
LaMorticella, Hamod, Guthrie, Davies and Albert
Website of the Weekend
Say a Little Prayer
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