Big News

Well Howard Stern has been promoting his big announcement all week and today it was revealed: he's going back on the air in 9 different markets that he was kicked off of by clear channel. Great!

And then there's the rumors that Michael Powell might resign as FCC chief (I remember reading this last week, heard it on the radio today and for some reason can't find any articles about it on the internet....talk about burying a story).

I always thought this was more about business than about censorship or ideology. Clear Channel made a bad business decision to cave to the goody-two-shoes at the FCC, who caved to the right wing-zealots who for some reason seem to not understand the history of censorship. Clear Channel must have thought the backlash against indecency would hurt their profits...but they forgot how popular and funny Howard is. It was just plain stupid.

As far as the folks running around trying to stop people from listening to Howard and get theater owners to not play F 9/11 - well, they are the reason God invented irony - here's Moore thanking them for boosting his movie profits. Yeah!

And with respect for censorship history - has anyone anywhere at any time ever looked back and said, Jeez, ya know, if we had to do it over again, we would have censored that book or movie or political activist. He/she/they just ended up causing too much trouble and pain and suffering to make their "freedom of speech" worthwhile. If anyone can find an instance, I'd love to hear about it because the predominant thing that happens is 5-10-20-50-100 years later, we end up looking back at how amazingly stupid those trying to censor things were. It happens time after time, in all countries everywhere over the course of human history and for some reason someone thinks that because they don't like Michael's movie or Howards show, that NO ONE should be allowed to see or hear it. I wish Bush displayed the same balls he had going into Iraq without the world's consent towards those idiots (to him, his base) who try to do such things...