ryan.freebern.org

Just touching base: I’m still alive, and I’ve been working for a few days on writing up my thoughts on the various Republican National Convention speeches. That’ll come later, though. Right now, I want to point out the excellent discussion of methods of reducing abortion rates over at Alas, a Blog. Ampersand makes some excellent points and I really think his argument is worth reading and considering.

Eugene Volokh is being an idiot. He’s arguing that “[t]he broad gay rights program isn’t just about increasing the freedom of gays; it is also about decreasing the freedom [...] of those who don’t want to associate with gays in various ways.”

Yes, Eugene, and the women’s rights movement is about decreasing the freedom of misogynists, and the black rights movement is about decreasing the freedom of white supremacists. So what? Is there some reason for society to hold these hateful freedoms above the inclusive freedoms being fought for?

In actuality, he’s just using this to support his “slippery slope” argument, which is complete bollocks. He’s said (in an earlier piece) that “the more proposals the gay rights movement wins on, the easier (generally speaking) it would be for it to win on other proposals.” That’s true, but in actuality, the slide down this slope of his is always brought into check before it gets too far. No legislator will pass a law making anti-gay speech illegal, or forcing people to welcome homosexuals into their homes with open arms. The slope will carry society to whatever point it deems currently acceptable as a whole; if the gay rights movement steps over the boundaries and begins to infringe on freedoms that the majority hold dear, society will push back until a balance is found.

The gay rights movement is not seeking superiority. It’s just striving for equality. We want homosexuals to have the same rights as anyone else, no more and no less, and to be treated, rightly, as if their sexuality has no bearing on anyone other than themselves any more than a heterosexual’s does.

After discussion with some of my readers, I realized that I was off-base entirely on the Slim-Fast/Whoopi Goldberg issue. Just as much as Ms. Goldberg should be free to speak her mind at any time on any subject, so too should her employer be able to speak its mind by making the decision to fire her or maintain her contract.

I was wrong, but I’ve learned from this experience. Thanks to everyone who helped me see the light.

Recently, Slim-Fast terminated its contract with Whoopi Goldberg due to some remarks she made at a non-Slim-Fast-related event, a Kerry/Edwards fundraiser at Radio City Music Hall. This annoyed me enough that I went to the Slim-Fast website and submitted some feedback informing them that their response to her remaks bothered me. Much to my surprise, I actually got a personal response a couple days later. The relevant paragraph is as follows:

Ms. Goldberg’s remarks created a great deal of negative media and consumer attention and this affected Ms. Goldberg’s ability to positively communicate our message of weight loss. Because
of this, we decided to conclude the current advertising campaign. Slim Fast believes its decision in no way impacts Ms. Goldberg’s freedom of speech, now or in the future.

I completely disagree. A decision like the one Slim-Fast made in this situation implies that there is no separation between Ms. Goldberg’s work and personal life. It implies that for the duration of her contract with Slim-Fast, every second of every day of her life should be devoted to the company. It furthermore implies that Ms. Goldberg, or someone like her, cannot be free to speak as she chooses at a non-work-related event without fearing for the safety of her livelihood. If one has to be perpetually in fear that a random comment made at any time could ruin one’s life, how can our speech be truly free?

Shame on you, Slim-Fast, for this stupid and cowardly act. All that was needed was a simple public disclaimer. People are smart enough to know that when Ms. Goldberg isn’t standing behind a glaring Slim-Fast logo, she’s not speaking for Slim-Fast.

I’m a subscriber to MoveOn.org’s email list, so last night I got an email from them that completely stunned me. It began as follows:

Our Fox campaign is becoming a major fight. The attacks are now coming from Fox — in an attempt to intimidate other media outlets. We need your help. It’s time to take this to Congress. On Friday, we’ll deliver our Fox petition to members of Congress and we need to have at least 250,000 comments from across the nation. We’re pushing members of Congress to make Fox come clean about its rank partisanship.

It continued, presenting arguments that Fox News is heavily biased towards the right, and saying how MoveOn is pushing Congress and the FTC to question Fox News and Rupert Murdoch about the partisan bias in their news arm.

This is disgusting. MoveOn, an organization which normally puts its efforts towards fighting for causes I wholeheartedly agree with, appeared to be actively trying to deny Fox News’ right to free speech. Upon further investigation, it turns out MoveOn is attempting to convince the government that Fox News’ use of the trademarked phrase “fair and balanced” to describe themselves is false advertising. While this may be so, it’s not a case that needs to take up the time and effort of the United States Congress. It could easily be dealt with by the courts whose jurisdiction includes Fox News’ headquarters.

Now, while I dislike Fox News as much as any liberal, and consider them by far the most shamefully partisan so-called news network on television, I feel that MoveOn has gone much too far with this. And while I agree that “fair and balanced” is not a phrase that accurately describes Fox News, I also think it’s not what our senators and representatives need to be concerned with.

Tom Ridge is looking into how to delay the November election in the case of a terrorist attack. Now, if the terrorists’ aim is to “disrupt the democratic process” (as Ridge has said in the recent past), and in response to their actions we, uh, disrupt our democratic process… aren’t they succeeding?

Recently, the Senate approved raising the maximum FCC fine for broadcast indecency to US$275,000, a significant jump from the current US$32,500 fine. The vote was almost unanimous: the only dissenter was Sen. John Breaux, D-LA, who’s retiring and doesn’t have to worry about reelection.

U.S. society has no interest in responsibility, largely. When something goes wrong, we love to try and point fingers. We’re loud and litigious. If we get hurt, it’s almost expected that we’ll sue someone over it. So when the government does something that helps us point fingers at someone else, we gladly endorse it. At least, those of us who don’t think too much about it.

The FCC is the government’s way of letting us not be responsible for what we, and our children, see and hear through the television and radio. Their rules governing “decency” attempt to punish broadcasters when they violate a high-minded moral code supposedly embraced by the majority of the people in the country.

What the FCC doesn’t realise, though, is that, as long as broadcasting is supported by advertiser revenue, decency in broadcasting is a self-regulating system. If a broadcaster airs too much that its audience considers indecent, the audience will stop tuning in, and the advertisers won’t pay as much. To maximise profits, the broadcaster has to find the right programming that is interesting enough to draw a large audience, but not indecent enough to turn them away. This works entirely on its own without the need for a third-party to regulate it. It will change itself over time as the audience’s opinion changes, and it will automatically compensate for different viewing habits of different groups.

It’s like the foxes and the rabbits. When the rabbit population is high, the foxes hunt and eat more of them, reducing the rabbit population, and allowing the foxes to breed. At some point, there aren’t enough rabbits to feed all the foxes, so the foxes die off. This allows the rabbit population to increase again, restarting the cycle. Introduce hunters looking for rabbit-meat into the equation, and everything falls apart. To beat the metaphor to death: the FCC is a hunter, and it’s using the AK-47 of decency regulations to shoot up the rabbits of boundary-pushing television willy-nilly, leaving us with a bunch of dead-fox shows.

People have been amazed lately by the pull of networks such as HBO and Showtime. These premium television channels have had a surge in viewership lately, and it’s not just because they’ve been putting together high-quality shows. It’s because the FCC-strangled broadcast and basic cable networks have been forced to tame their shows, making them less and less honest in the process. Not fettered by the same restraints, the premium channels have been able to air shows that people actually want to see, and have benefitted tremendously from it.

The FCC thinks it’s doing the American public a favour by saving them from having to make moral judgments for themselves. In reality, all they’ve done is managed to create a sterile, homogenised stream of entertainment that increasingly finds itself too stifled by inane decency guidelines to produce anything that regularly engages viewers.

Where has personal responsibility gone? The government is so keen on traditional family values, about being strong and smart and patriotic, but they don’t want parents to actually have to parent. They’re no longer trusted to be able to keep tabs on their kids’ television viewing, or make sure they’re not tuning into Howard Stern.

To top it off, the FCC urges people to issue complaints every time something in the media offends them. They offer many easy ways to file a complaint — an electronic form, an email address, a postal address, a telephone number, and a fax number. Anytime anyone is even mildly offended, they can file a complaint, with details about the occurrence and the perpetrators, and the FCC will take it into consideration and, if they feel it’s necessary, slap someone with a hefty fine. Where are the balances for this system? If the FCC receives a thousand complaints about an incident, who’s to say there aren’t a million other people who thought the incident was perfectly fine?

As it is, the broadcasters who violate these overly-conservative decency regulations are being punished twice over: once by the loss of viewers (leading to revenue loss), and once by the FCC. The FCC’s decency regulations should be eliminated, and government trust in people’s personal responsibility should be reiterated. Explicit show ratings should be instituted for every show (”The following show contains sexual situtations, explicit language, and drug use.”), and better viewership tracking methods should be employed to let broadcasters know what the people want. Only then will truly free speech be once again available on television and radio, and the public’s opinion be truly represented in these media.