The Ombudsgod and James Lileks seem to be arguing past one another, at least as I read it. The Ombudsgod is concerned about government censorship via the FCC in the "Opie and Anthony" situation, in which the two "shock jocks" ran a contest to get a couple to engage in conjugal relations on the air during Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

From Lileks' bleat today:

By bringing pressure on the FCC to both fine and revoke the broadcast license of WNEW FM, they have succeeded in forcing the radio station to eliminate a popular syndicated afternoon show. Two DJs, Opie and Anthony, have been fired, and the General Manager, Ken Stevens, and Program Director, Jeremy Coleman, have been suspended. This censorship will have a chilling effect on other broadcasters who may wish to broadcast controversial material.

Good.

Good. Maybe the next time some promotions director floats the idea of sponsoring a fellatio contest in a day-care center, he?ll be met with hard looks instead of high-fives. This stuff is ?controversial,? sure - but only by the most banal definition. Sawing off a puppy?s legs on the air is controversial. Stuffing a midget up Anne Sprinkle and having him broadcast from her oft-examined cervix is controversial. It?s also sick. It?s tiresome. It?s the work of people so jaded they think that intellectual bravery is defined not by the traditions you honor, but the ones you debase.

Now, my reading of it is that Lileks is saying "good" to the fact that they got fired--not the fact that it occurred due to FCC pressure. I suspect that the Ombudsgod's interpretation is that he is cheering the FCC intervention itself.

I'd like to agree with both of them (assuming that my interpretations are correct). I'm glad they were fired--I do think that it's a good thing. I'm simultaneously troubled that their behavior in itself wasn't sufficient cause to fire them, and that it had to take the threat from a government agency (that shouldn't be in charge of granting or revoking licenses in the first place--they should simply enforce the rights of the current owners of the spectrum). I would have greatly preferred that public pressure, and loss of advertisers, were sufficient to see that this kind of mindless audio excrement was taken off the air, or not appearing in the first place.

But despite the troubling First-Amendment issues (which are really caused by the charter of the FCC in general--not this particular case), it may have a salutory effect on the airwaves, at least for a little while. I don't think that the nation's intellectual or cultural discourse will be in any way impoverished by these clowns' absence from them.

I've been saying recently that in the near future someone, somewhere in popular entertainment will, in order to shock, tease, and titillate an already desensitized and macabre entertainment-hungry public, perform a live "snuff" event.

I am a grown man, worldly and jaded, yet even I have limits. My remedy for vanquishing this foul deluge of "shocking" entertainment pouring out of our airwaves was to simply pull the plug and ignore it. However, that is not going to change our culture--but it certainly improves mine.

Where do we the citizenry draw the line? When do we say, "Enough is enough?" Do we keep letting people push the limits in the name of the First Amendment until entertainment gets really creepy and does real harm?

It's a tough call. There has to be middle ground where those who have had enough can meet those who believe there are no limits. Democracy is about compromise, not absolutism (especially in interpreting our very elastic Constitution); issues are not black or white--and it's within that gray area defined as "what is right for everyone" where we must reside.

Personally, I've already had enough--and I am about as jaded as they come.

By what right do we, the majority, determine what people may say? Democracy may be about compromise, but the U.S. Bill of Rights should not be: people have an inalienable right to speak as they please. If a live "snuff" event was actually performed, it would be the "snuff" itself that would be the crime, not talking about it or filming it.

Live entertainment today is, I agree, becoming bizarre, and sometimes downright creepy. So if something repulsive comes up on the radio or elsewhere, I change the channel with a sigh, and remember that it is one of the many things that a free man living in a free society must tolerate, and that if we give the government the power to clamp down on speech that you and I find repulsive today, tomorrow others will give the government the power to outlaw the speech that you and I cherish.

George, it isn't a question of what people may say. It's established law that the airwaves are not the private property of the broadcasters, but are public property licensed to them in return for whatever "public service" their use may provide.

The First Amendment does apply somewhat, but the public ownership paradigm does in fact empower a government regulatory agency to tell broadcasters, "You can't put that on the air."

The question, therefore, is whether having a government regulatory agency thus empowered to ensure that the public airwaves are not abused with, say, live sex carried out in church, is good policy. I consider myself a conservative but with small-L libertarian leanings, but I think this is good policy.

I'm also a licensed broadcaster, call letters KL0TY (that's a zero, not an "O").

The reason for the suspensions had nothing to do with FCC pressure and everything to do with the fact that

1. Infinity, (radio network) a huge profit center, has other problems and had to make a statement. The local New York station (WNEW) is 22nd in the ratings and losing money big time, but most important
2. Sumner Redstone and Mel Karmazin, the billionaire heads of Viacom and one of the huge conglomerates controlling WNEW, were getting heat personally from their pals AND there had been a run on stock after the show. Both are huge Democrat financial supporters and couldn't afford to be seen as supporting obscene behavior.

Remember, all Hollywood types care about what their cocktail circuit friends think of them. In fact, profit comes in a distant second to current fads and PC in that crowd. It is only when profits get seriously threatened, serious is a $5 drop in the stock price one day after the Opie and Anthony show, it is only then that morality on the part of Redstone and Karmazin show up.

Opie and Anthony will get a new show at a new network and get paid even more money. Freedom of obscene speech will live on. I also agree that the next step will be a live rape, a car jacking, or perhaps a really funny torture bit.

BTW, if you listen to the show on Smoking Gun.com it appears that one of the other females was participating because she was afraid she'd be deported if she didn't. Probably a joke, but has anybody checked?

I won't mourn the loss of Opie and Anthony, and I agree with everything the Lileks said about how the culture is coarsened so badly that it's the ones calling for decency who get pariah status for being squares rather than the smut merchants racing to find out how far they can push the lowes common denominator. Everything that is, except for one thing, he dimisses the comparison between the Church's refusal to adopt a "Zero tolerance" for priests sexually abusing children but made darn sure to Opie and Anthony were riddden out on a rail for broadcasting consensual sex between adults. Lileks states that the Church shouldn't have to be silent on all crimes because some of their people were found guilty of another crime. In a perfect world, that may be so, but when an orgainization leaps to zero tolerance when it's the victim, but hedges when it's people are the perpetrators of more serious crimes, they cease to be a credible voice for decency, and the forces of decency are robbed of an important soldier. Like it or not, the Catholic Church looks more like the accountant who micromanages the petty cash and allows thousands to be stolen in a false billing scheme (i.e the Arthur Andersen of religion) and it's naive to think the Mapplethorpes, Trey Parkers, Matt Stones, and yes even the Andy and Opies of the world, won't point it out, and won't be effective doing so.

What's your solution then, Rand? Is the FCC to have NO regulatory authority over the airwaves? The libertarian in me would love that -- if the airwaves weren't a scarce public resource owned by everyone.

"What's your solution then, Rand? Is the FCC to have NO regulatory authority over the airwaves? The libertarian in me would love that -- if the airwaves weren't a scarce public resource owned by everyone."

Short answer, yes. The FCC should only enforce the property rights of the owners of the spectra, which are determined by the market.

The "scarce resource" argument holds no water. It may be valid in some ivory-tower, theoretical sense, but the reality is that any major city has many radio and television stations, and only one or two major newspapers. So which is the "scarce resource"? Which (if either) should be regulated "in the public interest"?

By the way, mucho congrats on the engagement. Sounds as though, like Steven Green, you're marrying up, and best wishes to you.

Rand, a license to broadcast on a certain frequency in a certain market area is not an conveyance of property. It's more like a lease. If you rented a house and the lease included a condition that the property and grounds be kept up to a certain standard, you would either comply with that condition or face sanctions and possible eviction.

Any broadcaster knows the rules going in.

I know that it's not property. I'm not arguing "is," I'm arguing "ought."

>I've been saying recently that in the near >future someone, somewhere in popular >entertainment will, in order to shock, tease, >and titillate an already desensitized and >macabre entertainment-hungry public, perform a >live "snuff" event.

Do videos on CNN of puppies being gassed count?