folksongs for the fivepoints
Kind of beautiful. From the How to use this site page:

Folk Songs for the Five Points is a digital arts project that allows you to create your own “folk songs” by remixing and overlaying a range of sounds taken from New York’s Lower East Side.

The SoundMap features a visual representation of the Lower East Side, overlaid with a series of dots. Each dot represents an audio sample recorded at that particular place. To select a sample, click and drag one of circles over the chosen dot. The sample will then automatically start playing.

Reminds me of Mr. Beller's Neighborhood, another slices-of-New-York web site. Via Roy Edroso. Enjoy. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:50:00 AM -- |    

 
Fucking bullshit FCC rulings
Jeff Jarvis is defending bullshit-- and what's more, he's right:

In its latest batch of nannyisms, the FCC declared shit and all its variants, including bullshit, not merely indecent -- which is where the case law stood after the Supreme Court washed the seven dirty words out of George Carlin's mouth in 1978 -- but also now profane. Since outmoded broadcast censorship legislation was passed in 1927 -- giving the government this constitutionally dubious authority -- the FCC had not once found any word to be profane until 2004, when it ruled against Bono's joyful utterance of "fucking" at the Golden Globes. Now "shit" et al join this devil's dictionary. And the FCC warns that they are not merely profane but "presumptively profane," which means that except in "rare" and "unusual circumstances," to speak these words on the air will guarantee you a penalty.

By declaring them profane, the FCC rules these words are "certain of those personally reviling epithets naturally tending to provoke violent resentment or denoting language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance." Nuisance, in this case, does not mean a dog barking; it means that the community finds this utterance universally disturbing, utterly unacceptable, and even intolerable. The FCC commissioners say that they "reserve that distinction for the most offensive words in the English language." As I pointed out in an earlier post, even the FCC recognizes the uncomfortable and quite politically incorrect irony that they will not similarly ban racial and religious epithets because they may constitute political speech. Thus, in the offensive view of the FCC, the S-word and F-word are now worse than the N-word and K-word.

("...nannyisms" link added.) Skimming the March 15 rulings, one thing that's funny to me is that the FCC uses the euphemisms "F-word" and "S-word" itself throughout the document, although the document does provide verbatim citations of the uses of the words it finds to be worth fining. This way the sacred FCC pronouncements can themselves be broadcast, of course, but there's a ludicrous "church lady" feeling to it all the same.

Lest anyone think FCC's "presumptive" objections to "fuck" and "shit" are somehow limited to casually obscene or prurient use of those words, Jarvis cites an exchange between FCC commissioner James Adelstein and NPR's Bob Garfield:

Garfield: Now, I want to talk to you about the word bullshit. Now this is commonly used to convey skepticism, but the commission found it to be explicitly excretory and therefore indecent, whereas dickhead as an insult is ok. But where I come from, bullshit is pretty much kidstuff and dickhead is pretty darned insulting. All of which is to finally ask how you go about finding standards on this stuff. It seems to be so arbitrary.

Adelstein: Well, are you going to edit that out?

Garfield: It depends. Are you on duty?

-- and Jarvis reports the words were bleeped out from the broadcast. Jarvis also notes that "bullshit" survives FCC's "presumptive profanity" muster for fictional heroic white guys (Spielberg's "Saving Private Ryan"), but not for actual black musicians (Scorsese's "The Blues: Godfathers and Sons").

Another interesting point, I think, is that the rule applies to broadcasts, but not to podcasts, illustrating another consequence of the personal gadget "revolution": really free speech is fine -- as long as you can afford the equipment to hear it. Maybe that wasn't an intended consequence, but maybe it's not an unwelcome one, either.

This looks minor compared to Iraq or the NSA scandal or the Katrina aftermath or any of a number of other news items. But freedom of speech is basic, and not letting the government restrict it is basic. While I don't enjoy shows that use offensive words excessively or pointlessly, I also don't want to make that decision for others, and I certainly don't want the government deciding what can and can not be heard on the air. Depending on the community, "personally reviling epithets" like "That lying bastard Bush lied, people died" will "provoke violent resentment" and be "universally disturbing" too. Depending on how fast minds continue to deteriorate at the FCC, such speech could presumably be banned next.

So I'm not just for trying to overturn these FCC actions, but also for trying to roll back the stupid 1978 Supreme Court decision Jarvis refers to. Mr. Jarvis' refrain is quite right: "I ... believe it is a violation of our civil rights worthy of court challenge. [...] " Say it, blog it, podcast it, broadcast it: these rules are fucking bullshit.


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UPDATE, 3/30: Georgia police take it to the next level: no "I'm tired of all the BUSHIT" -- like I said, Georgia police -- or "Bush sucks. Dick Cheney too." bumperstickers, despite a 1991 Georgia Supreme Court ruling striking down an anti-"lewd bumpersticker" statute. Reported by The Progressive's Matthew Rothschild, via Michael Silence (KnoxNews, "No Silence Here").
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:47:00 PM -- |    

 
Almost 2008 on the Straight Talk Express

And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

--- Jerry Falwell, 9/13/2001, interview with Pat Robertson on The 700 Club

Pay no heed to the voices of the poor, misguided souls, in this country and overseas, who claim that America brought these atrocities on herself. They are deluded, and their hearts are cramped by hatred and fear.

--- John McCain, 9/22/2001: Eulogy for Mark Bingham, hero of United Flight 93

American military hero and Arizona Sen. John McCain will deliver the Commencement message at Liberty University on May 13, at 9:30 a.m., in the Liberty University Vines Center.

--- Liberty University press release, 3/26/2006

Via Josh Marshall, who comments: "The transformation is almost complete." I wonder if McCain is planning a minor Sister Souljah moment, just strong enough to get attention, not so strong that he'd lose more than a few listeners.


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LINKS ADDED -- "gays": United Hero Mark Bingham; "Liberty University": Founder/Chancellor Jerry Falwell.
UPDATE, 3/30: There's probably a better passage for this (Luke 16:13? Matthew 21:13?), but I'll call it aTimothy 6:5 alert at Digital Warfighter.
UPDATE, 4/5: Jon Stewart calls it "going into crazy base world" -- and McCain agrees. Crooks and Liars video here.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 10:29:00 PM -- |    

 
Choose laughter
Raising Boys that Feminists Will Hate, by Townhall.com columnist and radio personality Doug Giles. It's uncanny -- this guy writes just exactly like Jesus' General:

Feminists—or lesbians—as I like I like to call them, would love nothing more than to take your son and eradicate his masculine uniqueness. They hate men, and therefore, they will hate your son. That is, of course, assuming that you, the parent, intend to raise your son to be a man instead of a rouged and lipsticked, male American Idol hopeful.

Just a leeetle bit bitter, are we? Via TBogg. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:42:00 AM -- |    

 
Worth reading
After three years, after 150,000 dead, why I was wrong about Iraq: A melancholic mea culpa, Johann Hari, "The Independent" ---

The lamest defence I could offer – one used by many supporters of the war as they slam into reverse gear – is that I still support the principle of invasion, it’s just the Bush administration screwed it up. But as one anti-war friend snapped at me when I mooted this argument, “Yeah, who would ever have thought that supporting George Bush in the illegal invasion of an Arab country would go wrong?” [...]

It is very hard to see a solution, but I believe the threads of one are visible. The polls show that most of these violent militias draw their support from the fact that they oppose the foreign troops, not from the fact that they massacre fellow-Iraqis. So the best way to drain their support – and dampen the inertia towards civil war – is to withdraw the troops now.

Like Hari, I'm a chastened Iraq war ex-supporter, and I continue to struggle with how I came to support it. In my case, it was mainly WMD apprehensions that were obviously ill-founded. I think I also was too prone to see analogies to Bosnia or other historical examples that weren't really appropriate or useful, and gave Bush/Cheney et al far too much benefit of the doubt about their shifting claims about Iraq. This is obviously not half of what I might or should have to write, but by my own conventions I'm trying to keep things short in this kind of post.*

An echo chamber of our own? Henry Farrell, "Crooked Timber" ---

There’s a lot that I admire about the Kos/Stoller/Armstrong crowd, and a lot in their analysis that I agree with. When they denounce the current Democratic consultocracy as a crowd of self-interested hacks, and the majority of Democratic politicians as jellylike invertebrates, I’m cheering them on all the way. When they talk about the blogosphere’s influence as depending on the extent to which it influences the collective wisdom, I think they’re absolutely right (this is in fact one of the themes of research that Dan Drezner and I are doing). But there’s something more than a bit worrying about the claim that an emerging consensus around a shared analysis is necessarily a strength for left wing bloggers. Isn’t the echo chamber quality of much discussion on the right something that we want to be avoiding, not trying to emulate?

I'm reminded a bit of my own How DINOs evolve, how they go extinct post. This one goes in a slightly different direction, but overall, I think we make similar points about dKos/myDD being too tightly focused on "infrastructure" and not enough on stuff like message regardless of party opponent, or policy alternatives -- their own self-image notwithstanding.

Against Orders --- In a veering but interesting post Roy Edroso ("alicublog") suggests that while their lives were more dangerous when people were taking drugs, their music was better. Some of us vaguely remember claiming the same thing once, but it's a little hazy, of course. Edroso goes on to suggest that our emerging techno-culture is a poor substitute, all in all.

Order's a popular electoral gambit. People squawk when you hit them up for tax money, but applaud your sense of responsibility when you dig your entrenching tool into the pleasure centers.

When you read, as any ordinary internet trawler will, fulsome odes to the iPod and the pay-per-view concert, please try to keep in mind that things were once way more fucked up. And seriously consider whether that means they were worse.

Apropos of other parts of this post, "Yellow Submarine" has replaced "Mary Poppins" as Maddie's favorite movie, and "Strawberry Fields Forever" is her favorite song -- although "Once in a Lifetime" is moving up fast.** Daddy's very proud that we're keeping our tiny, watered down version of the counterculture alive in the burbs.

Coretta a "communist"? There's a history there, Chris Kromm, "Facing South" -- A certain Washington Post ex-blogger recently apologized for calling Coretta King a Communist (under a pseudonym, at a different site, on the occasion Bush's appearance at her funeral). While one might be tempted to let a given wet-behind-the-ears wingnut comment go, Kromm points out that Domenech's remark has a rich and ignoble tradition: red-baiting was an integral part of the FBI's attempts to discredit both Martin Luther King and leftist outfits like the Highlander Cultural Center back in the day.

So let's be clear: Domenech's comment is more than unhinged howling (although it is that). It's part of the right's larger preoccupation with reliving the Cold War, and a larger agenda to resuscitate McCarthyism and validate the Red Scare.

There are two goals at work here. One is to justify today's crack-down on dissent, from illegal wire-tapping and surveillance of peace groups, to the harassment of "tenured radicals" the right fears are out to brainwash our impressionable youth.

But just as dangerously, it's also an attempt to re-write our entire history -- to cast those who stood for racism, white rule and persecution as victims (McCarthy suffered from a "witch-hunt," says Ann Coulter), and to portray those who stood most nobly for justice and freedom as irrelevant or diabolically un-American.

In other words, to change the very definition of progress in our country.

The Virginia Quarterly Review --- More interesting and fun to read than that sounds like -- and now with "6 (SIX!) National Magazine Award nominations." I'd never heard of it either. More about VQR here, via Facing South.

In other "pesky upstart Virginians" news --- go GMU! Another Virginia institution most of us had never heard of, unless of course you read Marginal Revolution now and then.


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* For some of my own attempts at a reckoning with my own last-minute support (With regrets -- for war on Saddam, 2/13/03), see False premises , A screwed up war (both 10/28/04) and a post about the 9/24/05 demonstration in Washington, D.C.. Probably unsatisfactory; in addition to some of the points above, my "with regrets" post now seems to me not a proper argument so much as a set of counterarguments, leaving my own reasons more implied than stated outright. I once discussed the topic of "good faith support" for the war at "fact-esque" with proprietor eRobin and her longtime reader David Byron, in comments about John Edwards' mea culpa on Iraq.
** There's also "Un gamin de Paris," which she's been singing over and over and over rehearsing for the 30 year anniversary of her K-5 French immersion program. Can't understand it; catchy, though.

UPDATE, 3/30: Re my discussion above of Hari's article, WorldWideWeber ("Notes from the Basement") asks "What mistake is it? Doing it, or not doing it right?" and says the war could not have been vindicated by any benefits whatsoever, including shutting down an active WMD program. I reply that think there's a third kind of mistake: "doing it, but based on deceit and self-deception"; more discussion at "Notes from the Basement."
posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:10:00 PM -- |