You Pissed Off the Wrong Guy

Much has been made of the new liberal radio network, Air America Radio (I like it. I don't get it locally, so I have to listen online), but the most vociferous critic of the Bush administration's media policy is none other than Howard Stern. With good reason - in the fallout of the Janet Jackson Superbowl debacle, Clear Channel Communications dropped his program from six stations under threat of a nearly $500,000 fine for obscenities, which by the way seems to be the only penalties that resulted from the Superbowl controversy (Jackson and CBS were never fined). Stern is mad as hell and won't take it anymore. He feels that he is the victim of a witch hunt by an administration that is choked with Christian idealogues - little more than a Christian Taliban.

I don't like his schtick, I've never found a reason to visit his website, and you can discuss among yourselves whether or not Howard is sincere in his outrage, or is just hiding behind the First Amendment to protect his career; but really, he's been doing the same offensive stuff for twenty years and the FCC did little more than occasionally slap his wrist. Why all the hubub now?

There have been big changes recently at HowardStern.com. We are now discussing adding a link to the website here on Media Monkey for the FCC and freedom of speech information and activism that are now available there. Seriously! I mean, how can we not link a site that starts out with a quote by Justice William Brennan?

"If there is a bedrock principle of the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable."

His site, recently rated the second most popular entertainer website behind Oprah, has taken on a distinctly activist, pro Kerry, get rid of Bush bent. For example, there is a popup labeled Complain to the FCC that contains an online complaint link along with addresses and examples of other on-air indecencies that have apparently gone unchallenged. There is a Take Action page with links to information and activism like Vote Bush Out of Office and Help Kill the Indecency Bill, and links to websites such as JohnKerryIsADoucheBagButImVotingForHimAnyway.Com.

Republicans, ignore him at your peril. In a recent LA Times Editorial by Jody Rosen:

Some might dismiss this as bluster, but Stern's words should send a shiver up Karl Rove's spine. Stern has a record of successful election-year activism; political observers in New York and New Jersey remember how his on-air endorsements delivered key votes to George Pataki and Christine Todd Whitman in past gubernatorial races.

What's more, although Stern's approximately 8.5 million listeners are often dismissed as overgrown frat boys, they might more accurately be called swing voters. They are overwhelmingly white and male, many are well educated and well off, and they vote. And millions of them listen to Stern's show in battleground states ? Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Missouri, Tennessee, Florida ? where the election will be decided.

Don't judge him by his program or his haircut. He is very intelligent, and politically and commercially astute. It wouldn't surprise me if he helps swing a close election this year. Check out both his website and the editorial.

The Nuclear Industry's Stealth Op-Ed Campaign

William Adler's article, Will Shill for Nukes in the Austin Chronicle documents a scheme whereby a public relations company for the nuclear industry writes op-ed articles, sends them to key university professors who then attach their names and send them to local newspapers.

Adler uncovered the practice after the Austin American-Statesman ran a March 4 op-ed article by Sheldon Landsberger, professor of nuclear engineering at the Universtiy of Texas, which was headlined "Funds for nuclear waste storage should be used for just that". According to Adler:

The op-ed was ginned up, assembly-line style, by a Washington, D.C., public relations firm that the nuclear power lobby retains to tilt public opinion in favor of the stalled Yucca Mountain project. (Unmentioned in Landsberger's plea for official rectitude are the myriad of unresolved scientific, technical, and legal questions about the viability of burying high-level waste in Nevada.) Besides reading and approving the column, all Landsberger did to take credit for authorship was insert his name and position at UT, and forward it via e-mail to the Statesman – even that address provided by the PR firm. (He also sent the column to several other Texas newspapers, none of which printed it.)

On April 20, the newspaper published a letter from Landsberger apologizing for his misrepresentation. The article describes a decades long program of planting op-ed pieces by the nuclear industry lobby. A sidebar article quotes some Lexus-Nexus and Factiva datavase searches of articles attributed to different profesors with almost identical wording.

Woman Fired over Coffin Photo

By now almost everyone has seen Tami Silicio's moving photograph of flag draped coffins being readied for transport back to the US. Likewise, everyone by now knows that she was fired for taking and sending the photo to her friend Amy Katz, who sent the photo to the Seattle Times. When asked, Silicio then gave The Times permission to publish it, without compensation. The incident has ignited a fierce debate regarding the Pentagon's policy of not allowing news media to photograph or publish images of the dead out of respect for the families. Silicio meant no disrespect, and told the Times that "she hoped the publication of the photo would help families of fallen soldiers understand the care and devotion that civilians and military crews dedicate to the task of returning the soldiers home".

Articles of the fring (mostly taken from the AP) are all over the web (google search). Regarding the question of the image and whether the Times should have published it, the Times published some of their readers' responses to the controversy.

Give the public some credit. This is not some politically loaded photo, but rather a moving testament to the reverence and respect shown to the war dead. We already know that our young men and women are dying in action. Seeing photos of flag draped coffins can only help to show that casualties are not taken lightly or forgotten. Lift the photo ban.

Flag Draped Coffins - Colombia Shuttle Victims' Photos Mixed With Iraqi Casualty Photos

Speaking of flag-draped photos, from the AFP News Agency via Yahoo! News comes this bizarre story about photos of the coffins of the Columbia space shuttle disaster victims accidently being mixed in with coffins of Iraq war casualties.

According to the story, Russ Kick circumvented the ban on taking and publishing coffin photos by using the freedom of information act to get more than 350 pictures of coffins taken at the Dover Air Base in Delaware from the Air Force for publication on his website, thememoryhole.org. NASA officials are unsure how the photos were mixed in (they suspect the Air Force just grabbed a bunch of pictures within a given time window), but estimate some 18 rows of images from Dover AFB were actually from Columbia honors. NASA is asking editor to exercise dilligence and caution when taking photos from thememoryhole.org.

USDA Forbids Rancher from Testing his Cattle for Mad Cow

Geez Dr. Z, again with the mad cow? Look, I'm no vegitarian. I love a good steak and all the sides. Nor do I think that mad cow disease is rampant, or indeed even a concern for us. The point is, we just don't know with accuracy what the exact situation is (see March 28 post, Is it Alzheimer's Disease, or Mad Cow Disease? ), and since CJD is a scary disease, it would put my mind at ease if the government would emphasize testing a bit more. Imagine my surprise when I heard the following.

Creekstone Farms Premium Beef, a small beef producer in Kansas, wanted to assure its US and foreign buyers that its beef is free of Mad Cow disease. Creekstone offered to pay to have every single one of its cows privately tested, thus exceeding USDA's minimal testing standards. The USDA forbade Creekstone from carrying this out citing that they do not allow private testing, even by certified labs. They claim that the government is in charge of securing the safety of the beef supply, and that private testing of 100% of the product would mislead the public into thinking that anything less than 100% was not sufficient (the USDA tests less than 1% of the beef supply). The specter of being compelled by public opinion to institute 100% testing no doubt concerns the beef industry, and has probably increased the pressure on the USDA to clamp down on "renegade testing". Jim Hightower (activist and former Texas Agriculture Commissioner) has asked for concerned citizens to call the USDA comment office at 202-720-5627 to protest.

He's Not Savion Glover

The president is back at the White House today resting after a long tap dancing performance in front of the press corps and the nation last night. He opened the press conference with a seventeen minute speech detailing why we need to stay the course, why democracy is good for Iraq, making the world safe for democracy, truth, justice, and the American way, etc. Then followed a Q&A in which the president answered every question posed to him, no matter what that question was, with highlights from the previous speech. Get the uneditied transcript of the conference from the White House website (to thier credit, even the president's unique liguistic abilities were left in, e.g.: "This has been tough weeks in that country.").

I love the part when he was asked if he'd made any mistakes:

Reporter: Thank you, Mr. President. In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life, and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say, and what lessons have you learned from it?

The President: I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time, so I could plan for it. (Laughter.) John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better this way, or that way. You know, I just -- I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet.

I would have gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even knowing what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would have called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein. See, I happen to believe that we'll find out the truth on the weapons. That's why we've sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth, exactly where they are. They could still be there. They could be hidden, like the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.

One of the things that Charlie Duelfer talked about was that he was surprised at the level of intimidation he found amongst people who should know about weapons, and their fear of talking about them because they don't want to be killed. There's a terror still in the soul of some of the people in Iraq; they're worried about getting killed, and, therefore, they're not going to talk.

But it will all settle out, John. We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time. However, the fact that he had the capacity to make them bothers me today, just like it would have bothered me then. He's a dangerous man. He's a man who actually -- not only had weapons of mass destruction -- the reason I can say that with certainty is because he used them. And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to have inflicted harm, or paid people to inflict harm, or trained people to inflict harm on America, because he hated us.

I hope I -- I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't -- you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I'm not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.

Yeah, I'm sure I have, I just can't think of any now. I guess if he had been given this question ahead of time, his handlers and writers would have given him a more eloquent non-answer that would allow him to appear sympathetic without actually taking any blame. Commentary and coverage abounds on the net, but my favorite is the transcript of the real-time blog recorded during the speech at Howard Dean's Blog for America. Dan Balz has a good article at the Washington Post.

(Savion Glover is a brilliant, Tony Award winning tap dancer and choreographer. You may remember him in Spike Lee's dark satire on racism and entertainment - Bamboozled.)

The President Faces the Press

As Iraq burns, Nero returns from his fiddling in Crawford to address the press in a rare prime time press conference (only the third since taking office) after considerable pressure from a skiddish White House staff. Read the NYT story (registration required).