By Stanley Rogouski, 4/14/06
If Howard Stern thought that by jumping
to satellite radio he was no longer on the minds of the Christian
right, he was sorely mistaken.
My daily e-mail alert from Tony Perkins
and the Family Research Council led off with the headline ‘Stern
Reality’ and quickly jumped into self-satisfied gloating. Not only
did we chase Howard Stern off the airwaves, the e-mail crows, we made
him lose most of his audience. But that’s not even the point of the
e-mail. It’s just a little treat to wet the palette before they get
to what they really want.
http://www.frc.org/get.cfm?i=AL06D06
Howard Stern, the shock jock who perpetually went over the line of
broadcast decency, is facing a stern reality – the vast majority of
his estimated 12 million listeners didn’t go with him to satellite
radio. While Stern operated for years with impunity from the Federal
Communications Commission (FCC), he found himself the subject of
several regulatory actions since the FCC awakening. Stern jumped to
satellite broadcasting where industry execs expected subscribers to
pay to relish his vulgarity. Sirius, the satellite company that
charges subscribers $13 a month for Stern, will not release numbers.
But industry analysts believe Stern has managed to corral no more
than 1-2 million members of his old audience. Stern’s reality shows
what an empowered FCC can do to keep the public airwaves decent for
America’s families. Despite the FCC’s successes Congress has yet to
give them the tools it needs to clean up broadcast television. A
major obstacle is Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) who continues to resist
get-tough broadcast decency legislation that FRC and its allies have
been pressing for. All the while he has hailed his own efforts in the
Senate Commerce Committee, which he chairs, as “family friendly”
and even claims support from “faith-based” organizations.
The reality is that the broadcast indecency measure has passed the
House, has received almost unanimous support in the Senate, but the
bill H.R.310 is being held up by Sen. Stevens. Call your Senators and
ask them to give the FCC the tools to clean up America’s public
airwaves.
Not only is H.R. 310, also known as the
Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act, one of the scariest bills to come
down the pike in years, it’s a perfect example of the kind of
Democratic complicity with the Christian right that often flies under
the radar. HR 310 would raise the maximum allowable fine for Howard
Stern like behavior from $38,000 to $500,000. It would also provide
for a ‘three strikes and you’re out’ rule and revoke the
broadcaster’s license if they violated the law three times. In
other words, this is a bill with real teeth. Think about how Elliot
Spitzer in his well hyped prosecution of various Wall Street security
firms was rendered irrelevant by the fact that the corporations he
went after were more than capable of paying large fines. Try to
imagine what would have happened had these same companies faced
losing their right to stay in business. That’s the level of
punishment we’re talking about. And we all know that the Christian
right has nothing against ‘indecency’ per se, only indecency when
it comes from a well-known Bush critic likes Howard Stern.
So it would make sense, right, that it
would receive a lot of media coverage, wouldn’t it? And it would
certainly make sense that the Democrats would oppose it, wouldn’t
it?
Unfortunately, the Christian Fascists
often get what they want through sheer fear and intimidation. That
Tony Perkins is targeting Republican Ted Stevens as the primary
obstacle to its passing should tell you just how far down the road to
theocracy we already are. It passed the House of Representatives 389
to 38 with 6 abstentions and received the OK of the House leadership
including Nancy Pelosi.
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2005/roll035.xml
There’s been little or no media
coverage of HR310. I couldn’t find any mention of it in the New
York Times. It’s given a brief mention in the Washington Post. I
couldn’t find anything in the Wall Street Journal. But if there’s
been little debate in the mainstream media over HR310, you can’t
say the same thing about the Christian right. It’s given a primary
place on the websites of The Family Research Council and the
Concerned Women of America. There’s a statement by George Bush
supporting HR310. There’s another one by Sam Brownback.
Even though my own
representative in Congress voted ‘no’ on HR310, I can’t find a
single statement from any Democrat anywhere on the web.