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In This Issue

• Columbia Expands, Gentrifies Outer Space
• Spectator Artist Plagiarizes Fed's Ben Schwartz
• Farewell from Feditrix Kate
• Media Decency Campaign Attacks Stern
• EC Fire Alarms Pester, Endanger Students
• Don't Get Impregnated By Young Republicans
• Letters to the Feditor
• Sci-Fi Poo Theory
• Sports Beer: Not Good For Sports
• Butler: The Engineering Frontier
• Unarians Help You Go To Space Life
• Totally Fab New Planet Suggestions
• Bush and Cheney's Excellent Adventure
• Fed Student's Guide To Meningitis
• Columbia Girls LOVE Barnard Prez Schapiro
• Funny Comic #543: Adventures of Ice Bitch
• Able & Baker: Monkeys in Space
• Honoring Jesse Strouth- A Highly Derivative Cartoon
• They Watch

I didn't watch this past February's Super Bowl. I heard somewhere that Janet Jackson's tit fell out during halftime. I thought it was mildly funny. I blushed for her for about half a second. And then I forgot all about it.

I didn't see the dozens of blurred-out replays on cheesy news programs full of interviews with enraged parents. I guess they must have said something along the lines of "I had it all planned out: I was going to reveal to my son that women have enlarged fleshy mounds on their chests with nipples in the middle on his eighteenth birthday, as we drove to his road test. Now the surprise is ruined, all because of that wicked television!" Living in New York City, I've felt insulated from good old-fashioned American Puritanical outrage. And I guess I've forgotten that our nation is controlled by Organizations of Outraged Mothers, people who attribute to God some particular and pressing opinion on the subject of television programming, and outright morons.

A few months later, the House of Representatives passed the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004, which would substantially increase the penalties to broadcasters if they transmit material that the FCC judges "indecent." The bill also gives the FCC a new ability to impose enormous fines both on broadcasters and on performers found responsible for indecency. These proposals have enjoyed overwhelming bipartisan support, and it is fairly certain that the President will sign the bill when it comes to his desk. Isn't it nice that our elected officials are so good at protecting our carefully indoctrinated, morbidly obese, ADD-ridden Middle American progeny?

There has been very little serious debate on these bills, especially in the Senate, where Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist and crew have been working overtime to come up with insidious little plans to avoid debate and call an immediate vote while the issue is hot. Moreover, the media, the very industry that is being threatened, regulated, and vilified by the bills, has also failed to voice objection.

For the most part, the Democrats have also been supporting these bills. The only real disagreement on the subject has been many Democrats' insistence that the reason for the increase in media indecency lies with recent corporate consolidation as a result of over-regulation. This opinion is completely counterfactual, because a giant media conglomerate is always going to try to reach the largest, most mainstream audience possible, by programming widely accepted inoffensive material. Independent broadcasters are much more likely to run edgy programming at the expense of mainstream popularity. But, instead of thinking about that, you could just be a good Democrat and indulge your favorite knee-jerk anti-corporate rhetoric, by hating ClearChannel for promoting indecency in media.

I, for one, would prefer to hate ClearChannel for promoting decency in media. They are the intersection between a sports game I don't watch, a singer I don't listen to, and a bunch of politicians who I already knew I hated, and something I actually care about: Howard Stern. Howard Stern is the funniest entertainer I have ever heard on the radio. He is also one of the most politically ballsy: he has risked his ass over and over again to make his program entertaining, honest, and even informative. He has been fired by a number of stations for his content, and has always persisted with his show. He never ceases to antagonize social conservative groups. He loves anal. He is my hero.

Shortly after the Super Bowl episode, ClearChannel took Howard Stern off the air on their channels. As a result, his program can no longer be heard in several major media markets. This was in response to political pressure from decency-in-media groups, as well as a pending FCC investigation triggered by similar complaints. The investigation finally concluded, last week, that a specific Howard Stern Show that had been targeted contained eighteen separate incidents of indecency, and fined ClearChannel $500,000. In setting this fine, the FCC set a new precedent; the maximum fine allowable by law for indecency is $27,500 per incident. Previously, an entire program had been termed an "incident," but to produce this hefty sum, the Commission decided instead to pick a specific number of allegedly separate "incidents" which it claims occurred during a single conversation about anal sex.

In response, Stern has declared that he is being attacked by the Bush administration for urging his 8 million listeners to vote Bush out of office. He points out that the Chairman of the FCC is Michael Powell, son of Bush's secretary of state Colin Powell, and that several prominent individuals involved with the FCC are major contributors to Bush's re-election campaign.

Since even the most zealous media reform activists can't claim to have any precise way of measuring indecency, vague terms like "reasonable standards" and "community acceptance" get thrown around a lot. However, it doesn't sound "reasonable" to me to parse through a radio transcript, most of which discusses deviant sex practices, but which uses no previously defined "explicit" word or phrase, and identify precisely eighteen separate instances of indecency. With these types of vague standards for FCC interference, the new Congressional indecency bills begin to look both ridiculous and dangerous. The proposed law allows for the maximum fine for indecency to be elevated almost 20 times, up to $500,000 per incident. I'm not so sure Howard Stern would be on the air to criticize the President anymore if they hit both his broadcasters and him personally for 9 million dollars (!) for talking about anal sex. Is that the kind of power that our government should have in the name of protecting children?