BROADSIDES

February 25, 2004

Moronic Quote Of The Day
Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content and Howard Stern's show blew right through it. -- Clear Channel CEO John Hogan, announcing that he's yanked Stern's syndicated radio show from all Clear Channel stations.

Let's try to make sense of this. Clear Channel wants to protect its listeners from Howard Stern's show. Yet, if listeners want protected from Howard Stern, why are they listening in the first place?

Hogan should just admit the truth of the matter. Hogan's new decency standards have nothing to do with protecting listeners. Rather, he's spinelessly sucking up to the witch-hunting FCC to avoid fallout (so to speak) from the Super Bowl halftime show.

Or maybe there's more to it. This is wild speculation but is it possible that Clear Channel is using the FCC deceny crackdown as an excuse to put the screws to a competitor? Viacom/Infinity Broadcasting -- which owns the Stern show -- competes with Clear Channel in the syndication business. In recent years, Clear Channel has quietly dropped non-Clear Channel syndicated shows from its radio stations and replaced them with its own syndicated shows. Perhaps Hogan's hot air about indeceny is a well-timed ploy to get Clear Channel out of its contractual obligations to broadcast Infinity's Stern show, thus clearing the way to replace Stern with CC-syndicated shows.

B. Sides @ 11:31 PM

February 23, 2004

Monica Weighs In (Insert Jenny Craig Joke Here)
Presidential fellatist Monica Lewinsky is put off by allegations circulated by Wesley Clark's campaign that John Kerry is steppin' out on the missus.

Drudge links to a report in which Monica lectures American voters during an English television interview:

I would really hope people are finally starting to smarten up about this and are starting to judge a candidate for his knowledge and accomplishments, rather than his personal life. You know, I've heard it before but it bears repeating: We're electing a President, not a priest.

That's an approximate quote, by the way; it was difficult to hear what she said exactly. Hey, Monica, next time don't talk with your mouth full.

B. Sides @ 1:37 PM

February 16, 2004

Make It George Washington Day
(Note: I originally blogged this post on February 17, 2003. And since my demands have not been met, here it is again!)

Today America pays tribute to its presidents. Unfortunately that group includes many lackluster chief executives, including the politically inept (James Buchanan, Ulysess Grant, Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter) and the morally inept (John Tyler, Millard Fillmore, Warren Harding, Lyndon Johnson, and Bill Clinton). These presidents are not worthy of a holiday-caliber commemoration.

Moreover, honoring all the presidents collectively on one day renders the holiday meaningless. That's why Congress should scrap Presidents Day and replace it with a holiday honoring the one person indispensable in the forging of the United States: George Washington.

As the Continental Army's commander-in-chief in the American Revolution, the most influential voice calling for a Constitutional Convention (over which he presided) and the first president of the United States, Washington occupies the center stage of American history. But more important than what Washington did is what he did not do. Though he would have had the military and popular support to do so, he firmly refused absolute power by explicitly dismissing suggestions that he make himself America's king.

In May of 1782—less than a year after the British surrendered to Washington at Yorktown—the Continental Army had yet to be paid by the new (and largely powerless) Congress established under the Articles of Confederation. In an attempt to resolve the issue of compensation, Colonel Lewis Nicola wrote his commander-in-chief expressing the opinion of many in the Continental Army that Washington make himself king of the United States. Washington's indignant reply reveals not only his exemplary character but his steadfast commitment to limited republican government:

Sir: With a mixture of great surprise and astonishment I have read with attention the Sentiments you have submitted to my perusal. Be assured Sir, no occurrence in the course of the War, has given me more painful sensations than your information of there being such ideas existing in the Army as you have expressed, and I must view with abhorrence, and reprehend with severety. For the present, the communication of them will rest in my own bosom, unless some further agitation of the matter, shall make a disclosure necessary.

I am much at a loss to conceive what part of my conduct could have given encouragement to an address which to me seems big with the greatest mischiefs that can befall my Country. If I am not deceived in the knowledge of myself, you could not have found a person to whom your schemes are more disagreeable; at the same time in justice to my own feelings I must add, that no Man possesses a more sincere wish to see ample justice done to the Army than I do, and as far as my powers and influence, in a constitutional way extend, they shall be employed to the utmost of my abilities to effect it, should there be any occasion. Let me conjure you then, if you have any regard for your Country, concern for yourself or posterity, or respect for me, to banish these thoughts from your Mind, and never communicate, as from yourself, or any one else, a sentiment of the like Nature.—May 22, 1782

As the nation's first president, Washington established presidential precedents and traditions to which most of his successors adhere. He defined the office. In doing so he was guided by one objective, which he explained in his Farewell Address of 1796:

With me, a predominant motive has been to endeavour to gain time to our country to settle and mature its yet recent institutions, and to progress without interruption, to that degree of strength and consistency, which is necessary to give it, humanly speaking, the command of its own fortunes.

Washington's policy triumphed. And today the United States has "the command of its own fortunes."

America should show its gratitude and respect by designating George Washington's birthday—February 22—a national holiday.

B. Sides @ 10:18 AM

February 13, 2004

John F. "Sleazeball"
Even though Mr. Teresa Heinz née Kerry denies allegations that he's boinking a woman other than the Countess of Ketchup, Terry Polier -- the father of the alleged mistress Alex Polier -- maintains that the Massachusetts senator is "a sleazeball." (Mr. Polier is referring to John Kerry not Ted Kennedy; any confusion is understandable.)

Conveniently, Miss Polier recently left for Kenya and had no comment when contacted by the Sun.

If the allegations are true, Kerry can minimize the political damage by choosing Gary Condit as a runningmate. That way, Kerry can tell voters, "Hey, at least my mistress turned up alive!"

B. Sides @ 12:40 PM

February 06, 2004

Living A Life That Is A Statement
The house we hope to build is not for my generation but for yours. It is your future that matters. And I hope that when you are my age, you will be able to say as I have been able to say: We lived in freedom. We lived lives that were a statement, not an apology. -- Ronald Reagan, St. John's University, March 28, 1985

Today is President Reagan's 93rd birthday.

B. Sides @ 11:27 PM

February 03, 2004

Good Luck, Jason!
Sgt. Jason, author of the always entertaining Just Another Soldier, has posted his last blog entry. Citing "operational security" violations, Jason's superiors have ordered him to shut down his blog. (How posting a pic of himself and a buddy smiling for the camera as they utilize an Army latrine constitutes an operational security violation, I'm not quite sure.) But an order's an order.

I don't know who gave the order to pull the plug on Just Another Soldier but it proves that, surprisingly, having a rod up one's ass isn't grounds for a medical discharge from the Army.

Thanks for a great blog, Jason. And happy hunting in Iraq.

B. Sides @ 6:13 PM

Insert Foot (A) Into Mouth (B)
I think that there has been an exaggeration [of the terrorist threat] and there has been a refocusing . . . 45 minutes deployment of weapons of mass destruction, No. 1. Aerial vehicles to be able to deliver materials of mass destruction, No. 2 ... nuclear weapons, No. 3. I could run a long list of clear misleading, clear exaggeration. The linkage to Al Qaida, No. 4. -- Senator Teresa Heinz née Kerry, explaining during the South Carolina debate why he tends to agree with some Europeans who claim President Bush is exaggerating the threat of terrorism, January 29, 2004.

Ricin powder in US Senate sparks bio-terrorism alert -- AFP wire report headline, February 3, 2004

B. Sides @ 3:45 PM

Michael Powell Is Outraged At The Boob Tube
Now it's the FCC's turn to reveal its boob to America.

Let's see...our country is waging a war on terrorist nations, the United States Senate was just attacked with one of the world's most deadly toxins and FCC Chairman Michael Powell--the poster child for nepotism--is going to expend resources conducting a "thorough and swift" investigation of the Super Bowl halftime show.

What is there to investigate? The facts are obvious: CBS retained its sister Viacom network, MTV, to produce the always tedious Super Bowl halftime show. During that 12-minute yawnfest, B-list rock stars sang off key, pranced around like rabbits in heat and, in one case, flashed a breast.

Investigation complete--and at no cost to the taxpayers.

But that's not good enough for Powell who says he's "outraged" because "my family and I gathered around the television for a celebration. Instead, that celebration was tainted by a classless, crass and deplorable stunt. Our nation's children, parents and citizens deserve better." He declared that the entire halftime show "crossed a heinous line" because it was "offensive" and "onstage copulation." (What or where that "heinous line" is, Powell did not say. Nor did he say when it became illegal for anyone to be "classless" and "crass," but a bullying bureaucrat never lets legal justifications stand in his way.)

Considering that every singer featured Sunday night is well known for sexually charged or even raunchy performances, it's odd that Powell and the other parents who are upset about their kids being exposed to a naked breast would allow their kids to watch the halftime show in the first place. And stranger still is that after the heavily sexual overtones of the show become apparent to anyone with a frontal lobe, these upset parents didn't promptly change the channel.

What transpired Sunday night is a matter between Viacom, the NFL and consumers. There is no constitutionally valid role for the federal government in this case. What's more, Congress should abolish the FCC since its only reason for exisitng is to arbitrarily apply subjective broadcast regulations, thus violating constitutional guarantees of free speech and equal protection.

Michael Powell has every right to be mad about what his family saw during halftime. But he has no right to unleash the power of the federal government simply because he failed as a parent to turn the television off.

It should not be the role of the FCC or any other organ of government to determine what children see on television. That's the job of parents. And, in this case, parents had plenty of time to preempt the boob.

B. Sides @ 8:50 AM

February 02, 2004

The Super Boob
Was it really necessary for CBS to reveal during the Super Bowl halftime craptacular that Michael Jackson has breast implants? [shudder]

The halftime show controversy is overshadowing what was the best NFL championship game in years. And that makes manifest this ugly fact: football is incidental to the modern Super Bowl.

Ironically, teams play for the Lombardi Trophy but had Vince lived to see what transpired in Houston last night, he probably would've demanded that his name be stricken from the trophy.

It's time to put football back in the Super Bowl. Here's how:

1) The Super Bowl should never be played in a domed stadium. There's no room for physical comfort in the game of football. Enduring the unpredictable natural elements and adjusting a team's game plan accordingly are as much a part of the game as the pigskin itself.

2) Football is a fall/winter game and, as such, the NFL championship game should, from time-to-time, be played in frostbite-caliber temperatures. I'm talking the type of climate in which referees have to sweep snow off the yardage lines and hash marks.

3) Eliminate the mindnumbingly awful, celebrity-polluted halftime farce and replace it with a marching band from a local high school.

4) Limit halftime to 15 minutes.

Pretty easy, huh? Too bad it'll never happen.

B. Sides @ 11:26 AM