April Fools Day

I only listen to a few radio stations. On April Fools Day I listened to three, WXRT, a rock station, Howard Stern on my way home from dropping off Vickei at work, and NPR. Of these three stations, XRT and Howie were doing jokes based on the idea that the FCC was going to start massively censoring their shows. Howard Stern didn't even go on the air for the first hour and a half. Two purposefully lame DJ's took his place. XRT's normal tag line is the "Chicago's Best Rock." They changed it to "Decent Rock." Everyone was saying it all of a sudden. You gotta be decent, they kept playing songs with swear words. They either bleeped the words out or a guy would say some random word that didn't fit with the rest of the lyrics. I don't know if other radio stations also made April Fools jokes along these lines but I'd be willing to bet there were quite a few.
Both of the jokes were funny. But they were scary too. I guess a whole bunch of people went apeshit, flooding both shows with angry and/or frightened calls. This is very telling.
How a society reacts to sarcasm is a good measuring stick of how bad things are. In this case I think it's obvious people are REALLY nervous about what lengths these Bush folks are willing to go to enforce their minority beliefs on the population as a whole. It didn't seem impossible at all that they would pull Howard Stern without so much as a warning. It's happened before. We're all so inundated with news we'd be pissed for a week and then something else insane would come up and we'd all forget. I think we were right to be worried, Powell's kid is a nutball. The President is so stupid he won't come in front of the 9-11 commission, even in closed session, without his puppetmaster Cheney. This is not the kind of man who's going to go to the mat for free speech, indeed, if the senate passed a bill turning over total control of all TV to Karl Rove, I have no doubt Bush would sign it.
I really have one thing to say about all of this.
"Four legs good. Two legs better."

AIR AMERICA RADIO

So it's finally here. The long touted Democratic answer to the Rush Limbaughs and Sean Hannitys of the world. Democrat radio. Notice I'm not saying progressive radio, I'm saying Democrat radio.
Al Franken's a funny guy. But he's a Democrat in the Clinton tradition. He refuses to see the corporate takeover that's tainted his buddies. He's not progressive, even if he is a lot of times. He's someone touting a company line. Not to mention the fact one of his first guests was G. GOrdon Liddy. Already they're making gross errors in characterization. Al had Michael Moore on Wednesday and on Thursday he characterized the guy as a Gore supporter because he pointed out that GOre won the 2000 election.
Michael Moore in no way supported GOre against Bush. He called them Gush and Bore. He talked about the way they agreed about everything in the debates. I personally listened to Moore speak at a Nader rally at UIC in Chicago. Progressive voices are trying to get the "Democrats" to realize they've become the same thing as "Republicans" both of which should be called, "Corporate whores." I'm afraid the way the Air America Radio is going now it's just going to be a classic example yet again of the Chomskian Propaganda model. Two sides, the appearance of debate, while the true issues are patently ignored. We'll see.
Still, Chuck D rules and even though some moron put him on the morning show he's going to be the kind of person the station is going to have to build around if they want to be really successful. Smart, articulate, and LOUD. They should give Jello Biafra and Henry Rollins a show too. Michael Moore should have a show; and Warren Beatty with Tim Robbins. John Cusak can do sports. If they get the right people the station could potentially be hugely important.

Shrub Steals Cash to Fund the Destruction of Church/State Separation.

From NOW on PBS.
Shrub wants voucher programs for private religious schools.
Public Money for private corporations. Congress has shot bush down on this issue because it takes badly needed public money and siphons it to private corporations, which is clearly a bad idea. (Kids aren't "products" or "consumers" they're kids.)
SO not caring one whit about the way the government is supposed to work Shrub's people got him to use the Dept of Education. He took 77 million from their budget and put it into religious school vouchers. He did this for "Choice."
The amount he gave was 77 million because it was the only non-congressional discretionary money in the dept of education. He took every cent.
Public money to private religious corporations to promote the end of public education. And you know the only groups getting the money are Christian. Not a cent of the 77 million went towards Buddhist Private Schools.
But wait, you say, just because you have vouchers doesn't mean you want to destroy public education. That would be true, but look who's getting the money.
Bill Bennett.
Bill Hates public education. He's been railing publicly against it for 20 some years. Bennett's company got 14 million in public funds.
Another big company is called "Creo" which is Spanish for "I believe." Based in, you guessed it, Texas. "I believe..." So much for the separation of church and state.