Saturday Night Complainers

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The website Government Attic has posted a treasure trove of indecency complaints the FCC received in the last five years about "Saturday Night Live." The reasons are about what you'd expect -- words or ideas the viewer was offended by -- with spelling and grammar mistakes galore. For example:

The show was a re-run hosted by Will Ferrel and contained a skit with Usher, Justin Bieber, Justin Timberwolf, etc. It was the most graphic and vulgar display I have ever witnessed on Public TV. NBC should not only be ashamed of the content, but should be held accountable to any violations committed. If this kind of garbage is allowed by the FCC, then shame on you for contributing to the downfall of common decency and respect.

I'm always amazed that someone would be so incensed by a simple television (or radio) broadcast that they'd stop what they were doing and take the time to file a formal complaint with anyone. I'm also amazed how ignorant these viewers are of the fact that the FCC has no authority over NBC's broadcasts of "Saturday Night Live," because it airs in the Safe Harbor hours, which are explained on the commission's website:

Congress and the courts have instructed the Commission only to enforce the indecency standard between the hours of 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., local time. -- when children are more likely to be in the audience. As a consequence, the Commission does not take action on indecent material aired between 10 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. In this way, constitutionally-protected free speech rights of adults are balanced with the need to protect children from harmful content.

As a parent, I've never needed a Nanny Government to protect my child from anything on television or radio, nor to keep my adult eyes and ears free of material that might be offensive to my sensitive nature. And I'd bet (yet again) that many of those complaining to the FCC are the same folks who claim they want government to do less, except when they're bothered by something or someone.

Here's another:

I don't typically watch SNL because of it's offensive material. In this instance, we had company over and it happened to be on. Unfortunatley, our 2 children were also in the room. They had a spoof of Clint Eastwood's Superbowl commercial for Chrysler. In the spoof the 'Clint Eastwood' character was talking about the presidential candidates and clearly said the word 'pus*y' in the clip. I was taken aback at the crude and offensive remark especially on REGULAR TV, not cable. I hope the FCC can start taking back the airwaves and bring back just plain common decency.

Well, that's some damned fine monitoring of what's on the TV while your children are in the room. You're already offended by the show, but you don't turn it off? Sorry, your fault. And by the way, the word "pussy" isn't banned from the airwaves, even outside the Safe Harbor hours.

Another (with original punctuation and case):

under the sea skit depicting Osama Bin Laden floating in the sea. Shocking and inappropriate. totally tasteless and upsetting. unAmerican. will boycott advertisers.

That will probably shut the show down. Meanwhile, the network appreciates you watching all the way through so you can make a list of all the advertisers you're going to stop doing business with. Do you have any idea how many viewers have threatened to boycott "Saturday Night Live" in its 38 years on the air?

And then there's my favorite comment from a complainer to the FCC:

Lome Greene ought to be ashamed of what he has allowed his show to deteriorate into.

Government Attic acquired the complaints from the FCC through a Freedom Of Information Act request. You can browse through them here.

Worth A Link

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From my Twitter feed...

• Yet another radio commercial for a Jaguar dealership mis-pronounces it "jag-wire." Try not to crash it into a "gired-rail."
• A newspaper explains why it's dropping a comic strip. Surprisingly, the reason isn't "it was never funny."
• Some friends I watched the Super Bowl with brought up this end-of-game possibility: the ultra-rare fair-catch-kick scenario.
• You won't believe the ridiculous claims made by the people who sell this brand of bottled water.

Less Mail, Less Often

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After August, you won't be getting letters on Saturdays, because the US Postal Service is cutting back to save $2 billion.

How will America survive? Easy. Polls show 70% of us won't miss Saturday delivery one bit. By September, you won't even remember to check your mailbox on the weekend. 

As I have written before, the no-Saturday-mail idea isn't radical enough. We don't need daily residential mail service anymore, so cut it back to every other day.

With e-mail and texting and cell phones, who writes letters anymore? So much of our life has moved online that the only mail I get these days is pure junk, and there's no urgency in getting that to my mailbox, just so I can carry it inside and throw it in the trash. The only mail I get that doesn't get tossed immediately is a Netflix DVD I'm probably not going to watch for a couple of days and a few birthday cards -- nothing particularly time-sensitive. Even the few bills that still come with a stamp on them give me enough of a grace period to pay that the delayed delivery would have no impact.

Wouldn't this mean lots of letter carriers and other postal employees being laid off? Yes, but the way the USPS is going, they're going to lose their jobs anyway.
Want to save more money? Instead of raising the postage rate by a penny every couple of years, why not make postage stamps free, underwritten by corporate sponsors?

There are plenty of major corporations who would like that space on the envelope to promote their products, and would happily partner with the postal service to expand the brand. Imagine being able to get company-logo stamps not just at the post office, but at any McDonald's restaurant or 7-11 store or Starbucks outlet. Then, when the USPS costs go up, they'd pass along the expense to their clients, not their users (the same model used by radio, TV, and the rest of us who live at the whim of advertisers).

Under my plan, you'd never again see this on an envelope: "Affix stamp here. The post office will not deliver without proper postage."

As if anyone who doesn't already understand the stamp concept would know what "affix" means.

The Fear Industry

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Of all the smart things said in our nation's history, few are more true than FDR's most famous quote:

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

There are entire industries devoted to exploiting fear in this country. If you can be convinced that something or someone is going to harm you in some way, you're more likely to buy a product that you're told will keep you safe. That's why so many Americans own guns -- and bought more when they were told "Obama is going to take your guns away," all evidence to the contrary.

Fear is the reason we forsake our Fourth Amendment rights and put up with security theater at airports. It's why the pharmaceutical industry tells you to "ask your doctor" about medication for conditions you didn't even know you could contract. It's why home security companies continue to thrive.

Next time you fly, browse through the SkyMall catalog and be amazed at how many items are offered that will supposedly make you more secure, from a keychain breathalyzer (because you should be afraid of your own drinking and driving) to a lung exerciser (you're not going to let your lungs get all flabby, are you?) to a clip you wear around your neck to hold a napkin in front of your shirt to make sure it doesn't get dirty (note to guys: chicks dig that look) to a covert alarm clock camera (so you can watch the people breaking into your house when you're not there and re-setting your alarm to go off at 6pm instead of 6am).

Fear-based claims are often irrational, but not always. When your parents taught you to look both ways before crossing the street, you learned how not to get run over by a bus. Your computer password should be slightly more complex than "123456." Teenagers shouldn't rent a cabin in the woods next door to the guy in a hockey mask with a chainsaw.

Fear is also a factor in political beliefs, according to a new study published in the American Journal of Political Science, which begins:

Fear is a pervasive aspect of political life and is often explored as a transient emotional state manipulated by events or exploited by elites for political purposes.

It explains how fear can play a role in influencing political attitudes on hot-button issues like immigration and how individuals who are genetically predisposed to fear tend to have more conservative opinions, which play out politically as support for policies like anti-immigration and segregation. The researcher, Brown University professor Rose McDermott, says:

It’s not that conservative people are more fearful, it’s that fearful people are more conservative.

That's why there's so much fear-based right-wing media in this country. If you listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, or Fox News, you constantly hear about how some liberal politician or a group is coming to get you, hurt your kids, take your stuff. They are experts at exploiting emotions and exacerbating paranoia, usually over stories that have no bearing on most people's lives, such as convincing viewers that two supposedly-menacing black guys standing outside a polling station represented a dangerous threat by the nonexistent New Black Panther Party. The whole "redistribution" argument is to convince paranoid white people that the government is going to take more of their money and give it to minorities. Fear mongering is why a Muslim community center several blocks away from the former site of the World Trade Center was turned into ginned-up rage over a "Ground Zero Mosque."

Exposure to those constant messages from right-wing blowhards becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. They tell you that you can't trust any other news sources, that they alone speak the truth, that the others ("the mainstream media") are purposely keeping details about this plot or that conspiracy from you because of a secret agenda to destroy America.

There's no denying these fear-mongers are good at what they do, but that's not a positive for society at large. What they specialize in is no more to our mutual benefit than Wall Street's greed was good for our financial meltdown, or a quack doctor is to our health, or this Congress is to progress.

On a larger scale, fear is why we went to war with Iraq over weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist. And why we stopped building nuclear power plants after Three Mile Island despite decades without another accident in other existing plants. And why ill-informed parents aren't having their children vaccinated.

If our ancestors hadn't overcome their fears, they never would have crossed oceans to get here. Humans would never would have set foot on the moon. Your child would never have left home to go to school. You never would have quit one job to take another.

Being afraid is no way to go through life. It's corrosive, an impediment to moving forward as a society. It's no way to greet the future.

Get over it.

Family and Medical Leave Act

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There was a ceremony at the US Department of Labor yesterday marking the 20th anniversary of the Family and Medical Leave Act, a landmark law that requires employers to allow workers to take unpaid leave for medical and family reasons, with a guarantee that their job will be there when they return.

The ceremony began with a speech by my brother Seth, who is the Acting Secretary Of Labor. There's not enough bandwidth on this site for me to tell you how proud I am of Seth, who, as Deputy Secretary under Hilda Solis, has essentially been the Chief Operating Officer of a cabinet department with 17,000 employees. When Solis stepped down from the top spot after President Obama's second inaugural, Seth moved into the big office on an acting basis until a new Secretary can be vetted, appointed, and confirmed (of course, I think Obama should give it to him permanently!). He also worked as a top adviser to Labor Secretaries Robert Reich and Alexis Herman during the Clinton presidency.

Here's Seth, talking up the FMLA's success and taking a shot at the critics who said it would kill jobs -- a claim as false as the same whines we hear today...

Other speakers at the FMLA anniversary event included former President Bill Clinton (who made the FMLA the first bill he signed into law in 1993) and former Senator Chris Dodd (who fought for the law in Congress over seven years).

When Clinton came to the microphone, he had this to say about my brother:

Seth worked for me in the Labor Department for seven years, for Alexis [Herman] and Bob Reich. I was thrilled when he became Deputy Secretary Of Labor, but if I had known he could give a speech like that, I would have urged the President not to appoint him, and instead to force him to run for office, because that was a terrific job.

Here's Bill in action...

A Day at the Gun Show

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Speaking of gun shows, here are some snapshots I took earlier this month at a gun show on a weekend day at the Pima County Fairgrounds just outside Tucson.

As at gun shows across the country, crowds were bigger than usual, ammunition and magazines were selling out, and the hottest items on many lips were the Bushmaster AR 15 rifle. You know, the same kind of semiautomatic assault weapon that that homicidal maniac borrowed from his gun-nut mother to massacre 20 little children and six teachers a month ago at that grade-school in Connecticut, after he murdered his mother at home.

The rifle is so popular that the boys from the NRA, manning their usual booth near the entrance to the gun show to drum up membership (which is flagging), were promoting one as first prize in a raffle, $10 a ticket. Gun owners told me that the AR 15s are almost impossible to find now. All sold out.   A used one that used to go for $800 is now in the $1,800 range, one said.

By the way, gun dealers I talked to said they love those well-intentioned "gun buy-back" programs that are increasingly popular as a reaction against gun violence. "You can get at least $50 for any old piece of crap in Grandpa's closet," one said. 

I occasionally go to the local gun shows to check out the doings. Most noticeable to me on this one was the unusual number of people who brought the kiddies along, including some in strollers in which a rifle was also being carried.  Alas, no photos allowed inside the sacred hall. So these from outside will have to do.

Sign in an SUV parked in Tucson gun-show lot

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Another Mass Shooting: Gunman Kills 5, Including 3 Children, in Albuquerque

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[UPDATED JAN. 21]
As the gun crowd jammed gun shows and celebrated Guns Across America rallies around the country, and assault rifles were hot sellers while supplies lasted, still another homicidal lunatic with an assault rifle shot five people to death Saturday night in Albuquerque, N.M. The murdered children were ages 9, 5 and 2. The boy charged in the murders is 15.

[UPDATED JAN. 21) -- The victims were identified today as Greg Griego, 51, his wife Sara Griego, 40, and three of their children: a 9-year-old boy, Zephania Griego, and daughters Jael Griego, 5, and Angelina Griego, 2. The shooter was identified as Nehemiah Griego, 15, who has been charged in the murders.]

[The church Web site has removed recent information on the Griego family, but past church bulletins described Greg Griego as a member of the "pastoral staff," not as the pastor. He is also described as the head of the church's prison outreach ministry.]

[According to the Albuquerque Journal on Monday, "Griego had converted his backyard barn into a halfway house for released prisoners, according to neighbors. He also held services at the county jail’s “God Pod,” where he gave inmates spiritual advice."]

A local TV station, KRQE, had this initial report on Sunday:

"ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) -- Police are investigating multiple murders after they say a teen fatally shot two adults and three young children in southwest Albuquerque.

Deputies responded to a home on 2806 Long Lane in southwest Albuquerque after reports of a 
possible homicide a little after 9 o'clock Saturday night. When they arrived, deputies say the found several victims and weapons inside the home. [Including an assault rifle that was used in the shooting]

An adult man, an adult woman and three children around elementary age were found dead with multiple gunshot wounds."

[Greg Griego, identified as the dead clergyman, appeared in a 2003 news report as the chaplain at the county Detention Center. He was at the center of a neighborhood controversy over  his plan to open a halfway house on Long Lane. It is not clear if that is the same Long Lane address as the site of last night's shooting. As chaplain at the detention center, Griego was described in a 2003 news account as the overseer of  the prison ministry for Calvary Chapel of Albuquerque.]


Meanwhile, the NBC affiliate, KOB, reports today that "Police believe the teenager used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle in the shooting."


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