Yustabe said:

"Marc Phillips" wrote in message
...
I think it's pretty apparent that the reason why RAO has become mostly
about
politics these days is because of the very strange things that are
happening in
our country, not to mention the rest of the world. This really hit home
this
morning when I was listening to Howard Stern on the radio. No one's
really
brought up what he's going through this week because I don't think there
are a
lot of his listeners posting regularly on RAO, but basically about
one-tenth of
his audience weren't allowed to listen to his show today because of
FCC-imposed
suspensions. The funny thing is, Infinty Broadcasting has been scrambling
to
find out what they did wrong, and they can't get an answer.

Basically, broadcasters have been under siege ever since Janet Jackson
showed
off her floppy, almost forty-year-old tit at the Super Bowl. In the last
few
days, shock jocks like Stern have been getting fired left and right for
doing
things they've been doing for years. Now, Stern himself is trying to
resign
because he can't do the show he's been doing for more than twenty years.
His
plan is to switch over to an uncensored satellite radio program, and since
he
has about 12 million loyal listeners, this will probably be a major coup
for
the new satellite radio industry. (I have XM, and I love it. It's far
superior to regular radio in every conceivable way.) Major chunks of
Stern's
show have been getting censored over the last few days.

Is it a coincidence that Stern has been openly calling for the ousting of
Bush?
Is it a coincidence that Stern has been making fun of that hysterical
Congresswoman from New Mexico whose son was needlessly traumatized by that
lone
nipple and has been screaming melodramatically at any network executive
unfortunate enough to show up to her hearings?

At the same time, "The Passion of the Christ" is breaking opening day box
office records. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the actual content of
this
movie, it is basically two solid hours of a man being tortured to death.
Roger
Ebert made the very interesting observation that if that man was anyone
other
than Jesus Christ, the film would have been rated NC-17...he calls it the
most
violent movie he has ever seen. Other critics have gone on to say that
sitting
through this film is tantamount to being punished for our sins, it's that
unendurable. One woman in Wichita actually had a heart attack and died
while
watching it, a relatively healthy woman in her fiftied who was actually a
local
broadcaster. And yet we Americans are seeing this in droves...why?

Tell me again how this country is headed in the right direction.

Boon

I guess the movie is kind of like "Resevoir Dogs" for Christians. Could you
imagine a Tarantino development of this project? Would it be any more
violent?

It would probably be a hell of a lot more entertaining. Tarantino knows that
movies are entertainment, not punishment. Besides, despite its violence,
"Reservoir Dogs" is one of the funniest movies ever made.


As for Stern, if you don't want to listen to him, you don't
have to tune in. People listening to Stern
have a good idea of what to expect. I used to listen to him
a lot, when he was still a local guy in DC at the start of his career.
He was a lot funnier and a lot more politically oriented than he has
been for the previous ten years or so. Later on I got turned off
when he would spend hours doing nothing
but gossiping about his own litle circle of insiders. He offended me
by being so boring!

That's what is so suspect about all of this. Howard Stern is nowhere near as
controversial as he used to be, even though the fines the FCC levied against
his company were for his use of the words "penis" and "vagina." Incidentally,
both of those words have been used on "Friends," which broadcasts on a major
network at 8pm. Can Infinity Broadcasting get a refund?


As for the Superbowl, in ways, it was worse, even though a pastie
covered nipple on a bare tit hasn't been a big deal since 1955.

Well, it wasn't quite a pastie, but yes.

People watching the Superbowl aren't expecting that kind of stuff,
and it it was really ****ty for Jackson and Timberlake to pull off
that stunt in the venue of a Superbowl halftime. But it is no concern
for any government action.

Exactly.

Boon