Politics and the Culture War
March 19, 2004
Are you off-mike or on? It’s easy to tell in print. (Can you tell the difference, here? I’m off-mike. Just like John Kerry). Now I’m on-mike.
I really like the guy more than anyone thinks. (I’m not lying. Certainly not like those GOP types Kerry talked about last week).
Regular readers know my first impression of the Kerry campaign wasn’t so great. I found Kerry to be cold and distant from the start, a cautious challenger to Dean. It was as if Kerry were waiting for the political Viagra to kick in. You’ve got to admit Kerry didn’t exactly come out of the gate like gangbusters. He kind of fell into the top Demo spot, rising as Dean’s campaign came to a screeching halt.
Frankly, I liked Kerry about 30 years ago. Now he’s aged into a 100 percent calcified political icon. Which is why I’ve been skeptical of him these last few months.
Until all this off-mike business.
I like it. It may be the way to get the real John Kerry out there. That way he can have deniability on issues. He can leave the truth to his off-mike alter-ego, the “amok” John Kerry. (Yeah that guy said it).
Meanwhile, the staid, cold, on-mike John Kerry wouldn’t say things like that directly. But the on-mike John Kerry doesn’t apologize for the off-mike John Kerry.
And that’s not a bad start.
So I’m just waiting for the off-mike Kerry to merge with the on-mike Kerry. I want to see more of the Kerry who says stuff under his breath. I want that politician. The one who is so bluntly honest — but for public consumption.
I hope it happens. Then maybe I’ll be convinced that his money and special interests are all much different from Bush’s money and special interests.
And then there’s the war. I hope Kerry has an exit strategy for the war that’s better than Bush’s non-exit.
Frankly, I hate talking about the war. I wasn’t for it. Wrote vehemently against it. And then saw all the things I feared would happen happen.
Bush got his war and now can’t get out.
It will be his undoing.
But he’s starting a new war to make up for that. The culture war at home. It’s Bush importing the Taliban to America.
Don’t tell me you’re still listening or watching things that aren’t government-approved and sanitized?
What are you — Un-American or something?
That’s obscene!
ON-MIKE
For the record, let us note that the first Asian Pacific American to fall victim in the Janet Jackson-inspired War on Obscenity (that I shall dub for our APA audience as the WOO) was the writer/performer Sandra Tsing Loh.
Tsing Loh was fired by KCRW-Santa Monica after a segment on March 7 that featured the “f” word, not once, but twice in the same broadcast.
KCRW’s General Manager Ruth Seymour said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times, that the use of the word violated federal broadcast law and the station’s policy on language.
I’ve enjoyed Tsing Loh’s prose ever since I first encountered it in Buzz, a ’90s magazine financed by a Thai capitalist that tried to be a Southern California version of Vanity Fair and Esquire. It ultimately failed.
For six years, Tsing Loh has done monologues on KCRW, an FM public radio station for the latte-set in West L.A.
And now she’s amok because her boss cowed to the prevailing heavy-handedness against free speech.
The segment was pre-recorded. Not live. And even if it were, where was the guy at the switch? If there were a seven-second tape delay, standard for commercial talk shows, an engineer could have bleeped out the word easily during the airing.
But what about before? Tsing Loh said she never intended for the word to go on the air. “It was a total mistake,” she said in the Times story. She said she even told station engineer Mario Diaz to bleep the word out before broadcasting the bit.
So for what amounts to the personal use of foul language that inadvertently got on the air, a simple mistake has cost Tsing Loh her gig.
Was that really the intention of the current FCC obscenity laws?
Was anyone really harmed besides the perpetrator, Tsing Loh?
I doubt there was anyone out there who had to be rushed immediately to the UCLA Medical Center for treatment.
But don’t be surprised if you see a gurney wheeling in the First Amendment.
Tsing Loh is the unfortunate victim in the new Taliban environment being established by the Bush administration.
The Jackson breast incident was like the “shot heard ‘round the world” for the cultural counter-revolution. Since then, the Federal Communications Commission has issued record fines. Broadcast companies fearing loss of licenses have taken off raunchy radio performers to show their adherence to new standards (Howard Stern chief among them). And Congress seems ready to pass laws featuring even harsher penalties to offensive broadcasters.
Freedom of speech is threatened, and so is freedom of choice.
Do we really need the government to tell us what we can listen to? Doesn’t that sound like — Communist China?
Funny how conservatives will argue for the standards. Remember, they’re the most ardently against taxes, government in their private lives, government control of business and markets.
But talk dirty or show naked bodies on broadcast radio television, and it’s bring out the Cavalry and save us all.
This is where Bush is putting his domestic marbles.
Watch Sunday morning TV and you’ll know why. I don’t mean the political shows. I mean the religious ones. If Bush can galvanize his right wing, then he won’t have to care about losing on the big issues like the war and the economy. Issues? Forgot those. Bush wants to sell us values and culture.
He’s the missionary and to him we’re the great unwashed.
That’s the culture war. And the reason we have to fight back. Off-mike and On.
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