I’m getting a bit tired of the glorification of W. Mark Felt, alias “Deep Throat.” The Journal Star editorial board published their paean to Felt today (“Deep Throat did service for nation”).

The editorial excuses all of Felt’s illegal actions and questionable motives with an ends-justify-the-means apology. “There were crooks in the White House,” they exclaim. Yes, and apparently there was a crook in the number-two position at the FBI as well — a guy who was bitter about being passed over for the top spot at the Bureau and wanted to take revenge; a guy who was convicted for violating American’s civil rights; a guy who thought the Bureau was so corrupt that he couldn’t go through proper channels, but didn’t mind drawing a paycheck from them; a man who broke the law and his trust with the President by leaking classified information.

The Journal Star (and many others) forgive all these indiscretions. They point out that Felt was later pardoned for his civil-rights violation conviction. So what? Nixon was pardoned, too.

The truth is, Felt is no better than Nixon. He’s just a jilted G-man, not a hero. And a paper that laments that “America’s judicial system . . . was at stake” under Nixon’s administration shouldn’t be celebrating vigilante justice in the FBI.

In the fight against Senate Democrats blocking Bush’s judicial nominees by using the filibuster (ala Mr. Smith Goes to Washington), a new weapon has been unleashed: evangelical Christians. Last Sunday there was a broadcast called “Justice Sunday” in which several Christian leaders, including James Dobson (Focus on the Family) and Chuck Colson (Prison Fellowship), took to the airwaves and challenged Christians to contact their senators to stop filibustering and give the judges an up or down vote.

What does this have to do with Christianity? Why should Christians be concerned? Ah! Well, because, according to the Family Research Council (FRC), Dobson, and others, it’s because the judges being filibustered are people of faith. That’s why this is a Christian issue. The Senate is blocking people of faith from becoming judges, so we should mobilize against this tyranny.

I heard about this a lot from the Family Research Council (FRC) because I take care of programming “Grace TV,” which is broadcast on Insight cable channel 20 (Peoria only) 156 hours per week (approx.). We mostly show a religious cable channel called FamilyNet out of Fort Worth, Texas, although in the afternoons we also broadcast INSP (Inspiration Network) out of Charlotte, North Carolina. FamilyNet carried “Justice Sunday” and the FRC wanted to make it an event. They were encouraging churches to broadcast this event in their sanctuaries and invite their congregations to come watch, then take action. (We didn’t participate in this, however, at our church.)

Republicans are using people of faith to accomplish their political goals by couching those goals in religious language, and that’s exploitation. And it appears that Christians are falling for it. On the FRC website the day after the event, they gleefully reported that the congressional phone lines were jammed with people calling for an end to judicial filibusters.

The Democrats are not against these judges because of their faith — they’re against them because they’re ideologically opposed to their views on certain issues, such as their views on women’s rights or strict constructionism. The judges’ views may flow from or be informed by their faith, but there’s a big difference between opposing someone because he believes in God and opposing someone because he’s a strict constructionist. The leaders who were on “Justice Sunday” are trying to push the correlation too far, and are exploiting their followers as a result.

My family enjoyed watching the updated “Little House on the Prairie” recently on ABC’s Wonderful World of Disney. It was a five-part, six-hour mini-series that more closely followed the book than the ’70s TV version. This show was well-acted, entertaining, and good viewing for the whole family. I can’t remember the last time there was a show on network television that I could sit down and watch with my two daughters (ages 4 1/2 and almost-2) without worrying about the content.

Some of the things that are worth special mention: the adults were adults and the kids were kids. Unlike most shows today, the kids were not smartalecs, but respectful of their parents and other adults. They were well-behaved (though not perfect), and loved each other and their parents. The parents were hard-working and competent, and you could tell they loved each other and their children in the tender moments as well as when they faced adversity. The story dealt with American Indians, settlers’ sentiments toward them, and the government’s treatment of them in a balanced way — showing that some settlers were afraid of them, some were wanting to coexist with them, and some hated them, but all had various degrees of ignorance about them. It also showed that there were good and bad Indians just like there are good and bad people of all races, but that overall, they really just wanted to preserve their way of life and often didn’t know which white people to trust.

I wish the networks would create more good shows like this for families. I commend ABC/Disney for putting this show on the air. Now my four-year-old wants to be Laura Ingalls! 🙂

Well, once again this year, whenever the Cardinals have a day game, I’ll have to pull it in from St. Louis on KMOX because WMBD won’t preempt Rush Limbaugh. The Cardinals only play during Rush’s timeslot about 12 times over the summer, and most games don’t start until the third hour Rush is on. Rush is on every day five days a week for three hours.

Would it kill anyone for Rush to be partially preempted twelve stinkin’ times a year? Most of those times it would only be for an hour of his show. Plus, it’s much easier to get his show on WLS out of Chicago than it is to get the Cardinals on KMOX out of St. Louis. Or why not at least put the games on their “sister station” WIRL when there’s a conflict so we can still hear them locally?

Cardinals won today, by the way, 6 to 3 — not that you would’ve known that by listening to local radio.

A couple years ago or so, I scaled back from expanded cable to basic cable. We now just have channels 2-22 on Insight. The main reasons we cut back were (1) price and (2) objectionable material. Our cable bill was getting ridiculously expensive, and many of the channels I really wanted were only available on digital cable, which would have cost even more. And some of the channels I did get I didn’t want. For instance, one of the worst channels was Oxygen which aired a program called the “Sunday Night Sex Show.” This program was a grossly explicit call-in talk show that discussed sex, sex toys, etc. I thought to myself, “why am I paying for this garbage to come into my home?” And paying dearly, too!

The answer, of course, is bundling. This is when big companies like Viacom will only allow cable operators to rebroadcast their popular channels like ESPN if they also take less-popular networks with it. The cable companies are thus forced to push those channels on to the consumer. However, cable companies also participate in bundling when they offer packages like Insight’s basic cable, expanded cable, and digital cable. They choose the channels for each package/bundle, and then you have to take them all or nothing.

From a consumer standpoint, it would be better if we could choose and pay for only the channels we want. This is known as à la carte pricing. So, for instance, if all I wanted were the History Channel, Disney, TV Land, the Learning Channel, and C-SPAN (hypothetically), I could request and be billed for only those channels. Congress thought it was a good idea, too, so it commissioned the FCC to look into the matter. They reported back that such a model would result in higher fees and fewer choices. I can’t find a copy of the full 122-page report online, but a summary is available here (from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association).

One of the big proponents of à la carte pricing is the Parents Television Council. They were disappointed with the findings of the FCC’s report because they said it didn’t adequately deal with the indecency issue, which is a big reason people (like me) want more choice of cable channels. I think they have a point. According to the NCTA summary referenced above:

The Bureau found that a la carte was a “particularly blunt instrument” for blocking bjectionable content. Some a la carte proponents have argued that consumers would have more control selecting desired programming and rejecting offensive programming” if they could purchase and receive only those channels that they wanted in their homes. The Bureau concluded that regulatory and technology options already exist and are better suited for controlling content. For instance, the Communications Act requires cable operators to scramble the signal of channels that customers have not purchased. It also requires cable operators to offer “lockbox” technology that blocks unwanted channels. Consumers also benefit from “V-Chip” technology in cable set-top boxes and TV sets, which blocks content based on ratings assigned by the programmer.

This is an inadequate solution to the problem of indecency and objectionable material on cable. Let’s take their three solutions one by one:

First, cable operators are required “to scramble the signal of channels that customers have not purchased.” What does this have to do with the price of eggs in China? No one’s complaining about the channels they’re not paying for — cable operators have been doing a fine job of blocking them. We’re complaining about the channels we don’t want but are forced to pay for in order to get the channels we do want.

Second, cable operators are required “to offer ‘lockbox’ technology that blocks unwanted channels.” This solution requires us to pay for the channels we don’t want, then have the cable company block them out with traps so we can’t see them. And this is what they call a regulatory option “better suited for controlling content.” I have an idea, why not block the channel like they say and not charge us for it? I think it’s also interesting to note that one of the reasons the cable industry gives for the higher costs associated with à la carte pricing is that consumers would need to buy/rent a digital set-top box for it to work. Why couldn’t they just use traps like they’re suggesting we use in lieu of cable choice? According to Michael Willner, CEO of Insight Communications, said in a July 2004 Wired News article, “traps applied to so many channels would cause signal leakage and other problems.” So trapping isn’t a foolproof method of eliminating objectionable content either.

Third, and finally, the coup de grâce argument: the V-chip. This supposedly gives parents the ability to filter out objectionable content based on television ratings in televisions equipped with V-chip technology. However, according to a recent Parents Television Council study, this system does not work. “For this study, the PTC examined prime time entertainment programs from the first two weeks of the November 2003, February 2004, and May 2004 sweeps on the seven commercial broadcast networks (ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, Pax, UPN, and the WB).” And here’s some of what they found:

● Every network had problems with the accurate and consistent application of content descriptors (a D, S, L, or V indicating the presence of suggestive dialogue, sexual behavior, foul language, or violence), which were added to the TV ratings system after complaints that the earlier age-based ratings system was too vague.
● To this day, NBC still does not use content descriptors on its programs. Moreover, 36% of NBC’s programs reviewed for this study received a TV-PG rating, even though many of these shows contained foul language and adult sexual content.
● Of the 85 PG-rated shows on ABC, 52% were missing necessary content descriptors. 40% of the PG-rated shows containing foul language lacked an L descriptor; 75% of shows containing violence lacked the V descriptor; 60% of the shows containing sexual dialogue lacked the D descriptor; and 92% of the shows containing sexual behavior lacked the S descriptor.
● CBS fared better than ABC with the content descriptors, but still has plenty of room for improvement. Of the 89 shows given a PG rating, 34% of the shows containing foul language lacked an L descriptor; 44% of the shows containing violence lacked the V descriptor; 57% of the shows containing sexual dialogue lacked the D descriptor; and none of the 19 shows containing sexual behavior featured the S descriptor.
● 42% of Fox’s PG-rated shows containing foul language lacked the L descriptor; 60% of the PG-rated shows containing violence lacked the V descriptor; 71% of the PG-rated shows containing suggestive dialogue lacked the D descriptor; and 76% of the shows containing sexual behavior lacked the S descriptor.

So, this obviously isn’t working either. The programmers aren’t living up to their end of the bargain, so the parents can’t count on the ratings.

In summary, the report didn’t adequately address the indecency problems, which is why many people want to have à la carte pricing as an option. If the cable industry were more socially responsible, they would figure out a way to offer some sort of family-friendly alternative to the current system. If à la carte pricing is really not possible as a business model, at least try to come up with something else that is profitable that will address parents’ concerns over objectionable content.

Ryan, a former pharmacist who never practiced law, is telling the world the American legal system is so sloppy, so flawed, so political that innocent people are not only routinely found guilty but also routinely executed.

 

Ryan said families of victims need the maximum punishment allowed by law. “Anything less dishonors their relative. If the maximum is life in prison without parole, that is what families need.”

 

“The death penalty is unfairly imposed on the poor,” [Ryan] said. Two states, Texas and Alabama, have no system of public defenders, he said. “A poor guy indicted in those states can’t even get a public defender,” Ryan said.