Help us find Annie
Common Sense, RIP
ITEM: Baltimore MTA buses are now sporting a poster on their rear ends that says, "Thank you for getting HIV tested." Notwithstanding the grammatical weirdness of that statement, the sentiment expressed is all wrong. But I suppose "Shame on you for fucking around indiscriminately" would not pass muster with the powers-that-be.
ITEM: There's another new commissioner at the Federal Codfish Commission. Her name is Deborah Taylor Tate. (Or is it Tate Taylor? Can't she just choose one family name and stick to it?) DTT (as we'll call her to avoid confusion) gave her first speech to broadcasters recently, and if what I saw reported in Broadcasting & Cable News is remotely accurate, she is a first-class ditz.
DTT said "her overriding principles would be partnership and what she called 'regulatory humility.' " Well, partnership between a regulating agency and those regulated is what the Democrats have been complaining about with Dick Cheney, so that can hardly be good. And regulatory humility is a first-class bit of bafflegab. Did she mean she would favor passing regulations to require humility? and if so, on whose part? Or does she mean to apply a certain degree of laissez-faire towards those she is charged to regulate? Which sounds again like that bugaboo, partnership.
Attempting to elucidate she described regulatory humility as "a tendency to look to 'peal back' an old rule when adding a new one, as well as to look at the consequences of any new rules on 'real world practices.' " Well, the verb "to peal" has something to do with making loud noises, usually employing bells, so I doubt that's what DTT meant. On the other hand, if she used the homophone "peel" that makes hardly more sense. And "real world practices" is a neat bit of fog that could mean anything from the need for broadcasters to make money, to the need of sexual perverts for titillation. For gosh sakes, the "real world practices" of pedophiles are felonies! Who is this woman--some soccer mom appointed to the commission to provide a common touch?
DTT then segued right into the stock appeal about "decency," whatever that may mean. FCC has noted that "decency" complaints are up 12,000 percent over some previous time period, but of course that could simply mean that the same few hundred zealots are simply spending more money on postage and wasting more internet bandwidth lodging their complaints.
Here's what I think would be "decent" of TV broadcasters:
1. Quit insulting my intelligence by trying to feed me political doctrine in fiction writing.
2. Report some genuinely important news for a change.
3. Stop advertising automobiles as anything other than a means of getting from one place to another.
4. Get rid of those godawful Victoria's Secret commercials, which are not even remotely erotic.
5. Quit pushing ads for tampons, vaginal yeast remedies and other such stuff.
6. Remove the vocal chords of Howard Stern, John Madden and Geraldo Rivera. For starters.
But broadcasters needn't go to much trouble on my behalf; I'm usually off reading a book somewhere...