Economic censorship hurts truly free speech

Economic censorship hurts truly free speech
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 06.25.2007
Free speech may exist in our country, but money still talks here.
What exactly it says remains up in the air, but we’re heading into an era of economic censorship.
Take the example of the radio hosts for “The Opie and Anthony Show,” Gregg “Opie” Hughes, Anthony Cumia and Jim Norton. Their recent history shows the pros and cons of censorship via the flow of money.
On May 15, XM Satellite Radio yanked the comedy show off the air for 30 days. A week prior, a guest on the show, “Homeless Charlie,” described his desire to do vicious things of a sexual nature with Laura Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Queen Elizabeth. The company suggested the hosts weren’t sincere enough in an apology they offered for the homeless guest’s rant or during conversations on the air afterwards.
The Federal Communications Commission doesn’t govern satellite radio. It’s based on satellite usage and not public airways. The company hired Opie and Anthony, boasting of satellite radio’s uncensored nature. The satellite radio show allows graphic and crude behavior and language alike, pushing the envelope of taste sometimes.
To be quite clear, this wasn’t a matter of the First Amendment coming into play. It had nothing to do with FCC regulations. It’s about a company trying to protect its assets, if you know what I mean.
It appeared the company simply bent to economic pressures. It’s in the midst of trying to merge with its main competitor, Sirius. And certainly a number of people were offended by the talk of a homeless man taking certain liberties with powerful women in our world.
Opie and Anthony are probably most notorious for a radio contest in August 2002. A pair of listeners claimed to have sex in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York. In the fallout, the radio team’s employer forced them to sit out of radio until their contracts expired without an audience. Certainly XM knew what it was getting when it hired the team, who focus on juvenile jokes, occasional randy conversations and sporadically thought-provoking conversations about politics and life.
As a subscriber to XM, I listen to the show on my way to work, and I enjoy the show. I don’t necessarily enjoy every second of the show, as sometimes the topics get too graphic for my tastes. The chat with the homeless man fell in that category. But I appreciated there was a place for people to listen to this, if they chose.
And there certainly is an audience for it. This is the part of economic censorship that leaves some hope.
In a Washington Times article, XM officials said the company lost nearly 5,000 subscribers after suspending the program. That’s out of 7.9 million subscribers nationwide. Still, the company must have felt some impact from that. It reached out to Opie and Anthony fans with an offer to waive a regular $14.99 reactivation fee until the end of the month.
During the radio team’s return to satellite radio June 15, Opie spoke up in favor of the fans. He said he believed they would’ve lost their jobs if it weren’t for the support of their fans and the economic pressures fans placed on the company.
This incident reminds us we live in strange times. A vocal group with the financial threat of a boycott can protest to the point speech protected by the First Amendment can get a radio host thrown off the air. That was the case with Don Imus, who referred to the Rutgers women’s basketball team with some rather derogatory terms.
It also shows the customer is still always right, as was the case with Opie and Anthony’s fans. They showed there was a demand for that brand of comedy, and the show is back now.
We’re fortunate at this newspaper, as there’s an ideological wall between our moneymaking side and our newsgathering side. Our news decisions aren’t influenced by what an advertiser wants. Advertising and the newsroom are literally on opposite sides of our building.
Still, the mass media considers the impact of what it prints or broadcasts before hitting the button. Maybe it’s an awareness of political correctness. Maybe it’s fear of economic repercussions. Whatever the reason, we think before we speak.
Ultimately, though, it falls back on the reader, listener or viewer. They must decide if they’ll be insulted, angered or wound up over anything. I worry too many people jump right to censoring when the language or ideas make them uncomfortable.
That’s where a quote widely attributed to the French philosopher Voltaire comes into play. It’s arguable whether the author, born François Marie Arouet, ever really said it or wrote it. Some attribute it to author Evelyn Beatrice Hall in a 1906 as an epitome of his attitude.
Whatever the source, the idea’s worth considering: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”
Perhaps it’s time for a revision to that. We can just add a few more words to the end, in much smaller type… “unless I lose too much money defending it.”
You can comment on this story at www.limaohio.com.

Gas prices make it cool to be a numbers geek

Gas prices make it cool to be a numbers geek

David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 06.12.2007
By spending 42 cents Monday morning, I could’ve saved you $1.08 on your next 12-gallon tank of gas.
That’s because I found gas at $2.889 yesterday morning, nearly nine cents lower than the average in our area. That makes that extra 4.4 miles and 14 minutes on my way to work worthwhile. It would be especially comforting if all 84,500 readers got a better price on gas, since they’d save a combined $94,500.
It’s all in a day’s work for the http://www.limaohio.com/gasprices team and math geeks like me.
Like everyone else with a car, I found myself paying a lot more attention to gas prices these days. It was hard not to, especially when prices crept near $3.50 for several days.
I quickly added gas-price tracker for our Web site onto my list of things to do each day, and it gave my inner dork room to run.
Using the fastest, most direct route to work, I only pass four gas stations on my 23-mile trek from Ottawa to Lima each day. With a little bit of research, I added those 4.4 miles, those 14 minutes and another 12 gas stations to my list. And it’s truly a list, printed out each week with neat little boxes for those 16 gas stations I pass each day.
It’s really my dream job. Deep down inside, I’m a numbers geek. While most of my journalism brethren disdain math, I enjoy it. I open up Microsoft Excel on my computer before loading Word on most workdays.
I’m half convinced I spent the first eight years of my journalism career in sports simply because I enjoyed adding up rushing yards in my head during football games.
I even spent a few minutes trying to work up a formula for happiness in our family’s home. I tried to think of an inverse proportion of hours worked to number of compliments given to my wife, multiplied by the number of times our daughter shot root beer out her nose because she laughed so hard.
I couldn’t find one that worked until I found this mathematical truth: My wife’s happiness equals everybody’s happiness.
I think there’s a certain degree of math geek in most of us. As soon as we learn what greater than and less than mean, finding a bargain consumes us. Most of us will drive the extra half mile to get gas from a cheaper gas station.
That’s why so many people wonder aloud if it’s worth their while to drive to Beaverdam to save 10 cents per gallon of gas.
The answer, at current gas prices, is maybe. At the roughly 30 miles to the gallon the ol’ Sebring gets, it’s worthwhile for nine cents or more. If you have a gas-guzzler, such as my wife’s Jeep and its 20 miles to the gallon, it’d have to be 13 cents cheaper per gallon.
I warned you I was a math geek deep down inside.
It all makes me wonder why we fixate on gas prices so much. Consider my other preferred fuel, Dr Pepper.
After a little number crunching, I realized I spent $8 per gallon for Dr Pepper at the office. It was the same whether I bought 12-ounce cans or 20-ounce bottles. If I buy it in 2-liter bottles, the price drops to $4.73 per gallon. Or I can get it for a mere $4.26 per gallon by buying it in six-packs of 24-ounce bottles.
It appears milk might be the most efficient way for me to get around. I can get that for $2.59 per gallon. Something tells me most people don’t comparison shop on milk, though. When I called Wal-Mart, the woman laughed at the bizarre question before answering it.
It all offers perspective. With nearly any product, people will pay what it’s worth to them. Whether it’s $2.889 a gallon for gas, $2.59 a gallon for milk or $4.26 a gallon for Dr Pepper, you’ll buy it if you think you need it.
Occasionally you’ll reduce your consumption, but that’s the exception to the rule. You’ll pay whatever they ask for it. You can count on that.
You can comment on this story at http://www.limaohio.com.

Strange thoughts dance through your head at a recital

Strange thoughts dance through your head at a recital
David Trinko dtrinko@limanews.com - 05.08.2007
Three hours at a dance recital probably doesn’t count as culture if you snickered at it the whole time.
That thought kept going through my head Saturday as I watched little girl after little girl tap-dancing, hip-hopping and balleting her way across the stage.
Their ages ranged from 3 to 18, but really all I cared about was that one 5-year-old. There were 43 dance numbers in the show. My daughter was in one of them, which is to say she was not in 42 of them. Thus, my mind wandered.
• Does Trace Adkins mind his song “Swing,” about three men trying to pick up the same gal at a bar, being used as a line-dancing song about baseball for junior high girls?
• Does it bother a songwriter when dancers act out every lyric in a song literally?
• Which of the unenthusiastic dancers in the back row is the next YouTube hit waiting to happen? I wish I had a video camera to capture those girls with the expressionless faces and rapidly moving arms.
• How does a grandma in the audience feel when her little sunflower gyrates wildly on stage to a hip-hop song?
• What possesses a parent to yelp out “woo woo!” after the daughter finishes a routine? Does this embarrass the child? It embarrassed me, and I wasn’t even on the stage.
• They shouldn’t make the preschool kids dance in the same performance as the high school kids. It’s unfair to the parents to sit through that much dancing by someone else’s kids.
• Why don’t you notice how suggestive some song lyrics are until you’ve seen a freshman in high school dancing to them?
• I spent some time auditioning names from the program for our house’s little coming attraction, due out in August. Why are there so many ways to spell Ashley, Brittney and Jennifer?
• Is it wrong to watch dancers like you do ice skaters and hockey players, waiting for one to fall down or start a fight?
• Did someone just sneak out the backdoor as soon as his daughter’s routine ended? That doesn’t seem fair.
• Why do dance outfits cost twice as much as regular clothes when they look so cheaply made?
• Do choreographers see dance patterns the same way a great hitter sees the ball coming to the plate?
• Were people thinner back in the early 1900s? Every seat in the old auditorium seemed cramped. Come to think of it, none of them seemed that cramped when I saw a show there as a kid.
• Would more pedophiles come in to watch this if it didn’t cost $7 per seat?
• How does a mother learn the routine enough that she can wiggle in her seat with every motion, trying to urge her daughter into keeping up?
• Every little girl looks like a middle-aged burnout when you put a pound of makeup on her face and put her hair up into a bun.
• Do organizers of these types of events have the express written permission of the music companies to use the music, like you’re supposed to do before replaying a sporting event in front of a crowd?
• What are all the other fathers thinking about when their daughters aren’t on stage?
• Is someone snoring?
• Was that me snoring?
I live to tell from the experience. And really, the two and a half minutes our 5-year-old spent on stage dancing to a Winnie the Pooh song made the rest of the show palatable.
It reminded me of something important. While other people’s kids may look silly and strange, your own children always look cute. Love may be blind, but it’s just nearsighted when it comes to your kids.