if you’re looking for something beautiful to listen to in this oft-depressing world, check out yesterday’s edition of Democracy Now. Amy Goodman interviews Dave Isay about his incredible oral hystory project, StoryCorps. If you’re too lazy to go over to their site, you can listen to it here:
(Early Wednesday Morning Edition)
I’d like you to take a moment and think of your favorite websites. Are they, by any chance, mtv.com or cnn.com or maybe michellemalkin.com? No? Well you may want to consider them as your favorites, cuz soon you may not have much of a choice. Or you could take a moment, educate yourself about net neutrality, and start making some phone calls, writing some letters, and signing a petition.
If you aren’t familiar with Net Neutrality and the threat against it, check out Save the Internet. Here’s the jist of it. Net Neutrality is basically the First Amendment of the Internet. It states that every site is given equal access. Basically, you are able to search for and look at a small site just as easily as a big corporate one. That’s what the internet is all about, right? Not if the big telecommunications companies and their enormous team of lobbying attorneys has anything to do with it. AT&T, Verizon, Time Warner and Comcast are spending millions of dollars to create a tiered internet where money determines how fast your site load or if it loads at all. The bill to destroy Net Neutrality is being considered by the Senate right now.
You can think of the internet as one big public access channel, but these telecommunications companies are hoping to turn it into something more like cable tv. Instead of being able to choose from millions of websites, you’ll have to choose from your internet provider’s menu. And those that don’t pay to be on the menu, won’t be accessible.
So if you like reading this website, it is of the utmost importance that you take action to save it and the millions like it. This is not something we can forget about. The telecommunications lobby is one of the strongest in the U.S. and has a long hystory of victories against what’s best for the public. But we can stand up against them and win. So take a moment and call your senator, sign the petition, write a letter to your local paper, and do whatever else you can to ensure an open internet.
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) abides by a strict moral code. They adhere to a higher standard of news broadcasting. And should you disagree, your complaints will be dismissed as low-brow.
You may remember a couple of weeks ago when BBC radio host Chris Moyles decided to do his impersonation of a “big, fat black guy” for Halle Berry. Berry’s unrelenting stance that this racist impersonation deserved punishment and an apology really won me a lot of respect for her. But Ms. Berry, in the end, is just another Black womyn - not the BBC’s high-brow target audience. So the BBC’s Board of Governors decided unilaterally that Moyles’ impersonation was, in fact, not racist and that Ms. Berry was simply getting riled up over nothing. Another case of the hyper-sensitive, hyper-defensive Black womyn syndrome, of course. White people sure know how to serve us some justice, don’t we? We’re experts on what is and isn’t racist. We should be, right? After all, we created it.
Moyles continued as a BBC host without so much as a single act of castigation from the higher-ups. When you know you have that kind of immunity, why change? Well, Moyles stirred up some more contempt this week by exclaiming that he was getting rid of a cell phone ringtone because “it’s gay.” I didn’t even know cell phones could be gay. I suppose that would explain why mine likes to pretend its a vibrator and dance in my pants.
But don’t get out of your seats, yet, folks. You don’t have to worry. Because the BBC Board of Governors declared that “Chris Moyles, when using the word, had meant no offence to gay people. He was not being homophobic in his use of the word.” Phew! I was worried for a moment that the BBC was allowing a racist, homophobic asshole to host their morning radio show. Turns out that those gays are just too senstive (yeah, there’s news). Good thing i was wrong. Now we can all rest assured that the BBC continues to uphold the highest of standards. Now on to some real news.
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