Straits of the arts.

Occasionally, there occurs a seemingly random, serendipitous confluence of events, the meaning of each quite accidentally expanding on the other.

On June 9 it was reported that Clear Channel Communications, the nation's single largest radio station owner, with some 1,300 local stations under the corporate belt, had settled all of its outstanding "indecency" charges with the Federal Communications Commission to the tune of a $1.75 million fine. A horde of parenting and moral watchdog groups hailed the FCC's action against Clear Channel, whose offenses related mostly to potty and titty jokes on Howard Stern's hugely popular morning show, as well as other, smaller-time, offenders. There was no mention of this on Clear Channel's website except incidentally that it had dropped "The Howard Stern Show" from the rest of its stations.

I view the FCC's and Clear Channel's actions with not a small bit of trepidation. First, Clear Channel exists in its current incarnation largely because of industry deregulation and the relaxation of ownership rules in multiple markets. This has resulted in a boon of unimaginable proportions for the industry's giants: Infinity Broadcasting, Viacom, Clear Channel, and others. It has also unleashed a consequence which may or may not have been intended.

It's a well-established principal of warfare, marketing, and politics that the bigger a target, the easier it is to hit. This makes the corporate carriers of shock jocks dead meat for those segments of our society who feel it is their mission to protect us and our children from virtually anything, not least of which is the mere mention of sex, on the airwaves. Deregulation and industry consolidation has neatly made their job easier. It doesn't take much. A well orchestrated letter writing campaign--a few hundred will do--to Clear Channel's moral guardians at the FCC and the behemoth is on the block. Disregard the vagueness of the FCC's standards and what constitutes a finable offense. All you really need is a relative handful of outraged citizens, and the moral integrity of the airwaves is, at least for the nonce, restored. There's another word for this: censorship.

So, we have an FCC who shares in its Administration's belief that governance should serve as the moral gatekeeper of the governed, and whose swift and sure reaction to a small letter writing campaign successfully reined in a corporate giant's alleged civic irresponsibility. Certainly, the complainants had a much easier time censoring Stern and his ilk this time around. Before deregulation and consolidation, the outraged had to go after a particular station. The rules that then banned the kind of ownership that now typifies radio made it prohibitive if not impossible to go much beyond threatening a single station's license. Not so today. Hence, the perhaps--and perhaps not--unintended consequence: what's good for megabusiness has become a bounty for the self-anointed guardians of public morality.

The first irony is that Clear Channel, despite coughing up $1.75 million, last week's petty cash, still laughs all the way to the bank. They reap huge profits on Stern's and other shock jocks' popularity, pay a small fine when they cross whatever line is in vogue this week, and throw 'em off the air for a while. But the lure of profit is far greater than the fear of a handful of moral guardians. My guess is that after an appropriate cooling off period, when they think no one's looking, Stern and his ad revenues will bow again. The grander irony is that all the actors win: Clear Channel makes money, the FCC makes a political point, and the self-anointed guardians of public morality can claim a victory. And once Stern's back on Clear Channel, he'll surely cross the line, and the dance will commence anew.

The morning after I read about Clear Channel and the FCC, I started in on a small literary enterprise, re-reading James Joyce's Ulysses. Ulysses is not for the faint of heart or nerve, and I don't tackle its enormous challenges lightly. However, since June 16th of this year was the centennial Bloomsday, dusting off my 1961 Vintage Giant edition seemed particularly appropriate. My edition includes the text of Judge Woolsey's landmark 1933 decision that Ulysses didn't pass the "leer of the sensualist" test and saw fit its release for American consumption--eleven years after its original publication. My copy also includes the original foreword to the first American edition by Morris Ernst, the attorney who represented Random House, Ulysses's publisher, before the court. Ernst writes:

"It would be difficult to overestimate the importance of Judge Woolsey's decision. For decades the censors have fought to emasculate literature. They have tried to set up the sensibilities of the prudery-ridden as a criterion for society, have sought to reduce the reading matter of adults to the level of adolescents and subnormal persons, and have nurtured evasions and sanctimonies.

"The Ulysses case marks a turning point. It is a body blow to the censors. The necessity for hypocrisy and circumlocution in literature has been eliminated. Writers no longer seek refuge in euphemisms. They may describe basic human functions without fear of the law."

It seems that we have progressed only incrementally, if at all, in the last 70 years. Ernst's remarks resonate even today under the harsh glare of the FCC's disciplining of Clear Channel. Indeed, the "prudery-ridden" have for the moment gained the upper hand courtesy of big business and a high-minded, low-brow government.

And, no, I'm not even mildly suggesting much less asserting that "The Howard Stern Show" has even a hair's breadth of Ulysses's artistic merit--tho' I believe Joyce would rather have enjoyed Stern's brand of amiable, harmless raunch. Artistic merit isn't even what's at issue, although that was the basis for Judge Woolsey's decision; he couldn't detect the "leer of the sensualist" in Ulysses. I'm afraid the good judge would today favor banning Stern from the airways, because there is little else to the show but the leer of the sensualist. The point is freedom of speech and freedom from oppressive censorship--the gall of the few to enforce narrow moral views on the many. I'm not one to indulge in conspiracy theories--after all, even paranoids have real enemies--but the convergence of corporate radio, the government as moral referee, and the ascendancy of those who would tell you how to live has wrought a distinctly odious form of censorship; most likely a coincidence. At least I hope so.

To those who believe the FCC acted correctly to force Stem's banishment from Clear Channel, I offer you an alternative: when I think Stern or anyone else has crossed whatever line defines my moral sensibilities, I don't write my congressman or fulminate to the local ministry. No, I exercise my constitutional right to change the channel. You can do the same.

--KE