The Revolution Begins!

At long last! He is free! Notwithstanding the monthly $12.95 fee. But he is well worth it. In fact, as I write these words, I am hearing the live east coast feed of his press conference from inside his Sirius Satellite studio. I am of course talking about the one and only Howard Stern. Today is January 9, 2006 and it is the inaugural launch of his uncensored, commercial free incarnation of "The Howard Stern Show." It is emblemized by a raised fist in protest to the assault on free speech headed by the FCC.

The battle has been raging on for many years: the FCC vs. Howard Stern. However, it was immediate days following the ridiculously dubbed "Nipplegate" that the war between the government and Howard rose to the point where Howard made the bold move to the budding pay radio service named Sirius. Since Howard signed his groundbreaking contract with Sirius in early 2005, Sirius subscriptions have risen from a mere 600,000, which put Sirius far behind the earlier pay service XM Satellite, to 3.3 million subscriptions announced just last week! As Howard said this morning, there were so many calls to Sirius to activate subscriptions to newly bought receivers over the 2005 holiday season the company there was a 9 hour hold period!

Howard became the reluctant face for the defense of free speech on broadcast radio because he is one of the few true living pop culture icons who is known not only in America but all across the world. He is and has been for more than 20 years an institution. Although once reluctant and has not said as much in his own words, it's clear to me that he has accepted the mantle of public free speech advocate in the wake of the fervor of his move to satellite radio. Like all great free thinking revolutionaries, such as Martin Luther and Lenny Bruce, it was never Howard's intention to become a symbol for free speech. Although he has always been public about his anti-establishment viewpoints, he is actually more conservative politically than liberal...or was prior to the illegal war in Iraq. He has become a vocal advocate against the Bush Administration's overseas activities as well as the administration's assault on personal and social freedoms. There is no doubt that it was his verbal assaults on Bush and his neo-con lackeys that made him the favored target of the FCC, who was able to use its poorly defined rules for "decency" to chase Howard from terrestrial to extra-terrestrial radio.

I have not been for many years a fan of Howard or his show. In particular it was his largely Republican and conservative viewpoints that prevented me from enjoying fully his entertainment content. I always thought of his entertainment as brilliant, but I couldn't get past his views. However, my girlfriend Laura turned me onto him just a few months before the Iraq invasion and I haven't been able to turn away since. And I am also the luckiest god damn boyfriend in the world because Laura got me a Sirius Starmate receiver for Christmas and we activated the subscription a week ago. But it wasn't the change in his viewpoint or even the fact that I have a free-thinking girlfriend who is threatened by Howard's content that has made me a fan for life. It is that Howard is the most honest radio personality ever.

I don't know when exactly I realized it is not Howard's political and social views or even the controversial content of his show that make him a threat to the establishment, all I know is that it is Howard's openly talking about his own ego, his own mind and his own eccentricities that have drawn him the largest following in the history of entertainment. Through Howard's unleashing his ego and personality, millions of fans connect with those aspects of their own psyches that our conservative and repressive American society will not encourage and actively seek to destroy. He has become the alter-ego of his fans. Like the comic book superheroes of which Howard is a fan, he achieves heights and heroics that the ordinary Americans who listen to him can't or won't do themselves. Howard Stern has become a modern American archetype.

The prediction has been made that the FCC will begin assaulting both cable and satellite radio services in an effort to concreting their Christian Right agenda of "propriety." It is unlikely that this can ever happen. The very supporters of the Christian Right's agenda of control and destruction of free thought and speech are the capitalist barons many of whom make their money from the profits from such pay services. But there is no doubt that the war between the FCC and Howard Stern will continue to be waged, at least on the side of the establishment.

Too late, assholes...Howard and his fans have already won.

Finally, It Looks Like A Democratic Party, Again

I'm not going to get carried away, now, mind you. After all, the Democratic Party still has a ways to go before they are, once again, the party of FDR and JFK. There is no doubt, however, that the battle in the Senate on Wednesday, December 21st, 2005 was a marked improvement as the minority leaders and a handful of not so regressive Republicans came together to force oil drilling in the ANWR (Arctic National Wildlife Refuge) out of the Defense Appropriation Bill. The fact that Stevens of Alaska and Frisk of Tennessee and their soulless cronies would slip such a brazen attempt at making the rich even richer and defile of one our countries largest and most precious natural reserves into a bill to fund our troops overseas fighting Bush/Cheney's illegal Iraq War as well as money for the relief of Hurricane Katrina and flu vaccines clearly shows they are interested in nothing more than the manipulation of the legislature to make themselves and their cronies richer. Bastards would use supporting our soldiers and helping disaster survivors to line their own pockets? It isn't even human.

Fortunately the Democratic leadership swept in and kicked the shit out the ANWR provision and persevered the integrity (at least for now) of the Congress, which has become nothing more than a body of kiss-asses for the Bush/Cheney administration. They then passed the Defense Appropriation Bill to get our soldiers the help the administration won't give them and to give our fellow Americans the help they need as they continue to struggle to rise above a disaster which the Bush/Cheney administration knew was going to happen and did nothing to prevent.

In addition, the Bush/Cheney administration and the majority leadership of Congress sought to make permanent the civil rights violating wrongfully named Patriot Act, the Senate once again stepped in and forced an extension of 6 months only. This allows for further debate in an effort to try and remove those provisions of the Act which clearly violate the rights of Americans as well as give superfluous and almost dictatorial powers to a president gone mad with his self-declared divine right of rulership. The release earlier this week by the once-great, now tarnished New York Times of a report that President Bush has been ordering illegal wire-taps for the NSA inside U.S. borders shows that whatever powers were given to this jackass during the days immediately following 9/11 are being abused. The fact is that Bush's violation of the FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) is an impeachable offense (one of many, including the War in Iraq)! But I'll save that discussion for another time.

As I watched the session on C-SPAN 2, I was riveted by the verbal battle between the two leaderships. However, nothing was more affecting as Ted Kennedy's impassioned cry against the rules violation by the Republican leadership who, as they had before with the prescription drug plan, during the dead of night slipped in verbiage into the pandemic flu provision of the appropriation bill which would relieve any and all manufacturers of the flu vaccine from any prosecution should recipients of the vaccine suffer side effects from the vaccine. In other words, if a recipient of the vaccine becomes sick or debilitated as a result of poor manufacturing, etc., then that recipient has no recourse for compensation - not even from the government! Because no money has been set aside in a fund which the government claims will have money! It's disgusting, immoral and, once again, shows how inhuman these Republican leaders are.

Just as riveting was watching Stevens of Alaska as he decried the other members of Congress for not allowing him to rape the ANWR, claiming that future profits from the oil drilling had been earmarked for Hurricanes Katrina and Rita victims as well as our soldiers overseas. This coming from the son-of-a-bitch who fought for a bill that would have given him billions of dollars to build a useless highway to a single island off the Alaskan coast instead of given those same dollars to help rebuild New Orleans...what a fucking hypocrite.

There is no doubt that compromises, such as cutting funding to a heating program that would have helped millions of Americans during Winter, were made in order to ensure the protection of the ANWR, extension of the Patriot Act and the defeat of a Budget Bill by the Republican leadership that would have included tax cuts, which, once again, clearly favor the wealthiest 1% while continuing to cut aid and benefits to the poorest Americans, but that's the nature of politics. Compromises will be made. I can accept that. I have to accept that! It's the way politics is done. What I haven't be able to accept is the complete ass-kissing of the Republican majority of the Bush/Cheney administration by the Democratic minority. At least for this Holiday Season (Yeah, fuck Bush/Cheney memos demanding the use of "Merry Christmas"!) I got a gift from my once proud party leadership who for the first time since 9/11 showed they have something to offer the American people: a choice between being screwed or having their best interests persevered the best way possible.

I'll take that gift, gladly.

"Last of a Dying Breed!"

December 16, 2005 saw the last broadcast of "The Howard Stern Show" on terrestrial radio. Simultaneously, my favorite morning show "Morning Sedition," broadcasted on the Air America Radio Network, aired it's last first-run show. With the passing of these cutting edge, satirical, brilliantly written counter-culture programs comes an end to free speech on broadcast radio. Of course other Air America staples such as "The Randi Rhodes Show," "The Majority Report" and "The Mike Malloy Show" will continue. But as much as I love these three shows, "Morning Sedition" stood out even amongst all liberal forums for its humor, satire and ability to laugh at its own liberal listener-ship. Similarly and for decades before, "The Howard Stern" show has delivered humor and satire aimed at its own infamous host and crew and fringe audience.

What is it about shows that not only poke fun at society, politics and organized beliefs but also poke fun at themselves that the powers-that-be find so threatening?

Satirists and humorists have been the target of governments since...well, I guess the first jesters were hired to parody the first monarchs in Europe. In those early days before their was mass communication, the ruling elite didn't seem too concerned with "fools" saying "foolish" things about them. In fact, the more the ruling elite allowed themselves to be poked fun at the more the people laughed with them and not at them. With the invention of the printing press and the production of news periodicals, cartoons began to appear which were sometimes vicious assaults on the ruling elite. And America was unique because it was the one country where commentators could cleverly assault the machinations of the powerful without fear of retaliation.

When did this end?

It appears with the invention of mass communication via the radio and television that this ability for the ruling elite to laugh at itself ended. Perhaps because, suddenly, the public had the power to see the truth in their agenda once kept behind locked doors. There is no doubt that Chevy Chase's portrayal of a bumbling President Gerald Ford on "Saturday Night Live" in 1976 had an impact on his lossing the presidential election to Jimmy Carter. And prior to Chase, the stand-up Lenny Bruce attacked the government nightly tearing away the shroud of mystery and spilling the guts of truth out on the stage. But surely it was after the Watergate investigation revealed the truly evil nature of the U.S. government the public finally realized..."Holy shit, it isn't just a joke! These bastards really are incompetent!"

Although Howard Stern will begin to broadcast on Sirius Satellite Radio beginning January 2006 and "Morning Sedition" co-host Mark Riley will have two hours in the morning preceding Rachael Maddow, who is herself the survivor of the equally biting "Unfiltered" on Air America, who will also have a two hour program, former "Morning Sedition" co-host Marc Maron has a less certain future. Maron has told his auidence he is in negotiations with the same Air America brass who canned his show to create another show likely to air on the weekends or in the evenings from Los Angeles. I hope it happens, because I have become a huge fan of Marc Maron.

I knew almost nothing about Marc Maron before "Morning Sedition." I had seen his one Comedy Central special and thought him an honest, hysterical and unapologitic comic. He had absolutely no experience in radio prior to "Morning Sedition," and in the early days showed, but I began listening to Air America on its first day and I heard the maturation of this brilliant social and political comic. I have also heard the changes in Air America Radio. Like all businesses it went from being a unique experiment in truly liberal talk radio into a business for the sake of making money. As a result, it has killed off it's two most unique shows in favor of less dangerous hosts. Again, I'm not trying to put down any talent still on Air America, as talent has no control over executives, but it disappoints liberal like me who have seen the Democratic Party, in a similar fashion, go from being a representative for the minority voice in this country in favor of pandering to the powers-that-be.

It was Howard Stern in his farewell speech to broadcast radio who put it best. He called himself, his crew and his audience, the last of a dying breed. Howard's right. The fearless voice of truth, humor and criticism is a dying. There is satellite, which at least for now uncensored, but it costs money. There is no longer an truly free outlet for representation of unabashed honesty about the powers-that-be. I hope that Air America Radio will secure a contract with Marc Maron and give him another show. If not, I hope Maron will go the route of Howard Stern and find a vehicle on satellite radio. Whatever the outcome, I believe that a time will come, again, when freedom of speech is not only allowed but encouraged in the mainstream media.

Until then, keep looking to the underground for truth.

Corrupting A Classic

Today sees the release of Walt Disney & Walden Media's live-action/digital feature adaptation of the C.S. Lewis classic The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe, the first installment in The Chronicles of Narnia 7-part book series. And I couldn't be more excited about it. I have been a huge fan of The Chronicles of Narnia since I was a little boy. In fact, I have been of fan of every book I have ever read by C.S. Lewis, especially The Screwtape Letters. What I am not excited about, what does in fact piss me off is how C.S. Lewis' epic Narnia is being used, manipulated and corrupted by the Religious Right to justify their anti-Christian political agenda. There manipulation is so evil that it has actually forced liberal voices to mobilize against the story itself and therefore the message of the Narnia story.

A little background on C.S. Lewis, taken from the Yahoo! Encyclopedia:

(Clive Staples Lewis), 1898—1963, English author, b. Belfast, Ireland. A fellow and tutor of English at Magdalen College, Oxford, from 1925 to 1954, C. S. Lewis was noted equally for his literary scholarship and for his intellectual and witty expositions of Christian tenets. Among his most important works are The Allegory of Love (1936), an analysis of the literary evolution of romantic love during the Middle Ages; The Screwtape Letters (1942, rev. ed. 1961), an ironic treatment of the theme of salvation; and a history of English Literature in the Sixteenth Century (1954). He is also the author of Out of the Silent Planet (1938) and That Hideous Strength (1945), outer-planetary fantasies with deep Catholic and moral overtones; the "Chronicles of Narnia," a series of allegorical fantasies set in the mythical kingdom of Narnia, including The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (1950) and The Silver Chair (1953); many works of literary criticism, including Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Literature (1966); and the autobiographical Surprised by Joy (1954). From 1954 until his death he was professor of Medieval and Renaissance English at Cambridge.

C.S. Lewis was a Christian theologian, yes, in fact, he was if not the most prolific, the best known Christian theologian of the 20th Century. That does not mean he was a right wing, neo-con Christian fanatic like George W. Bush and the Moral Majority bastards who have corrupted Christianity in this country. Lewis was first and foremost a humanitarian. He believed in liberty. He believed in freedom of speech. He believed each person had their own right to believe whatever they wanted to believe! I have no doubt, Lewis would see the modern-day right wing religious movement in this country as downright anti-christian. And to think now that his classic epic "The Chronicles of Narnia" is being used to convert innocent children into adopting the warped and evil interpretation of Christianity held by American right wing, neo-con Christian fanatics makes me absolutely sick.

I first read the 7-book Narnia series when I was in elementary school. At that time and up through my high school years these same right wing, neo-con Christian fanatics who are now trying to use Narnia for their own evil purposes were, at that time, denouncing Lewis' works. They perported Lewis was encouraging black magic and devil worship by setting his story in lands were witches and satyrs were as common place as human beings. In fact, by having talking beasts like the benevolent and brave lion Aslan, these Christian fanatics claimed Lewis was saying common beasts were of greater value than human beings...which, in my opinion, they probably are. But that's a discussion for another time.

Now that these right wing, neo-con Christian fanatics are using Narnia for their purposes, liberals are coming out to try and stop children from seeing the new movie. Having not seen it myself I can't account for it's adaptation, but the effect upon reading Lewis' brilliant literature will no doubt be dramatic. Yes, it is true that Aslan is an alegory for Christ, but the Christ-figure is an archetype and dates back thousands of years before Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth. Lewis was trying to instruct children in moral behavior, but he was insistent on not using any direct religious references, let alone his own Christianity, to convery these moral messages: unconditional love, sacrifice, hope instead of fear, innocence protected from corruption. He knew that the Bible was not written for children and that stripping down the complex, oftentimes contradictory messages of the Bible to be ingested by children was flat-out wrong. So, he created an amazing tale of wonder, magic and make-believe to which children would respond.

I heard on the radio Randi Rhodes speaking out against Narnia. It was clear she wasn't sure what the books were about, but because the right wing, neo-con Christian fanatics were screening the new film in their churches as they did with "The Passion of the Christ," she was speaking negatively against the entire film and book series. I am a huge fan of Randi, and I realize she didn't know what she was talking about; however, I blame the right wing, neo-con Christian political movement in this country for making voices like Randi attack literature and films which are being wrongfully manipulated and corrupted.

When I've had a chance to see the film I will comment further on the film itself. But I could not sit back and not defend Lewis and his classic fantasy epic which was as important to my childhood as Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings," or the King Arthur stories, or any of the many ancient mythologies I read over and over and over again.

Return Of The All Seeing Eye

According to the Miriam-Webster online dictionary, augur means:

Pronunciation: ô'gәr
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin; akin to Latin augEre
1 : an official diviner of ancient Rome
2 : one held to foretell events by omens

I prefer definition #2 myself. But I'm not here to toot my own horn (am I?). The fact is that I chose this title because I firmly believe as a student of history and anthropology (at the University of North Texas) that the America in which we live today, the America under the tyranny of Bush/Cheney and their neo-con cronies is the modern day Roman Empire. 'Nuff said.

Welcome, my fellow stoners, to the third incarnation of "The Augur." An online resource for the truth in the wake of an America gone completely mad. How in just thirty years could we go from the end of the Vietnam War to a War In Iraq which in almost every essential way resembles exactly the chaos of the tragedy in Southeast Asia, is just one of the questions we'll explore. We'll also explore the neo-con agenda of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the evil bastards running our government. On the lighter side we'll talk about pop culture, music and the film industry. I gotta a lot of shit to say, stoners.

For those of you who have patiently kept up with the various incarnations of "The Augur," since it first started reporting reality to you over two years ago on our home site for Brickyard Hill Inc. + Frustrated Monkey Films, Ltd. I hope you'll keep up with us and enjoy this temporary home. You'll be able to add your comments to the ramblings and eccentricities of the Stoners on the Hill.