Black pages

[Robert Wagers]

     Also, "no gesture" IS a political statement!

r wagers

On Thu, 8 Feb 1996, The Big Glee Bopper wrote:

> On Thu, 8 Feb 1996, Joe Schallan wrote:
> 
> > Haven't turned my pages black and do not plan to.
> > 
> > Have doubts about the efficacy of such a gesture.  Is preaching to the
> > converted.  Doubt if Senator Exon surfs the net.
> 
> So Joe what do you think the efficacy of _no_ gesture is? Right around 
> zero in my book.
> 
> > Beyond these considerations, I do not feel that it is my role to use
> > pages that I developed with taxpayer money to grind my own
> > particular political ax.  For all I know, the majority of the taxpayers
> > who employ me may think censoring the web is a terrific idea.
> > But even if they don't, I should no more turn my pages black than
> > I should tile a pic of Hillary C. for wallpaper.
> 
> 
> Cute. Maybe read Meeks article and think about efficacy one way or the other.
> 
> ****
> 
> [Parental advisory: Brock is being his usual profane self.  The first 
> half is a funny rant; the second half contains useful information about
> the censorship provisions in the telecom bill.]
> 
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> 
> Date: Tue, 6 Feb 1996 20:17:43 -0800
> From: "Brock N. Meeks" <brock at well.com>
> To: cwd-l at cyberwerks.com
> Subject: CWD--We're Not in Kansas Anymore
> 
> 
> CyberWire Dispatch // Copyright (c) 1996 //
> 
> Jacking in from the "Abandon All Hope" Port:
> 
> Washington, DC -- Forty-eight hours and a half bottle of Jack Daniel's
> into my 40th birthday and suddenly I knew what I had to do:  Compress
> my pending mid-life crisis into one white hot shining moment.
> 
> So I filed a lawsuit against the United States of America, calling the
> bluff of this bastard Congress, claiming the indecency provisions
> contained in the Telecommunications Act of 1996 are unconstitutional.
> 
> And so it is.  On Wednesday Dispatch becomes a plaintiff in a legal
> tussle for free speech in cyberspace.  The American Civil Liberties
> Union is doing the heavylifting;  a handful of others will be keeping
> me company. Before President Clinton can drop the signing pen for this
> rat-fucked piece of legislation on Thursday, the suits at the ACLU will
> be marching into court, papers in hand.
> 
> Having worked myself into a lather over this on the strength of a
> strange voodoo rhythm that only Pat Buchanan stumping in Louisiana
> before hordes of gun worshiping gay bashers could love, a sudden evil
> chill crawled up my spine.   My Gwad!  What if I've been set up?  Yes,
> that's it.   The timing of this millstone legislation was calculated to
> pass just inside the morose window of my birthday.  I'm being
> purposefully driven mad.
> 
> But who could harbor such a grudge?  Who would be devious and cunning
> enough to yank Sen. Bob Dole's chain and make him delay the vote just
> long enough for me to turn 40?  There could only be one answer:  Mike
> Nelson, the Administration's point man on encryption policy and a
> former staffer for Vice President Gore when he was just a second-class
> Senator from a third rate state.
> 
> Nelson, you see, is fond of introducing me as "the most dangerous man
> on the Net."  Clever, but he stole the line from my Mother or
> ex-wife... but I digress.  Yes, it has to be him.
> 
> Seizing the moment, I knew there was only one thing to do: Alert the
> President before he signed this bill, thus becoming an unwitting dupe
> in Nelson's twisted plot to turn my brain into gruel.
> 
> But I needed a plan.  I knew that if I could only talk to Bill, chat
> him up face to face, maybe share one of those contraband Cuban cigars
> the CIA smuggles in for him, all would be right with the world.  He'd
> see he was just a pawn and not only veto the bill, but he'd rush to the
> Rose Garden, tear the mother into shreds and feed it to the
> Republicans.
> 
> Around 11 p.m. I made my way to the front gate of the White House.  "I
> have an urgent message for the President," I said, "I need to see him
> immediately."  The guard was not amused and fumbled for what must
> have been an Uzi resting under his overcoat.  "I'm with the press," I said.
> I dug for my credentials and flashed them.  Now the guard's grip began
> to tighten on a weapon outlawed-for-all-sane-people and barked at me
> something about a joke that could get me 5-10 in the slammer.
> 
> I looked at my press credentials.   Egad!  I'd flashed my Diner's
> Club Card!  I couldn't bullshit my way out of this, no use trying, I
> slunk away.
> 
> It was just about midnight that I thought of the rats.
> 
> The plan was deceptively simple.  I'd scrawl an urgent message in
> paragraphs, attach one each to a rat, bag the lot and toss the entire
> rodent tribe over the White House fence with instructions not to stop
> until they had stormed their way inside.
> 
> The logistics worked fine, on paper;  however, I suddenly realized that
> once inside the White House no one would be able to tell the rats from
> the White House Press Corps.  I ditched the plan.
> 
> That was when a cat leapt from an alley.  He  looked strikingly like the
> First Cat Socks.   I pounced on him.   Fate would not be so generous
> again.   This was an omen.
> 
> My plan now entailed tying my entire message around the neck of this
> Socks-Imposter.   The rest would be easy.   First, I put masking tape
> on the bottom of the cat's feet.   Next, I had to calculate the
> trajectory for tossing this beast over the fence and onto the White
> House lawn.   Now this is not an easy task for a 40-year-old, lathered
> and booze-addled, mathematically challenged journalist.
> 
> The Arc of the Cat, you see, is  crucial.  Too high and he'd be caught
> in the radar that now guards against low flying single engine planes
> with a habit of making unscheduled landings on the front lawn.  Any
> blip on that early warning radar and a surface to air missile launches
> from just inside the White House tree line.   The missile, I figured,
> would do serious damage to the note.
> 
> No, the Arc of the Cat had to barely clear the fence, yet land squarely
> on the lawn.   If I was lucky, once on the ground the cat would begin
> to writhe in spastic convulsions due to the masking tape on the bottom
> of its paws; cats hate this, it drives them fucking nuts.  [Disclaimer:
> Kids, Do Not try this at home with Muffy.  You have been warned.]
> 
> This twisted feline mambo was important for two reasons.  One, it would
> make the cat a much tougher target for any of a number of snipers that
> camp on the roofs of all tall buildings within the line of sight of the
> White House.   Yes, they're there, watching through night scopes, ready
> and willing to drill any intruder.  Secondly,  the cat's crazed dance
> would immediately set off the motion detectors and the Secret Service
> would come running. They'd discover "Socks" and rush him inside to the
> First Family's private residence.   Clinton, being the curious man he
> is, would take note of the message around the "Socks-Imposter" and no
> doubt phone the front gate and have me summoned to his private
> chambers, offer me a Cuban contraband cigar and praise me for having
> saved him one of the greatest humiliations of his presidency.
> 
> And it would have worked, too, but I didn't factor in the cat's
> unwillingness to become a feline projectile.   At the top of his arc,
> the cat pulled off a perfect pike maneuver that would have a former East
> German diving judge cough up a perfect "10."  This mutant furball
> careened off the top of the fence and hauled ass down Pennsylvania Ave.
> 
> Dejected, I resigned myself to the only recourse I have left: Dispatch.
> 
> Pee Wee Herman In An Overcoat
> =============================
> 
> There are so many things wrong with this bill that it's hard to know
> where to start.   Of course the anti-indecency provisions are by now
> well-known.   Say a dirty word on-line, go directly to jail.  Hell,
> reading this Dispatch or forwarding it to a friend could land net you 2
> years behind bars and set you back $250,000.
> 
> In addition, seems Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) snuck in a sentence that,
> theoretically, makes it a crime to also send any language dealing with
> abortion through cyberspace.   This apparently due to something called
> the Comstock Act, which was put in place about the same time all those
> laws that made spitting on the sidewalk a crime also passed into law,
> somewhere around the around the turn of the century.
> 
> But court decisions have rendered Comstock obsolete, yet it's still
> officially on the books.   Hyde's staff swear up and down that they
> added the provision at the behest of the Justice Department, yet they
> can produce no proof.   Hyde promised that the provision wasn't meant
> to forestall abortion information.   Small catch... as long as Roe v.
> Wade stands as law, that's true.  But if that ruling is overturned, and
> it is under constant assault, the Comstock Act is given new life.
> 
> Now here's a thought:  Hyde is an ardent supporter of overturning Roe
> v. Wade... so you figure out the real implications here.
> 
> You Call This Deregulatory?
>  =========================
> 
> Although supporters of this bill insist that it is deregulatory, don't
> believe it.  First of all, congressional sources conspired at the last
> moment, and in secret, with no debate and with no mention in public
> meetings, to make sure the there was nothing in the bill that would
> keep the FCC from *regulating* the Internet.
> 
> David Lynch, Rep. John Dingell's (D-Mich.) telecom staffer, told me
> point blank that the bill "does not limit the FCC's ability to regulate
> the Internet."   As if that weren't enough, Lynch vamped on:  "If the
> Internet starts looking like a telephone company we might have to start
> looking at regulating it like one."    Two words:  Internet Telephone.
> You figure out the rest.
> 
> Suffice to say, Congress set us all up with this bill.  They've painted
> a huge red bullseye on the Net and when Clinton signs the bill, hunting
> season is open.
> 
> Want more arcane bullshit?  Okay, here it is.  In a 22-page document
> titled "FCC Proceedings and Actions Required by the Telecommunications
> Act of 1996," the law firm of Wiley, Rein and Fielding outlines 69
> separate *regulatory*  "proceedings or actions" the FCC must undertake
> because of this bill.  It covers everything from "Delegation of Ship
> Inspections to Private Parties" to setting standards for the so-called
> "V" Chip (yet another government mandated censorship program) to
> figuring out how much providers of interactive services will be allowed
> to charge schools, health care providers and libraries (hint:  they get
> a discount, but the percentage is left up to the FCC.)
> 
> Of course, the Congress doesn't mention that later this year it will
> hold hearings aimed at cutting the FCC off at the knees, both in
> funding and oversight capability.  How the hell can this bill be
> carried out as written if the agency charged with its implementation is
> effectively castrated?  Answer:  It can't.   Anyone want to give odds
> that this was just coincidence?
> 
> Jobs, Jobs, Jobs
> ==============
> 
> Another myth about this "obscene act" is that it will create hundreds
> of thousands of new jobs.  Listen close, you'll hear Clinton and Gore
> each say this at Thursday's signing, I'll bet a sack of rats on it.
> 
> If we just talk straight numbers, yes, the bill does create jobs.   But
> look closer, look at it like Labor Secretary Robert Reih would and ask
> yourself what are the *quality* of these jobs.   Answer:  pathetic.
> 
> Although some of the jobs this bill creates will be high paying,
> technical jobs, most will be low paying, non-union jobs.   Digging
> ditches to lay new cables, new fiber.   Construction jobs for
> installing wireless towers.   Sales jobs up the ass, all on commission
> no doubt. Customer representative jobs, again, low paying, tedious
> non-union jobs.
> 
> Why?  Because the phone companies, for one, will create separate
> subsidiaries which they don't have to staff with union employees.  And
> most manual labor jobs aren't union anyway.   A lot of jobs will come
> from the wireless industry.  Again, non-union and low paying, for the
> most part, building infrastructure, sales force, etc.
> 
> Howard Stern's Private Parts
>  ==========================
> 
> Although Howard Stern's privacy (is this an oxymoron?) isn't in
> question here, your privacy is.
> 
> The bill basically allows the telephone companies to use the data they
> have on you in any way they see fit, with one caveat:  They must
> provide the same access to that information to competitors, if asked.
> As long as they don't hog all your private data, such as how many times
> you call Domino's Pizza or whether you're an avid QVC network shopper,
> they can sell your data to just about anyone and use it internal in
> ways that should make your skin crawl.
> 
> This is all laid out in admittedly banal Congress speak:  "A local
> exchange carrier (that's your local phone company) may use, disclose,
> or permit access to aggregate customer information... only if it
> provides such aggregate information to other carriers or persons on
> reasonable and nondiscriminatory terms and conditions up reasonable
> request therefore."
> 
> In other words, bend over and kiss your sweet aggregate good-bye.
> 
> Now, I have to go... there's a cat running around Washington with
> incriminating evidence tied to its neck, no doubt rummaging through a
> White House garbage can, and I have to track him down.
> 
> Meeks out...
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
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