The Moment I Realized I'd Left Reality and Was Now a Resident of Cloudcookooland III

The moment the FCC labelled the Howard Stern morning show as a news program.

I’m sure that Mr. Stern himself sees the irony. His producers had to apply to be considered a news program because he desperately wanted to interview Arnold Schwarzenegger about his candidacy for the California governorship.

As you may have heard, California is undergoing an election to decide whether or not to recall current governor Grey Davis and, should he fall, who to replace him with. Over 150 candidates have lined up to replace Grey Davis, including Arnold, Gary Different Strokes Coleman and pornographer Larry Flint.

Election rules appear to give every candidate the right to demand equal time from media outlets that give any other candidate any sort of exposure. For this reason, California residents haven’t seen any of the Terminator movies on any network programming in the state. Repeats of Different Strokes are also hard to come by, but nobody has noticed the difference.

Understandably worried about the logistical nightmare of interviewing 150 candidates ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous, Stern and his producers looked for an exception. They didn’t have to go far to find one. The FCC, it turns out, gives out exemptions to any show it deems as a news program. Howard Stern’s show met the criteria, and is thus exempted from the equal time rules.

Now, let me see if I got this straight: election laws prevent the showing of anything a candidate has ever performed in, movies such as Conan the Barbarian and television series such as Different Strokes for fears that these things would influence voters… for fears that voters might look at the Terminator movies and decide that this would be the way that Arnold might run California… but news programs are exempt from actually interviewing Arnold, asking him specifically about his platforms, and then giving equal time to at least some of his competitors?

In order to entertain, Howard Stern had to get his program classified as a news show?

Is it just me, or is something terminally screwy, here?

Thanks to Blogumentary for the link


My Reaction to Watching Enterprise on the 45th Minute of its Third Season Opener

To paraphrase Marge Simpson… “you know, Star Trek’s descent into a soft porn show was so gradual, I hardly noticed until it was too late.”


Remember my earlier reflection about what the United States flag would look like with 51 stars in it? Somebody came up with a model. As Andrew Spicer said, it wasn’t too hard: alternating lines of 9 and 8 stars.

Looks nice!

One comment about this page: “The 51 star flag is already commercially available and has been sold variously to proponents of statehood in Washington DC, California, Michigan, New York City, Texas, Nebraska, Canada and the Philippines.”

I know of the rest, but… Nebraska? When did Nebraska want to break in two?

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