The samizdata fuck-off.
The FCC, defying the will of 98% of the thousands upon thousands of Americans who wrote and faxed and emailed and overloaded their phone systems, has voted to ease the rules restricting media ownership. “Our actions will advance our goals of diversity and localism,” is the money quote from FCC Chairman Michael Powell. Yeah. And bank mergers have ever and always been about better service and cutting costs.
Orwell fatigue’s setting in.
If I haven’t been writing about this or calling to arms with the fervor of days-gone-by, it’s because a) I’m tired and b) this more than anything else has been a foregone conclusion. We could have wired those three Republican FCC wonks to a Ryder® truck packed in with fertilizer and fuel oil and a suicidal Mickey Mouse,® haggard after 70-some-odd years on the plantation and more to come, ready to push the button if they dared vote yes—and, well, it still would have come down along party lines, 3-2 in favor of keeping in place the restrictive rules that lock thee and me out of the broadcast media playground, while relaxing to the point of meaninglessness the rules on those who’ve already greased their way over the insurmountable licensing hurdles.
Boom.
Time for the samizdata fuck-off: it is assumed you already don’t listen to the radio much. (Not many of us do, and fewer every day.) Shut it off. Cancel your cable; get a jump on the decline in television viewership to come, and be ready to miss the coming age of shock-block programming. (You can get your Sopranos fix from DVD if you really, really need it.) Get your news from civilized countries and scrappy under-the-radar sources, using your favorite blogs as filters and pointers. Add your own voice to the mix—pick up the slack on local coverage by covering it yourself, keeping in mind that “local” is as much the doings of the school of small press poets whose work you follow from Kokomo and Kathmandu as it is the politics of the school board race run just last week. —And while you’re waiting in your online bunker for the inevitable borgification of the net, pick up a typewriter. Buy a copier before you have to have a Kinko’s license to own one and keep it in toner. Learn to run a mimeograph machine. Let’s see a renaissance of ’zines and minicomics, chapbooks and ashcans. Home-tape your own talk shows and soap operas, existential dramas and surreal collagerie, and pass ’em around as mpegs on CD-ROMs. Solder together a micropower transmitter if you’re feeling daring and take back the airwaves with your band’s live concerts.
The net (by which I mean so much more than the internet) treats censorship (by which I mean so much more than bowdlerization) as damage and routes around it, yeah. But we are the net. We do the routing. So declare defeat. Turn off, tune out, walk away. Let them have it, tell them to fuck off, and do it your own damn self.
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The figure I heard on the radio this morning was 99.9% (probably not a reliable number anyway, but still...)
Democracy is dead, viva la plutocracy!
You know, funny that. I did that very thing last year.
I miss Turner Classic Movies terribly, though. Even though TW has really fucked up the programming.
> defying the will of ... thousands upon thousands of Americans
since when is THAT a consideration?
phrase of the week
Long story; short pier.: The samizdata fuck-off....
I need the BBC - it keeps me sane. The rest I already barely watch.
"Learn to run a mimeograph machine"
How many webloggers know how to do this? How many own a Gestetner 466? How many worked for Gestetner?
(raises hand)
Hey, don't put it all on MY head, Buddy. You're the one with the big-ass basement. Bunker. Whatever. I'll bring my swivel-knife and a chocolate-chip poundcake, okay ?
Glenn--not entirely sure where I got the 98% mark. Might have been of the total volume of comments received. I've also heard that when winnowed down to comments sent from individuals, a grand total of 11 were in favor of the relaxation. Whee!
Scott--it's all relative, but I do consider the BBC to be "news from a civilized country." Of course, us cable-less Yanks get it over the web rather than in the dulcet tones of Beeb Standard, but it's still sanity-inducing. (Weird. They actually care that they were lied to, over there.)
Patrick--I used to draw cartoons and illustrations directly on the purply crinkly mimeo sheets for a grade-school newsletter, and if I stop for a moment and think real hard, I can still conjure That Smell. You willing to run a master class for us?
Visited a youth NGO in Montenegro last year. No member was over twenty-five, all had mad computer savvy - and they were churning out the leaflets for upcoming rallies and concerts with an old mimeograph. Samizdat doesn't die, it mutates.