'Howl' too hot to hear: 50 years after poem ruled not obscene, radio fears to air it

[bananas]

Page A - 1 of yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/10/03/MN0PSIM67.DTL

'Howl' too hot to hear
50 years after poem ruled not obscene, radio fears to air it

Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, October 3, 2007

Fifty years ago today, a San Francisco Municipal Court judge ruled that Allen Ginsberg's Beat-era poem "Howl" was not obscene. Yet today, a New York public broadcasting station decided not to air the poem, fearing that the Federal Communications Commission will find it indecent and crush the network with crippling fines.

Free-speech advocates see tremendous irony in how Ginsberg's epic poem - which lambastes the consumerism and conformism of the 1950s and heralds a budding American counterculture - is, half a century later, chilled by a federal government crackdown on the broadcasting of provocative language.

In the new media landscape, the "Howl" controversy illustrates how indecency standards differ on the Internet and on the public airwaves. Instead of broadcasting the poem on the air today, New York listener-supported radio station WBAI will include a reading of the poem in a special online-only program called "Howl Against Censorship." It will be posted on www.pacifica.org, the Internet home of the Berkeley-based Pacifica Foundation, because online sites do not fall under the FCC's purview.

"Why, 50 years later after a judge ruled that children could read this poem, people are afraid the courts will say that their ears shouldn't hear it," said Ron Collins, a constitutional law instructor and First Amendment advocate who is leading a small group of authors, broadcasters and free-speech advocates pushing to broadcast the poem eventually. "Yet they can go on the Internet and see far, far worse things."

<snip>

Online resources
For more information about how the FCC defines obscene, indecent and profane broadcasts:

www.fcc.gov/cgb/consumerfacts/obscene.html
Voice your opinion
To contact the FCC or to file a complaint:

www.fcc.gov/cgb/complaints_general.html
Consumer and mediation specialists also are available Monday through Friday, 5 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. PDT to answer questions and assist in filing a complaint. Call toll-free at [phone] (voice) or [phone] (TTY).

E-mail Joe Garofoli at jgarofoli @ sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

[Richard Steele]

1. "...a special online-only program called "Howl Against Censorship."

They should have called it, "Requiem for Irony".

[On the Road]

2. I am Sure That's True,

but the most likely source of controversy might be the term "negro."

That and the part about getting anally raped by biker gangs and squealing with joy.

It's too bad, because will miss the one great line that Ginsberg wrote:

"Angelheaded hipsters searching for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night..."