Or, Maybe: Bruce

A Lefty blog claims Clear Channel is censoring Bruce Springsteen. Or, maybe people simply don't want to be lectured about politics by a sixty-year-old with a guitar?

Springsteen's early stuff was great, but he's been averaging one good track per release if lucky for years.

Comments

[Hank Kalet]

People seem to want to hear the disc -- it was No. 1 and the concerts are sold out. But what do I know?

[waka waka]

Hey dumba$$ (Riehl): He's at the top of the charts and doesn't deserve to be played on a pop station!? These are PUBLIC airwaves, my friend. Yours and mine. A pop station does not have the right to censor an artist just because he hasn't supported its platform in the past. I don't get mad when that neanderthal Toby Keith is played. I expect the same from your side. Duuuuhhh.
Truly pathetic.

[Seekeronos]

Big whoop. So Clear Channel doesnt wanna play the Bruce... it's still a free country, and they have a right to play whatever they like.

If you dont like it... Tune into another station.

All this amounts to is yet more shillery for resurrection that maggot-ridden pile of free-speech stifling rubbish known as the (un)Fairness Doctrine.

[Worst President Ever]

Seek says it's OK for Clear Channel to censor The Boss, then turns around to trash Hillary as an opponent of free speech. Hilarious. I guess that means Seeks for Free Speech, expect when he's against it.

Billboard doesn't seem to have gotten the memo from Dan cause they say that "Bruce Springsteen Tops Four Billboard Albums Chart. That would be the Billboard 200 chart, the Billboard Comprehensive chart; the Billboard Tastemakers chart; and, finally, the Billboard Top Rock Albums chart.

Pretty damn good for a 58 year old guy nobody's listening to.

[seekeronos]

I dont see the contradiction. The first case is a privately owned company choosing not to play works by a particular artist.

The second case (DemCong attempts to revive the Fairness Doctrine - fair and balanced only if you are a left-winger - is nothing less than a DemCong desire to freeze out anything but their socialist party line.

[JustOneMan]

Bruce who??

He is a pathetic huma being using the war to sell records. Soon he will be playing state fairs and oldie reviews..He has turned into a bad Bob Dillon impersonator..

Dont let fake music sales information fool you...the 2 top sellers on BillBoard are Soulja and Chris Brown...two other people on the charts that no one is listening to or buying their records!

JOM

[JustOneMan]

Bruce who??

He is a pathetic human being using the war to sell records. Soon he will be playing state fairs and oldie reviews..He has turned into a bad Bob Dillon impersonator..

Dont let the fake music sales information fool you...the 2 top sellers on BillBoard are Soulja and Chris Brown...two other people on the charts that no one is listening to or buying their records!

JOM

[Wahoo Willie Sez:]

I have no problem with BS or anyone else using thier fame to argue against the war. I just wish at least one of these people had an actual reason. The whole "There were no Titan II missiles with big ole WMD warheads" BDS is getting completely boring.

[LOL]

wow that JustOneMan post is just an embarrassing illustration of how out of touch and incoherent the average wingnut is. Aren't you guys embarrassed to be be siding with the drooling morons?

[Wahoo Willie Sez:]

"Aren't you guys embarrassed to be be siding with the drooling morons?"

More hate speech from teh tolerant left

[Purple Avenger]

"A pop station does not have the right to censor an artist just because he hasn't supported its platform in the past."

Please cite the legislation supporting this claim.

[seekeronos]

How can it be any clearer?

A PRIVATELY OWNED (or if you must be a stickler for semantics... a CORPORATION) actually _censor_ or ban content?

It is not censorship. It is an ownership decision to NOT play a selected work or works from an artist. Even if political views on the part of the owner(s) come into the equation, it is a still an ownership decision.

The people will vote with their feet (or in this case, with their radio tuners). And if it really creates that much negative buzz, where it starts to affect commercial sponsorship, THEN the company might change its mind.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

But the skinny on censorship is this:

Only governments have true power to censor published works from the public ear.

Corporations simply do not have the direct power to shut down all opposition and kick down your door at 2am in the morning to gut-shoot you behind your house for not enjoying their selection of music or talk radio.

Governments on the other hand... do so very much have this kind of free speech killing power - ESPECIALLY when people have allowed themselves to be lulled to sleep by entitlements and microwaveable pop-tart junk culture, so as to loose even the most basic grasp of what freedoms were fought and bled over that they so easily forget, ignore, or willingly hand over to the next round of bullies looking for an opportunity.

And then comes that "Fairness Doctrine", which is certain to be one of the first things on the DemCong agenda come late January 2009. True "Fairness" - only if you like having extreme leftward pressure squashing down all other voices.

To twist the words of a classic German hymn from the Thirty Year's War: "Wachen sie auf, Amerikanisch Volk..." >> Wake up, ye American People.

[Worst President Ever]

That's Dylan, not Dillon. Too many Gunsmoke episodes?

Hey, we were right about the whole WMD thing - they're weren't any - so get used to it.

Seek, you might want to check out the ownership figures for Clear Channel.

Yeah, hearing both sides of an issue. How unAmerican can that be?

They're call them PUBLIC AIRWAVES for a reason.

The federal government, through the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) grants licenses for defined periods of time to TV and radio broadcasters, in return for which the broadcasters must provide broadcast programming that serves the "public interest."

Clear Channel is the largest owner of radio stations in the country. Not broadcasting someone's music - currently #1 on a number of charts - because it doesn't mesh with your political opinions isn't serving the public's interest.

When you own the biggest megaphone and only let one side speak, that's called censorship.

[seekeronos]

"--- When you own the biggest megaphone and only let one side speak, that's called censorship. ---"

Nay, I say unto you, get a better megaphone and say things that people want to hear, if you think you can't stomach what the guy with the biggest megaphone was saying.

Free Market and free speech, not censorship.

"--- Yeah, hearing both sides of an issue. How unAmerican can that be? ---"

Now that depends on who calls the shots at the FCC. During the Nixon years, anything that wasn't right-wing friendly got squelched. For the most part, though... the Fairness Doctrine ruled during a Democratic majority Congress and a couple of Democrat Presidents, entrenching liberal groupthink firmly in power over the limited airwaves available (big Three network TV and AM/FM radio), whilst leftist academia ensured that only socialist yes-men got through J-school and hired on as reporters and staffers who in turn matured into executive managers who set policy today for the MSM.

For the most part, the FD was a club which the Left ruthlessly brandished to silence opposition. A command-economy over the "public" airwaves, as it were, especially when the Left was left to dictate what exactly the "public interest" of the airwaves is. Thanks be to God that Ronaldus Magnus Reagan set us free from the onerous chains of that wicked doctrine.

"--- They're call them PUBLIC AIRWAVES for a reason. ---"

Aye, which means that *everyone* should enjoy access to use them, if they can afford to put up a transceiver and antenna, and satelite uplinks and the other particulars needed to broadcast a signal.

And the less governmental (read: partisan) regulation and interference, the happier the public will generally be, like it always is when given freedom to choose what to listen to ... or not listen to.

Ideally, the FCC's role from the dawn of radio was to regulate a finite amount of a bandwidth of frequencies which could hold a signal. The federal government (and particularly the traditional tax-&-spend Democrats) of course, always eager to steal a buck or a billion at Joe Taxpayer's expense, happily arranged all sorts of licensing to ensure that certain things weren't said... starting of course with the reasonable (foul language, innuendo, stuff like that) and scope creeping to suppressing unfavourable points of view by enforcing a balance which always favoured whoever controlled the FCC.

But as for choice... let us put it other terms:

Say I own a chain of coffee and sandwhich shops... only, I hate, detest and loathe pastrami. On a good day, I'll serve up capicola on rye, but pastrami?

Fuhgeddaboutit!

I don't even stock pastrami, as it stinks up my freezer. (just saying...)

So, whose loss is it when a customer comes in and demands a pastrami on rye with mozz, tomatoes and bacon, with a side of pickles and a cappuccino... and I have to tell him that "sorry fella... I don't do pastrami! Only filthy red communists eat pastrami!"

I guarantee you that fella will walk... right around the corner to the next deli and get what he wants, and I've let a sale of a $4 cappuccino and maybe another $6 in a sandwich walk out the door.

BUT... BUT... as the owner of my shop, I have the intrinsic right to be an idiot and not stock the stinking pastrami! I don't need the government to "order me" to sell stuff I don't want to deal with, just because it is "fair" in the eyes of either some brass hat in DC, or some schlep who wants to yank my tail about not stocking the pastrami.

It's about CHOICE, man.

Am I getting through to you now? You lefties are supposedly all about "choice" (*snicker*) ...even if I think many of them are the wrong choices.

[Worst President Ever]

Pastrami = Free Speech. That's one stretch of an analogy.

No it's not Free market. The Market has spoken - The Boss's CD is at the top of the charts. People like ii and want to hear it. Playing music people want to hear is the market Clear Channel is in. But Clear Channel has chosen to not play it because it doesn't like Bruce's political views - which are actually the views of the majority of Americans. That's not a Free Market. It's censorship.

[ET]

--Bruce's political views - which are actually the views of the majority of Americans.--

Dude, if you think the majority of Americans share mr. springsteen's views you are smoking crack. BS is now one of the monied liberal elite with the luxury of navel-gazing and strumming tunes on his guitar...this does not make him intelligent, or informed. It makes him lucky to live in American under the protection of the government he despises. He should go back to writing about cars and girls.

[seekeronos]

"--- Playing music people want to hear is the market Clear Channel is in ---"

No, playing whatever music it _thinks_ (by way of focus groups, analysis of listener requests, consideration of chart trends, and album sales data among many other data) its listeners might like to hear is what Clear Channel is *in business* for, to make a *profit*. Whether or not CC chooses not to play the Boss's latest album out of dislike of his politics is completely irrelevant... until CC's listenership declines so as to affect their corporate sponsorship.

Yup, if CC's listeners are that much in fits over CC firing the "Boss"... they'd vote with their tuning dials and with their spending dollars perhaps even to avoid CC's sponsors.

The listener's votes would have walked, and their money would have talked... but since CC still manages to thrive without sucking it up and spinning the Boss's latest steaming heap of manure, that just might mean that most of CC's listeners are actually quite happy with CC's decision.

And quite unlike my non-pastrami selling Deli in NYC... it is doing quite well even without the Boss. I mean c'mon... Pastrami, Doc Brown's Root Beer, and a subway series (Mets and the Yankees) - that is the "trifecta di tuti trifectae" for a great many NY'ers.

So, let's chalk up another point for the Free Market. :)

As for those top of the charts, ever consider that a substantial part of that metric comes from people actually dropping a dime or two at their local Sam Goody AND buying his album, OR downloading it off of i-Tunes, OR file-sharing it out of some atrocious worm/virus laden peer-to-peer network?

I think that the "charts" would have to encompass a far greater measure than just how many times a radio station spins the vinyl.

[Brucie]

Who even listens to "music" on the radio anymore? It's all worthless commercial crap. And Mr Springsteen is way past his time, over the hill as they say along with all the other old codgers trying to cash in on worn out formulaic and not very creative "music"

And I am completely against censorship in any form, if people like his stuff and want to listen to it I don't see anyone stopping them, I hope they enjoy it, but there's no accounting for taste.

[Ennis]

Moonbats have always had a hard time with the following concept...

You have the right to say whatever you want to.

I have the right not to pay you to do so. I also have the right not to use the products you are trying to sell.

If I own a business I have the right not to stock that product, either. If that loses me money then that is my choice to do so.

[Fred Beloit]

LOL asks laughingly: "Aren't you guys embarrassed to be be siding with the drooling morons?" Yes, I would be, LOL. You don't find me siding with you, do ya?