A probable consequence of Congress’ efforts to strengthen the FCC’s “indecency” enforcements, from Volokh:

[B]roadcasters have refrained from bringing judicial challenges to the regulation of broadcast indecency precisely because the fines were small, and rare, enough that broadcasters decided it was not worth the costs of antagonizing the FCC and Congress. Now, with heavy fines (and maybe even license revocation) on the line, broadcasters are more likely to do so . . .

This is significant, because the Supreme Court probably would and in my view should find these indecency regulations unconstitutional. With respect to newspapers and magazines, telephones, and cable television, the Supreme Court has held that the government may not reduce the adult population to viewing only what is fit for children . . . Broadcast has been the glaring exception in the Supreme Courts jurisprudence, but its special status is no longer tenable.

Excellent. In my view, the FCC has one, and only one, legitimate purpose: efficiently managing a limited resource held in public trust. E.g., granting and policing licenses in order to maximize the use of the airwaves while preserving signal quality.

It was a mistake to ever grant the FCC power over anything other than the technical aspects of broadcasting; the commission’s regulation of content has long been a glaring thorn in the side of a generally expansive 1st amendment jurisprudence. How can one logically reconcile the enormous protections accorded to free speech in cases of libel and defamation with no-fault $27,500 fines for naughty words like the one my title above? It’s ricockulous. Here’s hoping this beast does finally get put to rest.

Multnomah County Judge Frank Bearden has ordered the county to stop issuing marriage liscenses to same-sex couples, according to a kgw.com story posted minutes ago (free subscription required).

Bearden said that he believes the Oregon Constitution would “allow either a civil union or (marriage) privileges to same-sex couples.”

A Supreme Court ruling is needed to determine whether gay marriage should be allowed in the state, he said.

Update: Here’s a non-subscription article from the Statesman Journal.

I know the OC Online issue updates can be far and few in between, but it’s almost noon and the Daily Emerald’s Web site hasn’t updated to Tuesday’s issue yet. I noticed that the same thing happened yesterday. Also, according to a note in yesterday’s issue, the editorial board stated that last week’s online poll wasn’t working so they’re running the same poll this week.

I hope this can all get sorted out soon, because I can’t hardly wait to link to Diana Aguilar’s slightly-delirious hot dog quote.

Update: Here’a a link to the article with the quote. What can I say? She loves the hot dogs.

Although this post is a few days late, I just wanted the usual suspects to know that the Portland Mercury has busted out an entertaining drinking issue with a list of bar manners and a list of Portland’s best happy hours: two things that go hand in hand, like a pint of Hef and a glass of Jameson’s.

In light of all this talk about a relatively badly written column in a relatively mediocre daily just up the road, I shall take a moment to make an announcement. I will be participating in a panel discussion on Journalism Ethics put on by the Society of Professional Journalists. Tuesday, May 4, 7pm in Allen 221. Come by if my usual ranting just isn’t enough for you.

Nice catch, Pete.

For some time now I have felt compelled to voice my opinion as to why African Americans have not made the leaps and bounds necessary to close racial disparity gaps…

Don’t you think apathy to their [R. Kelly, OJ, and AI] character hurts you in everyday life? If you don’t, you should stop and smell the roses.

In summation, I think blacks should be more careful in deciding whom they choose to support…

Three lines chosen more or less at random, each of which singles out the author as deserving of a slap. Referring to a nebulously-defined African-American community, based on certain shared aspects of the, quote, African-American experience, is one thing. But how is your randomly-chosen black citizen to hold themselves accountable for R. Kelly putting it in some middle-schoolers? Isn’t the idea to get beyond treating every member of an ethnic group as a standard-bearer for that group? With deference to Pete’s choice of headline, this piece is to the point. (There’s a point to be made about OJ – McWhorter covers it at length in Authentically Black – but Williams doesn’t really get within five miles of it here.)

Williams isn’t a racist, at least not on this evidence, but he’s a shitty writer, and with phrases like the ones above virtually guaranteed to set everybody’s teeth on edge, it’s hard to imagine what else he hoped to accomplish with this godawful column.

However: firing the guy? To speak colloquially, bollocks. It’s a horrible piece of journalism, which they never should have run in the first place – but the responsibility for that rests with the editor. If resignations are going to be tendered or jobs are going to be lost, that’s the first one on the list. Choosing to run the piece and then hanging the writer out to dry is shameful.

Heres the nut graph of a commentary piece by David Williams that ran in OSUs Daily Barometer:

My point, however, is this: There is a lack of morality in the black community because African American leaders, whether Jesse Jackson or the NAACP, choose to rally around minorities who seem to have little quality characteristics about them.
Why don’t black leaders call out people like Allen Iverson and Sammy Sosa and say, “Hey, there are millions of young African Americans who worship you; why don’t you start showing up for work on time and stop putting cork in your bat?”
Sure, that’s contrite and overly simplistic and there are bad apples in more than just athletics, but you get the point.

Heres the Barometers response after the usual bunch of leftists staged a protest:

On Friday, April 9, The Daily Barometer published a column by staff columnist David Williams that was racially insensitive and inappropriate.
We apologize to everyone for printing the column.
While the opinions expressed in columns are not representative of the staff members of the Barometer, we have a policy never to print material that is discriminatory, racist or sexist.
By printing such material in the Barometer, we legitimize the messages, even if we don’t agree.
We never meant to offer racially insensitive opinions as valid ones by printing the column. . . .
The plain and simple fact is this: We made an inexcusable mistake.
We apologize to the African American community, who was [sic] no doubt disappointed, hurt and outraged by the column. . .
David Williams will no longer be writing for the Barometer.

Heres the Editor In Chiefs contact information:

EDITOR IN CHIEF Niki Sullivan
541-737-3191 [email protected]

I know Ill be wishing her my best! I caught wind of this controversy on Lars Larson, but its spreading all over the usual conservative websites. Expect to see the author on OReilly shortly

Having just attempted to vote via Duckweb, I was redirected to the “system down for maintenance” page. That’s right, from 6pm-12am every Friday, duckweb is down. Wonderful, six hours when voting is probably most likely, it’s impossible to vote. [Cue Evil Laughter]. I’d be sad if it wasn’t so typical. Folks, please, if you do nothing else, at least remember to vote against the PSST this weekend. Seriously, do it tomorrow…I’d say do it now, but you CAN’T. Goddamn.

The entirely wonderful Not Fooling Anybody has a new one up that’s a real winner.

While readily acknowledging my failings as a member of the campus community, I’d like to offer up the following quote from whichever half of the Strawn/Aguilar ticket was doing the talking. (Strawn, I think.) This is in response to the question “There’s always lip service paid to keeping the incidental fee on campus, but every year OSPIRG, OSA and USSA get their money. Do you have any real plans to change that?” Follow the bouncing ball:

We can guarantee that the lip service will stop. We think we have to acknowledge that OSPIRG, OSA, and other off-campus entities are fundable. We can’t debate the fundamentals year after year. What we should focus on is getting those budgets to comply with our terms and processes. Departments such as the Career Center and Rec Center provide great models of how to fund large entities with budgets that are necessarily different from the average student group’s. If we look to decisions such as those for guidance I think we can find a reasonable way to fund the off-campus groups.

What the hell kind of a guarantee is that? A guarantee to not even pretend to pay lip service to the issue? I have nothing against Strawn personally; he appears to be neither a crook nor a flake. But there’s no goddamn way I’m voting for someone who considers OSPIRG and the Career Center to be comparable programs.

Arrow’s Impossibility Theorem is quite important in the realm of public choice. Essentially, it says that you can’t get an aggregate preference ordering that has the sorts of nice properties you might want such a thing to have [here’s a better explanation than I could give]. Any number of solutions to this problem have been advocated. Many of them violate various aspects of Arrow’s theorem: A Borda count violates the IIA principle and plurality voting violates transitivity, etc.

Pairwise voting schemes seem to be one of the better ways to deal with this. Condorcet’s Method is usually a pretty good solution. The only problem is that it doesn’t always produce a winner. Yeah. However, I do think that there’s a great opportunity to have the relatively low participation in ASUO elections not arrive at such a bad outcome.

I think the Executive race should be set up as a pairwise competition. So, the ballot for this year’s race would’ve looked like:

Ben/Diana VS Adam/Mena
Ben/Diana VS Adrian
Ben/Diana VS Ben Brown
Ben/Diana VS Tyler
Ben/Diana VS Nick/Joe

Adam/Mena VS Adrian
Adam/Mena VS Ben Brown
Adam/Mena VS Tyler
Adam/Mena VS Nick/Joe

Adrian VS Ben Brown
Adrian VS Tyler
Adrian VS Nick/Joe

Ben Brown VS Tyler
Ben Brown VS Nick/Joe

Tyler VS Nick/Joe

That is a rather tedious list of choices for kids to make, but on duckweb it shouldn’t be that hard to set up appropriately. Further, it would eliminate the need for a primary and a general elections, provided that there was a Condrocet winner present in the set. The general elections, if needed, could be a simple majority count or, alternatively, any number of dispute resolution methods could be used. I’m not sure which one of those possibilities would really be best. The reason I think that the ASUO is the perfect place to try this sort of thing should be obvious: in majority voting a small turnout can have a profound effect on an election; further, majority voting violates both IIA and transitivity. The ease of implementation is also a factor to consider, as voting here is all electronic and should be relatively easy to modify. Just something to think about, I shall now return to the nerd cave. You know, the one devoid of ladies.

In the latest issue of the Oregon Commentator, Volume XXI, Issue IX & X, Ben Strawn’s answer to the question “Do you think it’s hypocritical of the ASUO to constantly complain about the rising cost of higher education while taking action that causes the already high incidental fee to rise?” (P 15) was not correct. Instead of Strawn’s answer, which will appear as an update to this post as soon as I return to the office, Adam Petkun’s answer was run a second time. This was the result of not nearly enough checking on the part of the OC editors after a long couple of days of layout. We regret the error, and apologize for any misrepresentation of Strawn’s position that might have occured as a result.

UPDATE: Strawn’s answer should have read as follows:

It certainly is contradictory for us to steadily increase our self imposed and maintained cost while simultaneously griping about the state imposed costs. There is always warranted growth within program budgets, but I think we have had problems in the past deciding how to go about allocating that money. The PFC bylaws should have much firmer guidelines as to how quickly line items can grow, and under what circumstances that should be recommended. But also, there is a certain dynamic at work that pushes the incidental fee higher. As the state continues to disinvest in higher education, the programs not directly linked to academics are the first to suffer. With the student fee we have a choice to let that happen or take on more of the cost ourselves. So far it seems like students have felt, on some level, that our physical and cultural development is worth supporting regardless of what the state is doing.

–The Company

Not surprising, really. From the opinion:

Complainant is unable to demonstrate that the students of the University of Oregon will suffer any actual prejudice as a result of the aforesaid constitutional violation, and therefore, the court dismisses this grievance on the grounds of harmless error. First, although the Oregon Daily Emerald and the Elections Board unquestionably committed error in printing and distributing a version of Ballot Measure 1, the Emerald is printing a retraction to remedy the situation. Secondly, the official text of the ballot measure is deemed that which appears before a student on the actual ballot form (eg. the website). As a final matter, the remedy sought was wildly disproportionate to the harm done. The grievance is therefore dismissed. [emphasis mine]

Essentially, the ConCourt has determined that because the harm done was “harmless” the kids who screwed up get a pass. Now there’s accountability for you. Kudos to Miss Shively for filing the thing, too bad the Court doesn’t seem to care about actual enforcement of the rules. Coincidence that last year’s Elections Coordinator, whose faults at that task are well known, is on the Court that finds little to no fault with this year’s equally unable Elections Board? Perhaps? Perhaps not?

The outcome of the ASUO elections this year is, really, quite unfortunate. While I’m not exactly surprised that Adrian did not make the run off, I am saddened and disappointed. This year’s Executive and E-board did everything in their power to assure that only ASUO insiders and cronies would turn up for the election. How else can one explain the overwhelming victory of Maddy’s hideous demon-baby, the PSST bloc? Did anyone else notice that the E-board did nothing to publicize the elections after the first day? The candidates were pretty annoying, but the E-board could have at least put up a banner accross 13th or something. Further, it’s quite ethically unsound for the Executive to first appoint the Elections Board, and then work on a campaign. ME doesn’t understand propriety, it seems.

Worse, they know the turnout in the General Election will be lower, and seem poised to do absolutely nothing about it (From the ODE story above):

Elections Publicity Coordinator Nathan Strauss said voter turnout for the general election, which begins Friday at 9 a.m. and ends Monday at 5 p.m., tends to be lower because many students don’t realize there is a second election, and because there are fewer candidates and less campaigning.

With an attitude like that, the general student body gets pretty screwed. In light of the choices before us, however, I would like to take this opportunity to make the official OC General Election Endorsement for 1) Ben and Diana for Executive, as they seem much more capable, honest, and willing to work with folks than Adam and Mena. 2) Anyone running against any of the PSST candidates in the general election or in the retake of the elections for seats 10, 12 and 14. There is hope yet, we’ve just got to make sure that PSST doesn’t have a pure majority on senate, otherwise the fee is going to go up to, I’d wager, well over $200 a term.

Speaking of the fee, I would like to offer a word of support to the ASUO Senate for deciding, rightly, to use part of this year’s over-realized fund to buy down next year’s fee. By taking $200,000 of the over-realized and buying down the fee, the Senate has taken at least one small step toward keeping fees from climbing. I fear that next year, we’ll have no such luck. Good work, ladies and gentlemen. It might only mean $5 to any individual student, but the principle is important.

Perhaps the least surprising thing about this piece is the revelation that our hero Aaron Shakra lives in Whiteaker.

But as I passed Mac Court, something finally did stop me. It was the blue box of the Register-Guard, the newspaper inside reading: “Submit or die, Marines tell holdouts.”

I take a deep breath.

“Submit or die.” This is rape culture. This is death culture, repackaged and represented in an easy-to-digest form, available for withdrawal from a blue box. Or whatever color box — They’re all the same shades of gray.

Ah, so that’s what rape culture is. One hears the term bandied about so much, it’s good to finally get some specifics. And now, with a typical display of acrobatics, we find ourselves talking about gender roles:

Feminist biologist Anne Fausto-Sterling has noted that the idea of there being only two sexes is yet another gendered social construction — if we consider hermaphrodites, there should be five sexes…

First of all, if he actually opened the blue box and read the damn newspaper, he might pick up on the fact that the Marines have not been called into action to subdue an unruly crowd of hermaphrodites. Secondly, while his point that biological characteristics do not conform exactly to a “dichotomous system” is fair, in the overwhelming majority of cases – let’s face it – biological characteristics distinguish between men and women quite effectively, for what that distinction is worth. Thirdly, so what? If you want to be androgynous, go ahead. If you don’t, that’s fine too. As Dan Savage would put it, occupy the role that makes you feel comfortable, and kindly quit your incessant bitching.

There is no “us versus them.” It doesn’t exist. Yet, we rely upon it and we learn to conform to it.

Speak for yourself, jackass.

The first place to fight this conformity is with our bodies. Stop subscribing to this culturally imposed gendered social control. Our bodies are the site of direct action — it’s time to begin. It’s time to sing these songs of dissent.

To be continued.

Now, where do we think this is going? Proposed future headline: “Aaron Shakra Wants Everyone To Know Why He’s Wearing A Dress.” He should team up with Scott Austin on this one, I think.