[NYTr] 50 Yrs Later, Ginsberg's HOWL Too Hot for Pacifica Air, But Webcast

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

[MichaelP sent Pacfica/WBAI's post about HOWL to the activ-l list
alongwith a congratulatory message to WBAI that they had the spine
to put the reading on the air on the 50th Anniversary of the court
decision judging it NOT obscene.  However, the Pacifica announcement
talks only about it being available for download from the web, not 
an on-air broadcast. The SF Chronicle story Michael also linked to
(which follows directly) says Pacifica/WBAI have it only on the web,
which is not susceptible to FCC fines, but that WBAI had decided NOT to
air it. If this is correct, no spine (or fine money) was required. 

LINKS:

You  can  read  the full text of HOWL here:
http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt

You can download a 128k mp3 audio file of Pacifica's October 3, 2007
50th anniversary rspecial at:
http://www.audioport.org/audioport_files/specials/Howl-Final-128.mp3


Maybe there was a follow-up and WBAI DID air it after all; we've
asked for a clarification. -NY Transfer]


San Fran Chronicle - Oct 3, 2007
http://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

by Joe Garofoli, Chronicle Staff Writer

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."

Another irony: WBAI, the Pacifica Foundation station in New York that
plans to post "Howl" online, is the same station that took on the FCC
more than 30 years ago over the right to air George Carlin's comedy
routine featuring the "seven dirty words." The challenge led to a 1978
Supreme Court decision governing what naughty words can be broadcast
and when.

Pacifica's attorney for FCC issues, John Crigler, thinks airing "Howl"
would be "a great test case" in the current environment. But he
understands why WBAI won't broadcast "Howl," even between the hours of
10 p.m. and 6 a.m., the hours the FCC has cordoned off for rougher
language.

WBAI program director Bernard White fears that the FCC will fine the
station $325,000 for every one of Ginsberg's dirty-word bombs. If each
Pacifica station that aired the poem - and possibly repeated it - were
to be fined for airing "Howl," it could mean millions of dollars in
fines.

The potential impact of such penalties is daunting to a commercial-free
station with a $4 million annual budget whose financial state White
described as "in the black, but we're surrounded by a lot of red ink. A
fine like that might crush us."

Interim Pacifica Foundation executive director Dan Siegel said, "And I
think they're being optimistic with that financial assessment." Siegel
said each Pacifica station is free to air the program if it wishes, but
he didn't know if any planned to.

But with a budget of $18 million for all of its five stations, Siegel
said, "it might make more sense for CBS or someone like them to take on
a risk like this."

So the poem that begins "I saw the best minds of my generation
destroyed by madness" finds itself an odd bedfellow in the battle
against the FCC with entertainers like Nicole Richie and Cher, both of
whom were deemed to cross the FCC's dirty-words line that free-speech
advocates say is constantly shifting.

Last month, several public broadcasting outlets - including San
Francisco's KQED - broadcast "clean" versions of Ken Burns' World War
II documentary "The War" because they feared the FCC would punish them
for airing four four-letter words that turn up over the course of the
visually graphic 14-hour documentary about the brutality of war.

At last month's Emmy Awards broadcast, the Fox network censored three
instances in which performers said words that the network felt could
land it an FCC fine. One involved comedian Ray Romano using the word
"screwing." In another instance, a performer mouthed, but didn't say, a
four-letter word. The third was actress Sally Field using the word
"goddamn" to describe her opposition to the war in Iraq.

Free-speech advocates and broadcasters say uncertainty about
appropriateness is rooted in two recent cases that are wending their
way through the court system.

Last month, attorneys for CBS asked a federal appeals court to overturn
a $550,000 fine the FCC imposed for airing singer Janet Jackson's
exposed breast during her infamous "wardrobe malfunction" in the 2004
Super Bowl halftime show. The FCC said that even though the exposure
lasted only 9/16th of a second, CBS failed to exercise proper control
of its "employees" - Jackson and halftime show co-star Justin
Timberlake.

In June, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York ruled
that the FCC acted "arbitrarily and capriciously" when it planned to
penalize Fox for "fleeting expletives" uttered by Cher and Richie at
the Billboard Music awards shows in 2002 and 2003 respectively. The
network's attorneys said the FCC hadn't punished such "fleeting
expletives" since the 1978 Pacifica case involving WBAI and Carlin's
seven dirty words.

But while Pacifica's Crigler said "Howl" would be a good test case for
this new landscape, University of Virginia law professor and former FCC
Commissioner Glen O. Robinson said "it is best to let the other cases
go through the system first."

"Maybe the commission would look differently on it if we were talking
about Shakespeare, but Ginsberg isn't Shakespeare," he said.

But in an era in which a bottomless well of profanity and pornography
is available online, why should it matter that "Howl" can't be
broadcast on the radio? Finding "Howl" is a quick online search away
for anyone old enough to access a computer.

"But you still have to have a computer," said Janet Coleman, arts
director at WBAI, who is airing a program Wednesday about "Howl" with
San Francisco's iconic poet and City Lights Books owner Lawrence
Ferlinghetti and others. Like other station employees, she feels
frustrated by the current atmosphere.

"This is about the public airwaves. If we can't control what goes on
them, then how much freedom do we really have?" she said.

The power of Ginsberg's poem isn't lost on Ferlinghetti, who faced jail
time and a fine 50 years ago for publishing "Howl." In August,
Ferlinghetti joined Collins' group of free-speech advocates, writers
and attorneys in asking WBAI to air the poem.

In an interview to be broadcast today on WBAI to commemorate the 50th
anniversary of the poem's legal victory, Ferlinghetti was asked what
Ginsberg, who died in 1997, would have said about the broadcast
controversy.

"Ah, well, I'm sure he'd have plenty to say about it. I often lament
that he isn't around to say it," Ferlinghetti told WBAI.

"As Allen Ginsberg's original publisher and editor, for most of his
life, I look at the present situation as a repeat in spades of what
happened in the 1950s, which was also a repressive period," he said.
"The current FCC policy wasn't conceived just for poetry, but when
applied to the case of Allen Ginsberg's poem 'Howl,' it amounts to
government censorship of an important critique of modern civilization,
especially of America and its consumerist society, whose breath is
money, still.

"It's such a hypocritical concept of American culture in which children
are regularly exposed to adult programming in the mass media, with
subjects ranging from sexual to criminal to state-sponsored terrorism,
while at the same time they are not allowed to hear poetry far less
explicit," Ferlinghetti said. "I suggest the FCC ban all television
newscasts until after 10 p.m., when children won't be listening."
'Howl' online

Hear a recording of Allen Ginsberg reciting his poem "Howl" in January
1959 in Chicago on "Howl Against Censorship" in commemoration of the
50th anniversary of the San Francisco court decision finding the poem
was not obscene. The program will be posted at 9 a.m. today at
www.pacifica.org.

Excerpts

The poem

The beginning of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl":

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving
hysterical naked,

dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an
angry fix,

angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the
starry dynamo in the machinery of night,

who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat up smoking in the
supernatural darkness of cold-water flats floating across the tops of
cities contemplating jazz ...

The ruling

What San Francisco Municipal Court Judge Clayton Horn, in his ruling on
Oct. 3, 1957, said of "Howl":

"The theme presents unorthodox and controversial ideas. Coarse and
vulgar language is used in treatment and sex acts are mentioned, but
unless the book is entirely lacking in social importance it cannot be
held obscene." 

                            ***

sent by MichaelP (activ-l) - Oct 4, 2007

HOWL broadcast  [actually, it seems, "webcast" - NYTr]

I'm a day-or-two late with this news-item - but of course the general
issue is still wide open -- HOWL has, once-and-for-ever, been declared
to be not obscene, but the recent FCC extentions to bar "profanity" on
air may allow the FCC to punish stations broadcasting HOWL because the
definition of profane is peculiar to the FCC, has nothing to do with
the English language, and may - ultimately - be approved by the Supreme
Court.

So congrats to WBAI for having the spine to air HOWL yesterday

Michael


Pacifica radio
<http://www.pacifica.org/program-guide/op,segment-page/station_id,0/segment_id,469/>

Howl Against Censorship

Fifty  years  ago,  on  October 3, Judge Clayton Horn ruled that Allen 
Ginsberg's  great epic Beat-era poem HOWL was not  obscene  but
instead, a work of literary and social merit. This ruling  allowed
for  the publication of HOWL and exonerated the poet Lawrence
Ferlinghetti, who faced jail time and a fine 50 years ago for
publishing "HOWL."

Fifty  years later, with draconian FCC fines for language infractions,
you still  can't  hear  HOWL  on  the radio. That's something to howl
about. This October 3, WBAI and Pacifica Radio Network invite you to
join our commemoration  of Judge Horn's ruling on behalf of free
speech, by listening  to  a  recording of  the poet Allen Ginsberg,
himself, reading the unadulterated HOWL.

The commemoration of HOWL will also [include] Lawrence Ferlingetti,
poet Bob  Holman of the Bowery Poetry Club, first amendment lawyer Ron
Collins, Beat Generation scholar and filmmaker Regina Weinreich, WBAI's
Program Director Bernard White and WBAI Arts Director Janet Coleman,
who will discuss the relevance of the poem to language censorship in
broadcast media today. Allen Ginsberg's reading of HOWL is copyrighted
and used by permission of Fantasy Records. From "Howls, Raps & Roars:
Recordings from the San Francisco Poetry Renaissance" (produced by Bill
Belmont; Fantasy, 1993).  Occasional musical background from "Pull My
Daisy and Other Jazz Classics" by the David Amram Quartet.

With  thanks for  the  generous  efforts  of John Crigler, Barney and
Astrid Rossett,  Hettie  Jones,  David  Dozer, Chante Mouton, and Jon
Almeleh, Nathan Moore, Ursula Ruedenberg and Pete Korakis of Pacifica.

DOWNLOAD AVAILABLE:

You can download a 128k mp3 audio file of this complete special at 
<http://www.audioport.org/audioport_files/specials/Howl-Final-128.mp3>.

You  can  read  the full text of HOWL here: 
http://members.tripod.com/~Sprayberry/poems/howl.txt 
Feel free to follow along with Ginsberg's reading.