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 Mr. Powell has been the target of some criticism in this group over the years...

Richard Cuff / Allentown, PA  USA
 
 Michael Powell Exposed! The FCC Chairman Has No Clothes
 
 By Tom Shales
 
    Oops.  They got rid of the wrong Powell. The father unfortunately is going, but the son, even more unfortunately, remains behind.
 
 Colin Powell, as most Americans know, has "resigned" his position as secretary of state, though few in the inner circle of the coldhearted Bush administration will likely be shedding tears at his departure. Staying in office, however, and capable of wreaking havoc in American broadcasting until 2007, is Colin's son Michael Powell, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission and definitely not a force for good in America.
 
 Pompous and imperious, an ideologue who believes unfailingly in his own philosophy of how TV and radio should work (the FCC also has domain over telephone and emerging broadband technologies), Powell ignores or condemns anyone who opposes him. Though FCC chairmen have labored mostly in obscurity, Powell has managed to make himself famous; he's the Torquemada of the insane campaign now being waged against "obscenity" on the airwaves.
 
 There was according to legend a face that launched a thousand ships. This is about a nipple that inflamed a thousand nut cases. Janet Jackson's brief breast exposure during halftime of this year's Super Bowl has led to hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines, a wave of hypocritical hysteria with which Democrats as well as Republicans are only too happy to be associated, and a state of affairs that boils down to open season on the First Amendment, the bedrock of the Bill of Rights.
 
 At no point did anyone, including Chairman Powell, positioned now like Attila at the head of the Huns, produce one single living creature -- man, woman, child, toddler, infant, newborn, late-term fetus, dog, cat, rooster, horse or parakeet -- who saw the briefly exposed nipple and was in any tangible way harmed by it. Like most of the halftime entertainment, it was tastelessly inappropriate, but the ensuing mass fuss is a farce that has made America an international laughingstock again.
 
 Tired as the topic is, one must mention the nipple when recounting what might be called the Sins of Michael Powell, since it's a highlight of his bumpy, disgraceful tenure as FCC chairman. The furor it generated resulted not only in a $550,000 fine to be paid by CBS, which aired the Super Bowl (and is owned by Viacom, whose MTV produced the halftime show), but in more and more punishments meted out over more and more alleged infractions, many involving naughty words that had previously been uttered without incident (no cases of shock reported in trauma units, for instance, and no outbreaks of rioting in the streets).
 
 One result is to make Howard Stern, however improbably, a national hero. After two decades on the radio doing material of a certain nature that every American was free to avoid, Stern found himself under all-out attack from the FCC, which started fining stations and station groups for carrying his program. The two met electronically recently when Stern got through to a San Francisco call-in show on which Powell was  a guest and  they exchanged insults.
 
  In fairness to Powell, the commission's two Democratic members, Michael J. Copps and Jonathan S. Adelstein, have been among those pushing for not only fines but license revocations when stations violate the still-vague obscenity rules. They are idiots.
 
 And the networks are hardly just angelic victims. In this increasingly hysterical climate, ABC was spectacularly stupid in beginning last Monday's NFL telecast with a raunchy scene set in a locker room and featuring a fully dressed player being seduced by a woman in a towel. She dropped the towel and jumped naked into his arms. Powell then jumped into the spotlight and by Wednesday was pontificating about the episode on CNBC: "I wonder if Walt Disney would be proud." ABC is a Disney-owned company.
 
 Naturally, an FCC spokesman said complaints were pouring in. Complaints pour in now about everything. Any day now, somebody will complain that the Energizer bunny is naked. And yet for all this alleged public distress over naughtiness on the airwaves, the most popular new series of the year is also the raciest: "Desperate Housewives" on ABC.
 
 The madness reached its appalling apotheosis on Veterans Day: Sixty-five of ABC's 220 owned or affiliated stations declined to air the universally praised Steven Spielberg film "Saving Private Ryan," about American heroes of World War II, because the verboten F-word is spoken several times, and the FCC now fines stations sometimes astronomical amounts if even a few people file complaints over what they have heard. 
 
 This means Spielberg's acclaimed Holocaust film, "Schindler's List," cannot be shown again on a broadcast network because it, too, contains unpleasant language and, of course, graphic violence. See, it's about the Nazis, and they tended to be a little pushy. But realism is no defense, artistic excellence is no defense, even a consensus that the program in question constitutes a public service is no defense. (By contractual agreement, Spielberg's films must be shown without deletions or alterations.)
 
  In large measure, the usual suspects are in the driver's seat -- fanatical right-wing groups  that  include words like "family" or "decency" in their names and  view increased permissiveness on TV as part of a left-wing plot to undermine moral values. They have mastered the art of making minor protests look like huge movements by manipulating the Internet (thousands of "protest" votes at the click of a mouse) or simply manning the mimeograph machine. People can sign form letters even if they never saw the program in question.
 
 Jeff Jarvis, TV Guide's last good TV critic and now prominent in the blogger universe, uncovered a stupefying example of how the process works and how unfair the FCC's actions are. He filed a Freedom of Information Act request to see the 159 complaints supposedly received at the FCC because of an April 2003 Fox special, "Married by America." Now 159 seems like an insignificant enough number, but when Jarvis checked further into the case, he found that most of the letters were identical, produced by an "automated complaint factory," and that the number of authentic, actual, original letters of complaint was not 159 but . . . three. Yes, three.
 
 Result: Powell's FCC slaps Fox with a $1.2 million fine.
 
  Even some of Powell's harshest critics credit him with being too intelligent to dream up an obscenity like this campaign against obscenity. At heart he may even have wanted to lie back and let the uproar blow over. Another case involving the dread and soul-destroying F-word indicated that Powell and the FCC might deal sensibly with such issues. The singer Bono blurted it out when presented with a prize on a music awards show. The commission's first impulse was to overlook this transgression as having been spontaneous and unintentional -- and besides, the word was used in its adjectival state, a participle and not a verb.
 
 But the pressure groups wouldn't accept that. They are tireless (don't they have day jobs?) and they inundated Congress with still more protests -- and Powell quickly switched positions. It didn't matter in what context the word was used, the FCC decided, because there was no context in which it could possibly be acceptable. What if  President Bush scampishly includes it in his second inaugural address? Who knows? If  Vice President Cheney's F-word outburst on Capitol Hill had only been aired on ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox, FCC commissioners would have a really nice, and richly deserved, mess on their hands.
 
 Unable to deal with serious problems of the day, Congress opted instead for transparent demagoguery. Powell, who came under attack from lawmakers last year for his tireless efforts on behalf of giant conglomerates and concentration of media ownership, saw a chance to get back in its good graces. He now pontificates with vigor, building himself a political base. The fines in most cases are symbolic; CBS can pony up $550,000 any day of the week but will fight on principle.
 
 The fines don't really compromise Powell's credentials as a pro-industry man, a dilettante who invariably sides with the moneyed minions of Big Broadcasting on the major issues, the ones likely to have the most lasting effects. These are the actions that could qualify as "sins," not just peculiarities of style.
 
 I asked experienced industry insiders and activists to cite some "sins," and their answers were familiar. They all requested anonymity on the grounds that they must continue to deal with Powell's FCC no matter what.
 
 "Arrogant" is the adjective used most often in any discussion of Powell and the way he pushes his personal agenda, an extension of the fanatical deregulation that gathered steam under Ronald Reagan's FCC chairman, a reckless loudmouth named Mark Fowler. Basically the theology is this: Commercial interests come first, second and third among priorities, and "the public interest, convenience and necessity," which the FCC is mandated to uphold, straggles in a distant fourth. Powell is much better tailored and milder mannered than Fowler but equally stubborn and self-adoring.
 
 He seems never to have met a media merger he didn't like, which will result in the virtual death of local television and radio in America as station after station is sucked up into one enormous unfeeling conglomerate or another.  Powell scorns the pleas of public-minded groups  that try to meet with him, critics say, but will rush off eagerly to any luncheon, dinner or cocktail party sponsored by big corporate powers.
 
  When criticized heavily for this during the uproar over Powell's attempts to jettison the rules against media concentration (rules designed to promote diversity in American broadcasting and keep one company from acquiring too much media power, as Fox has now), Powell grudgingly and belatedly scheduled a series of public forums on the matter. "But he skipped half the public hearings he authorized," laments one of his many detractors. Another characterizes him thus: "He's an elitist, he's arrogant, he's inaccessible, and he's incredibly vain about his own ideas." Critics consider him so egotistical that he will not listen or give any credence to the arguments of others. He has a master plan in his head for what American broadcasting should be. It really can be summed up in those four infamously immortal words, "The public be damned."
 
 Says one industry veteran who has seen many FCC chairmen come and go: "Where we are now is the land of the bizarre."
 
 Some people scoff. After all, it's widely assumed that the FCC's new passion for fining stations and networks will be swept aside by the courts, once it gets to them, for the audaciously unconstitutional assault on the First Amendment that it is. But, one skeptic points out, the Bush administration will be naming new judges to old courts. Bush has been known to sneak in judicial appointments in the middle of the night, literally.
 
 We stand at the top of a dangerously slippery slope. When you start leveling fines for uttering certain words, the list of the verboten is bound to grow. We could be facing four years of even more paranoia than usual about Big Brother, much of it justified.
 
 Over the decades, although the job wasn't usually considered a plum appointment, men of distinction, intelligence and integrity have served as chairman of the FCC -- such men as Charles Ferris (1977-81), Richard Wiley (1974-77), Dean Burch (1969-1974) and the most famous chairman, at least until now, Newton  Minow, an intellectual and scholar who coined the phrase "vast wasteland" to describe prime-time TV and used the power of his office to try to make television better, not censor it.
 
 Powell belongs at the bottom of the barrel with the lowliest of the bunch. He is an agenda masquerading as a man, the proverbial pompous ass and, worse, a genuine threat to freedom of speech. But on CNBC, he was playing Santa Claus. "I am still having fun," he said merrily, as if that were part of the job. "There are still things that are really significantly important to me to complete. Right now, I just have no plans of going anywhere."
 
 That's the problem. If he were looking for places to go, I could suggest one in a snap. But it's a four-letter word and, who knows, I might end up in jail.
 
  
 
   

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