Banned books don’t exist just in libraries — in fact, they don’t even have to be books.
The New York Times has a story today about how WBAI, a radio station in New York, decided not to air ‘Howl’, the well-known poem by Allen Ginsberg.
This is the 50th anniversary of the court decision that found the poem not obscene due to its “redeeming social importance”.
Unfortunately the radio station felt they might get slapped with punitive fines by the FCC if they aired the piece, so they decided to stream it over the Web instead.
The poem has been broadcast several times since the court decision. But one lawyer familiar with First Amendment issues observes that as a consequence of the FCC’s so-called “zero-tolerance” policy, “it’s a completely different era”.
UPDATE: Here’s the segment WBAI didn’t broadcast, “Howl Against Censorship“.
oh, THAT reason?
I thought they weren’t going to air it because it’s boring.
Full disclosure: I went to see Ginsburg read this poem about 10 years ago and feel asleep.
I hate Beats.
FCC Only Does “Indecency”
Apparently ‘boring’ is fine.
Hurray for the “zero-tolerance” policy!
I just had to go an listen… 26 minutes out of my life I’ll never get back. Any high school student in the country could write something that would sound just as interesting as that to me.