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anywhere you want. It's the intelligent thing to do. We are recording
this particular program on the twenty third of February. George Orwell said, if
liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they
do not want to hear. The very first Amendment of the Constitution solidifies this
concept as one of the bedrock principles of American democracy. However, we have
always been conflicted between our desire for free speech in our need for privacy and
protection, especially in a world where technology changes at an ever increasing pace.
In fact, with the advent of the Internet and social media in nineteen ninety
six, Congress recognized that for users speech to thrive on the Internet, it
had to be protected and the services the powers use and powers up excuse me,
the power user's speech Pardner. That's why the US Congress passed a law
known as Section to thirty. It was originally part of the Communications Decency Act
that protects Americans freedom of expression online by protect the intermediaries we will rely on.
It states, no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be
treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another emation content provider.
Section two thirty in bodies that principle that we should all be responsible for
our own actions and statements online, but generally not those of others. The
law prevents most civil suits against users or services that are based on what others
say. Of course, on the on surface, this seems reasonable, especially
among consenting adults, but what about others who might have the same power of
reason by children. Social media companies use algorithms designed to improve the user's experience
by giving them the content they believe that user might be most interested in.
That often includes violent, disturbing videos that are certainly not suitable for children or
encourage others to commit violence. It should be noted that most of these algorithms
are also designed to create vast revenue sources for the companies, But these videos
can cause irreputable damage and even death to a young, impressionable mind like that
of a ten year old Pennsylvania girl who died accidentally after viewing a video on
social media and engaging in a blackout challenge encouraging people to hold their breath to
near unconsciousness. One of the cases currently being an argent in front of the
court has been filed by the family of Naomi Gonzalez, an American student killed
in a twenty fifteen Isis attack, claiming that how to videos and other violent
content scene on Google inspire the attackers. Google accounters by claiming that they are
protected by Section two thirty and still another case, Twitter versus Taminah. The
plaintiff claims that social media companies like Twitter can be sued under the Anti Terrorism
Act for aiding and abetting terrorist organization, even if it does not directly promote
violence. It's an awful lot to unpacked, but it's important stuff, guys.
It seems highly technical, but this involves how we get and give information
on a daily basis. So we need some help to unpack this. And
of course I'm going to go to my media guy. He's a renaissance man.
I like to tease him, but it's the truth. He's an author,
a musician, a blogger, and a professor. Of Media Studies in
my colleague at Fordham University, doctor Paul Levinson and a regular contributor to Being
Frank, thank you once again for joining us. Paul, I'm delighted to
be here, and yes, I am a renaissance man. I was born
in the year fifteen thirty and got into a time machine and somehow convinced the
folks at forty University to hire me. So if my accent sounds a little
strange, like a little bit of a bronx accent, it's because I've had
a work on it for years. You wouldn't understand me in my original language.
God knows what that was. Anyway, to get to the very important
series of issues, and they really are more than one issue there. That's
why I say series we we do need to go a little bit back in
history, not as far as the Renaissance, but at least as far as
nineteen thirty four when Congress passed a Communications Act and FDR signed it into law.
And to give that context radio, as most people know, although Marconi
showed it could be done, like in nineteen oh one, you can still
see some of the places where he did his experiments on Cape cod by the
way, but it wasn't until the nineteen twenties that radio became what we now
know it to be. That's when the networks were set up, the CBS
network, then the RCA network, which later became NBC. And there was
a problem initially in that stations were broadcasting so close to one another that people
couldn't hear them. There was no regulation of radio, so the radio stations
themselves said, hey, we need the federal government to do something about this.
At that time, Herbert Hoover, a Republican, was president. He
was president from nineteen twenty eight to nineteen thirty two, and he, as
a Republican, didn't like federal regulation and he commented at some point, this
is the first time I've ever heard of an industry calling on us to regulate
and Republicans taboot. I mean, wow, hell just froze over, that's
right. So it was a strange time. And whoever passed like a very
and the Congress under him passed like a very weak act. So it was
cool, something like the Federal Radio Act or something, which really didn't help
much. Fdos elected president, the Democrats controlled Congress. It's nineteen thirty four.
They passed this massive Communications Act. And I won't spend too much time
on this Act except to say one thing. It created the FCC, the
Federal Communications Commission. And although the language in the law says that although the
FCC will be responsible for giving licenses to stations that are broadcasting in the public
interest, they won't try to regulate the content of those stations, which is
actually a rather confusing thing than what does it mean? How can you judge
if they're broadcasting in the public interest? So the Act didn't go into that.
But in my view, that was an unconstitutional act. It should have
been struck down by the Supreme Court. There was a case that did eventually
get to the Supreme Court in the nineteen forties and one of the justices by
the name of Felix Frankfurter, always one of my favorite Supreme Court justice name
just for his name, Alan, but please continue, professor. Yeah,
So he actually led the Court into ratifying the fccn that Communications Act, so
that became the law. So the reason why I point to all that out
is that laws stayed the law decade after decade after decade until finally in the
nineteen nineties, a lot of people are saying, hey, you know,
this is a really new thing. This web business with the blogs had begun.
You can post things online. And just to be clear, nineteen ninety
six, that's still a good ten years before Twitter, YouTube, well before
TikTok, etc. And Instagram, So social media per se didn't even exist
to them, but the web did exist. And so this act was passed,
and just like the nineteen thirty four law, it was severely flawed.
In fact, it was a mess, I think in many ways. One
way, which has nothing to do with Section two thirty, was a part
of the act that basically would find anyone who posted something that had quote objectionable
unquote material which kids might inadvertently see the poster of that could be found guilty
of violating the law and be fined up to three hundred thousand dollars and be
threatenced up to three years in prison. So I thought that was a horrible
part of the law. I urged Bill Clinton not to sign it. Of
course, Bill Clinton probably never even saw that I urged him not to sign
it. If he had signed it, he would have still signed it.
If I had urged him not to sign it and he had read that he
would have signed it anyway, because he was trying to sell himself in nineteen
ninety six as a Democrat but who understood conservatives, so he signed it into
law. Sure enough, a guy in California was charged with posting something he
puts uping on his blog in which he cursed out Congress and the President,
and that was deemed by the Attorney General to be quote objectionable unquote, and
the case went through the courts, and the Supreme Court, in a rare
display of good judgment, struck down that part. And that part is what's
known mostly as the Communications Decency Act. In other words, the government trying
to insist that station's only broadcast decent material. And that was a good moment
for the Supreme Court. It's become popularized today by the so called section two
thirties. Is the one particular area within that law that has been brought to
light, which we will continue why it's important today, but please let me
mean to interrupt ahead. No, no, that's exactly right. And there
were many parts to that law, and among them is section two thirty The
only part of the law that was struck down was the part of the law
that said anybody who post objectionable material can be found guilty of a crime and
served three years in jail and pay three hundred thousand dollars. I don't know
about you. I don't want to spend three days in jail, let alone
three years. So terrible law. Yeah, so that only that part was
struck down, but section two thirty and all the rest of the law remained.
And section two thirty, which at the time I thought was fairly enlightened,
made the essential point, as you correctly said earlier, that the only
party who is responsible for posting something online which let's say might be libelous,
you know, it might defame someone, that might be a civil suit.
This wasn't so much about crime. It was really more about people suing other
people, as happens in commerce and communications. And what the law said is
the site on which this is posted is protected. They are not responsible for
the posting. The only entity who is responsible is the person or people who
posted that material. And many people, including me, think that that provision
is in many ways responsible for the incredible explosive growth of social media because anyone
could start a site they would be totally protected from civil suits. Not if
they're committing crimes. That's something else, completely different, but totally protected from
civil suits, which of course can bankrupt a company. And instead, if
somebody wanted to sue someone for a posting that defamed them or lied about them
or whatever, they would have to go after just the person who posted it,
not the site. And many people, including me, lauded that,
and the more I thought about it, I was glad, you know,
to see that happen. But and this gets again to you know what I've
said. I'm sure at least once before on your show, you know,
the the immortal words you know, usually attributed to the great economist John Maynard
Keynes. When the facts change, I changed my mind. What do you
do, sir? And you know, to some extent the facts have changed,
And this now brings us to these two cases at hand. The twenty
fifteen case, by the way, is a really interesting case for a variety
of reasons. The young woman who lost a life right she was an American.
Her parents are suing um You, which is owned by Google. So
that's why Google is often cited, and Alphabet is in turn the parent company
now of Google. But Google and YouTube are pretty much what we need to
know she was in Paris when ISIS launched one of its last terrorist attacks and
killed a lot of people, including Is Gonzalez. And what the lawsuit is
saying is that YouTube and the algorithm that it has. And for those who
might not know how these algorithms work, these are actually even old fashioned algorithms.
They are more sophisticated today. But even back in twenty fifteen, if
I watched a video on YouTube and I liked the video, YouTube would be
aware of that. It keeps track of the number of likes, and YouTube
would make sure that I would see similar videos every time they came up on
the site. And so there's no doubt that people who were supporting ISIS.
And here's where the suit is like somewhat unclear. It's not clear where the
attackers got their money from. There were whether they were ISIS per se or
ISIS sympathizers. If they were Isis per se, the lawsuit is ridiculous because
ISIS didn't become ISIS because a video they saw an Internet on the Internet.
I hear you, yes, it makes great right, But if they were
people in Paris who became ISIS supporters, and they became ISIS supporters because they
saw a pro ISIS video and the side in those days was crawling with those
videos, and then in turn they were fed more and more and more videos.
Well that is ann watch a thing, to say the least, because
and in fact, in that case we're going from defamation or possible defamation to
mass murder, which is what ISIS was doing. Well, we don't even
have to go as far as isis. The kid in Buffalo said he by
watching videos he became indoctrinated into bigotry and racist hate. So it's again,
as you're saying, it's not simply just the ISIS ideology. They didn't happen
because of the internet, but they do use the internet to indoctrinate these people.
So we don't even have to go to Isis. It happens here.
That's right. And look, I mean as far as you know, Buffalo,
though, I always say when these issues are raised, and they can
be raised just about every day, certainly every week there's a new mass killing.
As much as I do want to see these videos regulated, we need
to be clear that the most direct way of stopping these mass killings is to
crack down on the pandemic of guns in our society. There's something like three
to four times now as many guns in American hands as there are Americans in
this country. So you don't have to go any further than that. That's
what Congress needs to do. That's what Republicans are constantly getting in the way
of. And that's what there's one group who's really happy about it. They
don't want to see people killed, but that doesn't stop them from selling as
many guns as they can. And these are the manufacturers of guns and the
manufacturers of boats. That's the perfect point to be made, I think Paul
two where you were sitting the Gonzales point of view, but then you have
the Google point of view. And let's face it, as you were saying,
this makes a lot of money as the gun lobby, it makes a
lot of money for gun manufact actors, an etc. These algorithms make a
lot of money for these companies. And and here's where the difficulty and debate
lawes between free enterprise, the ability and the need to make money. That's
what they're there for generally, But then again within the realm of the public
safety, etc. Something has got to give because also we have I don't
know what you want to call it esoteric, that's the correct word. But
this ideal of free speech in all cases, which you, as big of
a proponent of, you are in most virtually all cases, But there's that
caveat of virtually. So explain a little bit about how do you how do
they balance again the need they're to make money. They're a company, they're
a privately owned company, that's their job. But at the same time they
do have a public interest. How do we protect the public at the same
time. Is there a fair medium somewhere in there. Well, it's a
very tough thing to adjudicate and to even just decide, But for me,
the guiding principle is that life and the protection of life surmounts everything else,
including making money for sure, but even including freedom of expression, because you
know, you can't communicate very much when you shot dead someplace, and that
has to be stopped, and we have to do everything we can, I
think, to stop that. So although I started out a long time ago
as being happy when people would say, hey, Levinson's an absolutist about the
First Amendment, and I was, but now indeed I'm saying virtually everything should
be protected. But there are some things that shouldn't be protected. There are
some freedoms of communication that, although they are legitimate in most cases, they
cannot be protected where that freedom is jeopardizing human lives to the point where those
lives are lost. So although honestly, the last thing I want to see
is the federal government regulates social media because and this doesn't matter, by the
way, whether it's a Republican or a Democratic congress and president, because both,
in my view, ever since FDR who was a Democrat, have made
very bad decisions about how to regulate communications. Both Democrats and Republicans, in
my view in general, have been equal abusers of freedom of expression. For
example, Chuck Schumer, who's now sent Majority leader, back when he was
still s editor, was leading a charge a couple of decades ago to resurrect
the fairness doctrine, which, in case your listeners don't know, for a
while the law was interpreted as if you had me on this show saying that
I think gun manufacturers are doing a lot of damage. People are dying because
of them. Something must be done about them. If you were a broadcast
medium, not a podcast, you would be obligated under the fairness doctrine to
have somebody from the National Rifle Association explain and support the other point of view.
And you know, I always thought, no, the faraoh government shouldn't
be insisting no one appointed the federal government some kind of referee of communication.
I'll talk to whoever the hell I want to talk to you. Yes,
exactly right. So that's why I'm making this point. The Democrats haven't been
such great supporters of the First Amendment and freedom of speech and the press either.
But there are exceptions, I think, to how free communications can be,
and there are occasions when I do think we need the federal government to
step in and just on that case, you know which. Now Google is
saying, well, hey, what do you want from us? You know,
we didn't create these terrorists or whatever, But it certainly didn't help to
first of all, allow a video like that on its site in the first
place, and second of all, and even more egregiously, to basically serve
people up more videos like that because they've watched and liked that despicable video.
What they should be using their algorithms for they're much vaunted algorithms that Facebook talks
about, Twitter talks about YouTube is identifying the videos as soon as they're posted
and pulling them down so that nobody's anymore sees them in the first place,
And that would be a constructive thing for them to do. In all fairness.
By the way, to YouTube, they have been doing that. This
case goes back to twenty fifteen. I have to say this on behalf of
social media. I think that they're slowly but surely learning to do the right
thing and to in effect censor themselves and not disseminate these dangerous videos, dangerous
posts of any kind, not only not disseminate them, take them offline as
soon as they had discovered. Well, you know, in my research,
one of the things that I found interesting about the so called Section two thirty
is the spirit of it was also to prevent frivolous lawsuits. Okay, which
this is certainly not frivolous. We're talking about people dying here. But it
kind of begs a little bit to the story that we talked about with the
young gallon in Pennsylvania, the ten year old who unfortunately died in one of
these ridiculous TikTok challenges or whatever. And they don't even know exactly what social
platform she saw this thing on, but again not to trivialize the death of
a young gallon. As I said, these are minds that are very impressionable,
and parents can be actively involved in their kids surfing and computers, etc.
But as you well know, it's twenty four seven. With young people,
you can't be there all the time. So at what point does personal
responsibility? And they said, that's kind of an extreme example. Most logical
people are not going to swallow tie pods, are not going to strangle themselves
to near unconsciousness, but yet it still happens. Is could that be considered
under the term frivolous where they're saying, hey, look, you gotta take
some responsibility. It's stupid to eat a tied pod. No matter what aige
you all are. How can we how can we be reheld responsible for behavior
like that? That's the other side of the coin your thoughts. Actually,
in some ways I am even more sympathetic to that suit than the earlier suit,
although the earlier suit the YouTube suit. I think the suit has married
also. But if a site allows children that young to come on the site
and use it and ask, it's impossible to stop them. No matter how
vigilant parents are. They could be over a friend's house the site. In
this case, Twitter can't have it both ways. You know, I would
agree if someone twenty five years old did something that stupid, although even there
I don't see what merit what possible good, not that good has to come
from everything, but all that can happen with these idiotic stunts like you know,
will black you out, you know, if I choke you out and
you will be unconscious or barely conscious for a minute or two. I don't
get, you know, why that should be on there in the first place,
but yeah, but certainly if if kids that young and that impressionable can
see that, I think in this case, Twitter had an obligations. And
again I don't one of the problems here, And I keep getting back to
this, and I'm being somewhat sarcastic because all you ever hear about at any
of these, you know, basically meetings and shows, which is what they
are when when new apps are unfurled and you know we're upping this and that
and you can be able to this and that, all we ever hear about
is there wonderful apps, you know, And I don't get why these wonderful
apps couldn't have identified something like that, and and and basically the app reported
to some human being this is Dane injurious. You know, a twelve year
old child or slightly older can see this. You know, a ten year
old child can see it. Look over, twelve year olds, shoulder,
take this off your system. Well, they're interested in keeping it simply because
of the numbers, because because they get big note and look and we both
know that. And we're not making this up. This is for real bad
news. False news travels much faster than real news and good news. That's
been proven by many psychological studies. So does it really just really comes down
to, like, hey, this makes us We're not going to look past
the fact that this making us a lot of money. That's kind of deplorable.
Well, it is deplorable. And you know, this money thing is
very interesting because the great success, the extraordinary success of social media YouTube,
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Was based upon the fact it's free
to use. But that doesn't mean the people who were running it, you
know, were like already independently wealthy. They made it free as a strategy
to attract as many users as possible, so in return they could get as
many advertisers as possible to pay to have their ads run on the system.
That's indeed what runs social media, just like advertising runs broadcast media, just
like advertising runs newspaper papers. And if you think, well, isn't there
a better way? Unfortunately there isn't because the only other way is the government
controls media. And then welcome to Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union, and
even Putin's Russia, where anything you hear on any broadcast medium is basically something
the state has approved. Well, we'll take a break book. Before we
go for the break, i'd like to wrap up this particular segment. Well,
you and I are kind of media aheads. If you will, you
know, we teach it, we live it, we have lived in it.
Said, what does all of this mean? And I hope it didn't
get too complicated for people because we're unwrapping so much. But it's important to
because the internet plays such a huge role in our lives. Why is it's
important for people to understand really what's going on with these lawsuits and cases?
Why does the rank and file, the average person really need to know about
such things? What does it mean to them in their everyday lives? Well,
I think in the nut show, what it means to them is everyone
seems to agree that the internet has to be safer than it is. That
doesn't mean perfect, that doesn't mean bland, that doesn't mean that everybody agrees
with everything that goes on there. But I think it does mean you shouldn't
have things that can lead to the death of human beings, most egregiously children,
but anyone of any age. And so since these horrible results have occurred
in two and fifteen, at other times really throughout the whole time of social
media, beginning say in two thousand and four to two thousand and five,
and developing by two thousand and eight two thousand and nine into the situation we
have now. What it means to everyone is if you're not comfortable with the
way social media are, if you're a parent and you have to worry every
minute what your kid is looking at, these cases and these issues are going
to decide how safe it's going to be for them. And if we value
that, which I think most people do and should, then we should look
at these lawsuits as a good thing. I mean, I do have to
say on the other side of it, though, the government and laws that
have passed are always very clumsy. They usually regulate things that don't need to
be regulated. They overlook things that do need to be regulated. So if
we have to depend on the government to pass a law that's going to improve
things, then will be us, you know, if we're waiting for that.
But there's no other alternative. I think we you know, a certain
level of common sense has to go in here. I think it would be
safe to say that you and I are more liberal in our approach to things,
but certainly it can't be in everything. In other words, what I'm
saying is if someone would have come and show me someone beheading somebody in the
in the guise of some political statement or whatever, there's no I'm not looking
at it well that you know, we may have to know it's a violent
video that shouldn't be It's even at that point for someone I should speak for
myself, even someone as liberal minded as myself, as you know, there
has to be some type of some type of control. Would you tend to
agree with that book, Yeah, I would agree with that completely. And
I just add, you know, part of my being so always talking about
the First Amendment is being violated. We have to respect the First Amendment and
I think I've mentioned this to you before on an earlier show. You know,
you look at the you look at and listen to the Grammys, and
every year you have a rap singer, a hip hop singer getting up and
singing a song with like half a dozen bleeps in the song. There,
you see, I think the federal government at its worst trying to regulate something
point. So that's what I want to be clear about. I don't want
the Feds or any government telling people what to say and not say, except
when those words and those images can lead to a loss of life. And
as far as I'm concerned, if you hear somebody cursing their head off in
the Grammys, you don't like it, turn it off. You know who
cares. You don't like a good maybe somebody else does like it. It's
not hurting anybody, you know, it's not influencing anyone to do violence.
You don't like that word, don't listen to it next time, or shut
it off right right at that moment. But that's a far cry from the
kinds of videos we're talking about. It's a perfect We'll take a break,
Paul when I come back. Some recent comments by Marjorie Taylor Green that you
know, when do we cross the line into sedition treason. I mean,
there is a fun and I want to get you. I want to get
your thoughts on that, and I think and I know it will be interesting.
So police don't go anywhere, and of course our listeners don't go anywhere.
We've got more Being Frank coming up with Professor Paul Levinson talking about,
of course free speech, and you so all coming up with more Being Frank
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being Frank. We're the only way to b is Frank. I'm your host,
Frank Lebono. Thanks for sticking with us here on the Intelligent Conversation Podcast.
Remember you can catch us wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts and whenever.
Remember, they're all archived. We do a fresh show a week,
and we've done a fresh topic. We've done over sixty shows so far,
each one with a fresh topic. But you can see them anytime because they're
all archived on any one of the podcasting sites including Hudson River Radio, iHeartRadio,
Apple Podcasts, Spotify, etc. Our very special guest tonight is my
media man and my go to guy for all matters, media Professor Paul Levinson,
my colleague at Fordham University. Paul. Before the break, we mentioned
Marjorie Taylor Green is added again and we're all shaking. They can't see us,
but we're all shaking our heads if you saw the video, you'd be
seeing us shaking our heads. She's added again, where to basically paraphrase,
She's basically why don't we have two countries, a blue and a red and
we know where she lies, etc. The point being, Look, anybody
can say anything that's kind of the point of free speech. But at some
point when is it cross the line? When are we talking here in terms
of legal issues and not only with her, And because you mentioned things like
a libelous comments and things like that, there there are legal issues associated with
the consequences of what we say. So in this particular case, sedition treason
and you're not a constitutional lawyer, we understand that. But from a media
perspective, has she crossed the line? When do you cross the line?
And then talk a little bit about when people do cross the line into legal
issues a libelious comments and statements? Please? Okay, So, first of
all, I do think we have to make an important distinction here, and
the distinction is did Madre Taalgreen commit crime? Or is she just unfit to
be in Congress? And should Congress reprimand her maybe even expel her. The
whole series of things that Congress can do and those are two very very different
things, because in terms of whether she committed a crime and whether a statement
like that is treasonous, that's an extremely slippery slope to go down. You
know. So I was talking to my class today, and I know you
did a show last week about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and since today,
the day that we're taping this as the anniversary of the Russian invasion,
I was talking to my class about that, and I said, you know,
frankly, just like you know where I'm coming from, I'd be nothing
but happy if I heard on the news that Vladimir Putin dropped dead. And
I'm sure if I if I said that in Russia, you probably wouldn't.
You probably find that I fell off a balcony. But yeah, I'm able
to say that. But the truth of the matter is I don't think that
should be criminal in any case. It's an expression of an opinion. It's
not a very nice opinion to wish anybody that they dropped dead. But I
do think that's protected under the First Amendment. And you know, most of
the stuff that these magarepublicans say, they are totally horrendous to my and your
progressive ears, but I don't think they even come close to being criminal activities.
And let's conclude what would be a criminal activity someone who was laying forth
a real plan. And it's even worse when the plans enacted and we see
the results, like the January sixth, twenty twenty one insurrection at the Capitol.
Someone who's saying this is ridiculous. You know, Trump did win the
election. Democrats basically are adding votes to it. We have to march on
Congress, not only march on Congress, but break into Congress, and we
have to hang Mike Pence, etcetera, etcetera, and say that in a
way that that person is organizing trying to organize a real insurrection, and in
fact, that's in fact what happened. It would be good to know.
And that's why Congress is right to investigate this, and that's why the Justice
Department is right to currently be investigating this, because a real crime took place.
You know, at the end of all those statements, but just making
a statement that there should be there are red states and blue states, and
what was she saying? Such an idiotic statement. I think you're saying everybody.
I think she said anyone from a blue state, who moves to a
red state shouldn't be allowed to vote for five years? What an idiotic statement.
First of all, who in a blue state wants to move to a
red state anyway? You know what, I'm living in New York. I
think I'm gonna move down to Florida with that lunatic de Santis. No thank
you. Maybe I'll move to California, which is like they seem pretty sane
now, you know what, I'm not going to move that to Texas either
with Abbot governor. So so that's the first thing makes her out of her
mind. But the idea that it's such a ridiculous statement you can't even take
it seriously. The idea that any state would say, if you've moved here
from another state, you can't vote here for five years. I don't know
where she gets her ideas. I don't know what Q and on site or
she makes them up herself, But frankly, that is so idiotic that I
you know, if I were, you know, a district attorney someplace or
working in a federal prosecutor's office, I couldn't with a straight face see fit
to bring her up on charges because you know, who is going to take
that seriously. So, but if we have a case, and certainly if
we have a case where physical violence has taken place, and then we can
play back what led up to that physical violence. And you hear people inspiring
other people planning with other people to do things that are physically violent, that
I think what has to be stopped. Well, I know this is within
our purview as media guys, but why not. We like to talk.
We've got a few we've got a few minutes less, so why the heck
not? But I was thinking about people like Alex Jones and Steve Bannon who
have been punished and rightly so, for their comments made, but they haven't
gone away. Steve Bannon is still around, Alex Jones is still and they're
still making money out of media. Certainly frustrating. I know it is for
you, I know it is for me. Is that just the way it
is? And we have to live that is that part of the fallout,
if you will, of the First Amendment. And as we said, we
mentioned the George Orwell comment in the beginning. You said, looks it's here
to protect speech we don't like. We listen to things we like. That's
easy. This is to protect things we don't like, and I don't like
them, but yet they still continue to be monetized, and that just frustrates
the heck out of me. Your thoughts just in general, well, apropos
of money. Alex Jones was found guilty in a civil suit brought against him
by the Connecticut parents of those kids who were massacred. Whenever was in two
and fourteen, you know, one of the worst of these series of horrendous
things that keep happening. And Alex Jones, I don't know what you would
call it, the depravity, the the insanity of saying somehow the parents were
faking it. I mean, I can't they say do they say these things
simply to get raised? And Culter, who had become an afterthought I've forgotten
she had still still around, all of a sudden comes through with all these
anti Semitic statements again to try to prove I guess, some relevance. But
it's just amazing to me how these people are again and this is the first
Amendment, but they just seem to me, they seem to say things simply
for the sake of saying them, because we're talking about them right now.
So if they haven't been forgotten, do we do we add fuel to the
fire by even discussing them? Should just ignore them completely? Well that's a
very good point. There's no doubt that the best way of burying these people
is to never talk about them. Right. But here's what the problem is,
and this is a really sobering thought, but it's true. There are
people. I would bet if you walked a mile or I walked a mile
in our respective neighborhoods, we would pass by five, ten, twenty different
households where there were people who eat up and love what Steve Bannon and Alex
Jones saying for that matter, the garbage that you see on Fox. But
as I've said many times, there are things that we can do. It's
not just a question of like arresting these people. I seriously sent a note
to the Federal Trade Commission months ago saying that they should oblige because it's false
advertising Fox News to change its name to Fox Propaganda. That's what they are.
I mean, I heard the Upper Poa of Ukraine right after the Russian
invasion, Tucker Carson got on the air babbling away, how maybe Putin is
right? So you know, I don't think he's on Putin's payroll, but
obviously there are people out there who like hearing that stuff. We're not going
to change them. The best thing that we can do, and it's not
a question of committing a crime, is where possible through these people in civil
court, as as as the parents of those Connecticut children did and they won,
and that I think was a very just verdict. Well, you know,
Paul, and the upside and again, fairness, we do try to
be balanced. I hate that that sounds like a fox thing of fair and
bald, but it's still true. We are trying to be in that sense.
Um yet um we have. The point that I'm trying to make is
we have been given the privilege of just being able to do a virtual hour
show of saying wherever the hell we pretty much wanted. We talked about who
we wanted, we talked about stations we'd like, we don't like. That's
a beautiful thing, Paul, and thank god we still have it, and
people like you and I are willing to fight to continue to have it,
even with things you know, we don't like. And I think people have
to make that distinction. And I always say that people are invited on this
program with opposing point of views. It tends to seem to get like minded
people on the program, but certainly be willing to hear another intelligent opinion expressed.
And I think that's still still a beautiful thing, and it's still a
beautiful country for that your final thoughts. I agree with that one hundred percent.
I think that is what civilization is all about, in contrast to savagery.
You know, human beings disagree. We disagree with everything. We disagree
with members of our family. We disagree with you in politics. We disagree
over sports, which team, which player is better. We disagree over music
that's wonderful, that's horrendous. We disagree about everything that I think is part
of the festival of human life. And I agree with you it is a
beautiful thing. And the fact that we can talk about it, I'm sure
that people, though, who feel like Marjorie Taylor Green wouldn't think it was
a beautiful thing to hear us saying I know a lot of people like to
shut me up. I can't speak for you, Paul, but I can
honestly say, you know, there's a few people out there I wish he
would just shut up. And I was on the O'Reilly factor a bunch of
times over the years, and every shole time my mailbox would be flooded by
a hundred emails. I don't know how they got my Namely, how on
earth you teach it for the university? Are you kidding me? Present to
the university? I said, great, right past, I got that.
One day I could report you to the school too, I said, I
think they'd probably be pretty glad to hear that I'm out there doing doing what
I'm doing. Paul, I want to thank you once again for all your
expertise here I'm Being Frank and your intelligent conversation always pleasure, always, Thank
you, Paul, and of course a special thanks to our listeners who take
the time to give us a voice in their lives. Remember we offer a
fresh topic every week and you can catch us wherever and whenever you get your
favorite podcast like Apple, Spotify, iHeart Radio, Spreaker and more. You
can also check us out on the Being Frank Facebook page. Thanks to our
engineer, the mailman, mister Neil Richter, who gets us streaming every week.
He's the man. I'll leave you with a couple of nuggets, Paul,
don't go anywhere yet. You know you're gonna make it work a little
bit more. But before then, I got a good quote from Salomon,
Salomon Rushdie excuse me, that I think is very appropriate when he said,
what is freedom of expression without freedom to offend? It ceases to exist?
Kind of our topic tonight, Paul, as I mentioned in the beginning,
as a renaissance man, you're not only a college professor, an author,
a blogger. You're all so musician. You brought some music with you tonight.
What are we going to hear? You're going to hear a song that
I wrote the lyrics to back I think around two thousand and eleven. And
to give a tiny bit more context, those people who know my science fiction
know that time travel is one of my favorite themes. The plot to save
Socrates, Marilyn and Money. Those are you know, a few of my
science fiction works. And I decided, you know what, I should write
a time travel lyric. You know it's good for novels and short stories.
So I wrote this lyric If I traveled to the past, and I ran
into a guy, John Annelio, who also was writing and still is writing
like science fiction songs, and he actually contacted me and said, hey,
do you have any lyrics and maybe we can write a song together. I
said sure, and I sent them If I traveled to the Past. He
wrote the music to it. It wasn't until twenty eighteen, you know,
I take my time with these things. I finally went into a studio and
recorded it, accompanied by the name of Old Bear Records in Buffalo, New
York. Wanted me to put together an album of science fiction songs, songs
about time travel and space travel, so we included if I Traveled to the
Past, that's what your listeners are going to hear. But least but not
least, as you also know. I also wrote a story called It's Real
Life. It's an alternate history story about the late disc jockey Pete Fauntel from
WFUV to take the train down to Grand Central and finds himself in another reality,
our reality in which John Lennon was killed. It turns out in his
reality Lennon was not killed, and there's a radio play which is just about
finished. I keep saying this, but the guy assured me he's going to
send me a rough cut of it in the next couple of days. It
should be up in mid March, in which this song If I travel to
the Past not sung by me, but we got somebody else with a British
accent to sing it plays a major role. We're gonna hit you up for
that radio play when it's ready to Paul. We want, we want,
We definitely want to be talking about that again. It's terrific, folks.
That's all for me. This week's being Frank. Will be back will when
I can learn to talk again. We'll be back with more being Frank.
We're the only way to be is of course Frank next week. Thanks for
joining us, folks. We'll see you next time. If I traveled to
the past to change Joe mine, so you love me then and you love
me now, But I am known to travel back in the first place.
If I traveled back so that the world was blind christlip time, could I
slip the vine of paradox that turns the best into the first came it said
right to turn the sun into the darkest night. If I could be get
pork but just one time, I could have it all. If I could
have you in my heart. If I traveled to the paint I Pavitell a
single soul. My lips would be seen except where they brushed against your street.
If I traveled to the bed to change yall to mind, so you
loved me then and you love me now? What I have known to travel
back in the first place, I eat, sample run, to turn the
side into the darkest night. If I could make it part just one time,
I could hide it at all, I could make it my house.
Only I could travel at from time. Shoot, only I can trive back
to time. Hudson River Radio dot com