Day: March 8, 2004

There is a small brouhaha going around over the tremendous likelihood that the allegedly true story of Frank Hopkins, as depicted in “Hidalgo,” is BS (or, more appropriately, HS). People are shocked–shocked–to discover the historical Hopkins exaggerated his exploits a little. A lot. A whole hëll of a lot.

Well, I took Ariel to see it before I’d heard anything about the brou or the ha ha. And I’m watching thisl film and thinking, “An annual horse race of 3000 miles? The width of the United States? Across scorching desert? On a single horse? No frickin’ way. I’m not even sure there’s that much Arab desert *to* ride across. And by the way, he makes a side trip to rescue an Arab princess? Aw, c’mon.”

I pretty much came to the conclusion while watching that anyone with a couple of brain cells to rub together should think of “Hidalgo” as nothing more than a live action version of those old wild west pulp magazines, and that all claims to the facts being unvarnished–as those magazines likewise claimed–should be given equal credence. Certainly the extreme flexibility of “truth” vis a vis the old west is integrated into the movie’s own story, ranging from the Wild Bill show depicting the slaughter of 300 surrendering Lakota at Wounded Knee as a brave victory for the white man, or an Arab’s perception of the west coming entirely from what he’s read in the greatly exaggerated wild west magazines. A deconstruction of the film’s own veracity, as it were. It’s annoying that Disney didn’t market it that way: It could just be billed as “Based on the tales of Frank Hopkins” and that would be perfectly fair.

Taken on that basis, “Hidalgo” is a rousing film with a nice kid-friendly message about not losing touch with your roots. It features a portrayal of Arabs that depicts them as fairly arrogant at first to the upstart cowboy but, ultimately, is pretty flattering (which is a nice change from the Arabs=terrorists mindset we currently have.) Plus there’s no twenty minute sequence of some poor Jew getting flayed and, hey, y’know, there’s horsies.

PAD

Years and years and years ago, I listened to Howard Stern on the radio. He was funny. Really funny.

And then, over a period of months, he shifted emphasis. The material became more raunchy, more of what would come to be called the “Shock Jock” mentality. It annoyed me. He seemed better than this type of material. As if doing real humor was too hard, and he was going for cheap gags about flatulence and breasts. Plus the major problem with shock humor is that you have to keep upping the ante, until it’s all about the gross out rather than anything approaching wit.

So I started listening to other stuff.

It’s now years later and Stern is saying that the show will probably be folding its tent altogether as the Clear Channel dumps it from major markets and the FCC issues bug bucks fines for indecency.

What I’d like to know is this:

When in the intervening twenty-plus years since I last listened to Howard Stern were station selection controls removed from radios?

Have they become overly complicated? Have people lost the ability to manipulate them? Is every radio in the world locked in to the stations carrying his show so that people have no choice but to listen?

I mean, I don’t understand why this isn’t a no-brainer. I don’t think Howard Stern is funny. So I don’t listen to him. What the hëll kind of mentality are we living in where it’s decided that Howard Stern isn’t funny and he must be punished for it or driven off the air or both? This makes zero sense to me. Am I that much smarter, better, niftier than so many others that I just say, “I don’t think that’s funny, I’m not going to listen anymore?” and then do that? I’m unclear on why everyone can’t do that, rather than decide on behalf of those people who *do* like Howard Stern that they shouldn’t be allowed to hear it.

PAD