You don’t know Jack!

I’m so sick of corporate radio. I feel like a trapped rodent careening down the stressed out freeways of my life while I punch buttons frantically searching for some escape.

Yes, I listen to CPR and KGNU, especially when BBC News or Free Speech Radio News is on. I like WINGS, too.

None of that represents an escape, however.

I know that KGNU offers very interesting music. If I took the time to listen I could learn a lot.

I’m not proud to admit it but I really like pop music. To my credit, I like Hindi Pop, Latin Pop even Arab Pop music as much as I’ve ever enjoyed American Pop.

I want to tap my toes, I want to sing along, I want to loose track of my environment just enough to realize I’m oops! over the speed limit. Is that so wrong?

No. what’s wrong, as far as I’m concerned is the insane repetition. There are moments when I can punch 3 radio buttons and hear the same song on three different stations. That’s wrong. Everyone seems to be dealing from the same deck. Yeah, okay, different formats, same lack of depth and creativity. Lack of real personality.

I’m tired of knowing that my favorite jocks are broadcasting from the coast and in all my years of shuffling stations I’ve never heard a woman broadcaster that didn’t make me cringe.

I want lots more music that easily moves me, and I want a sense of connection while I listen.

It got worse when I went south for a couple weeks. A brand new city, something completely different from home....until you turn on the radio. Then America is the same all over. I was unnerved.

But maybe that’s why Jack! is so popular.

I remember when I first heard Jack. He gave me the creeps right away, Sure he played all the songs I liked and said all the right things. “Locally programmed and locally owned.” How did he know I craved to support the home team? His careless defiant attitude was attractive though I hated to admit it. “Playing what we want!” he growled. I hated him, but I listed.

Then I left town again.

Imagine my surprise to find him muttering the same things into the ears of another city! How could he?!!

Ah the cheating son of a slick format. I knew it was too good to be true. As soon as I got back to my hotel room I hit the ‘net and found Jack! all over the place.

I still don’t understand what loophole he’s speaking through when he growls: “locally owned and locally programmed” but Jack is a radio bigamist.

It’s only my fault that I was so vulnerable to his lies, but can toe tapping, steering wheel slapping, off key singing desire be so wrong?

We’re only vulnerable when we don’t know Jack.

Dead Catholics, nearly dead Catholics and the great Catholic unborn

You can’t even throw a rock these days without hitting a dead Catholic, at least if you are throwing a stone at a nearby television set, and how many places can you go these days and not be within a stones throw of one of them?

I’m not trying to pick on the recently departed Pope, after all, he’s not my pope. He might not have been your pope either if you are a part of the nearly 76% of the United States that does not identify itself as Catholic. Nope, for most of us United States citizens, the pope is not our spiritual leader.

That might surprise you if you were trying to figure out “just how Catholic is this country anyway?” while watching the boob tube. It would seem that we’re all Catholic these days.

But you’d be wrong. We’re not. I’m certainly not and I can’t wait for the news to get back into the business for which it receives constitutional protection; the business of educating the electorate on issues of political importance.

It is of political importance that the United States Congress recently stood on its collective head in an unsuccessful attempt to interfere in a private medical decision for a near corpse in Florida at the behest of her Catholic parents, while at the same time cutting funding for medical programs that would save a statistically vast number of lives...but you really can’t video tape a statistic. Statistics rarely give you the satisfaction of seeming to follow an arbitrary balloon.

Meanwhile, in Texas, our president’s “hometown,” Sun Hudson had his ventilator removed over his mother’s objections because the money ran out. The medicaid money.

In my opinion is it better to let some of these people die? Maybe. But neither you nor I want to put me in charge of your family’s most devastating life decisions. It’s none of my business, I’m not a doctor and I’m not your spiritual leader.

I’m not your governor either, but if I was I still wouldn’t consider myself an expert on your faith. That’s not stopping our Governor Owens. No, if you are raped and you get yourself to a hospital in Colorado, you may or may not find out that there’s a way to prevent pregnancy from occurring as a result of this heinous felonious assault.

That’s because Governor Owens believes that institutions have First Amendment rights. Not individuals, they are already protected, Institutions.

The Governor is concerned about the rights of Institutions under our Constitution. The Governor is concerned about what an institution thinks, feels, believes and has to say. He expresses his concerns when he uses this phrase: “by forcing an institution to say things to patients that it explicitly does not believe to be morally or ethically valid...”

I’ve got a news flash here. An institution doesn’t have beliefs, nor morals, nor ethics. Institutions do not have rights; particularly not rights endowed by (a divine) Creator. People do. Rape victims do. Citizens do.

And as citizens, we need to take back the public space. We need to take it back from the commercial industry of the entertainment-news. We need to take it back from those with a religious agenda for the rest of us.

There are some decisions that are private, and they need to stay that way. They may be agonizing, devastating and polarizing, but they are deeply private.

There are some decisions that are public, like supporting or opposing a politician or an elected official.

Governor Owens isn’t my conscience, he’s not my spiritual leader and I deeply regret that he is my governor, not only because we have such different views about personal decisions and about the role of government. But more than that, because Governor Owens confuses the difference between people who rightfully have ethics and morals and need to make decisions; and institutions which do not.

Governor Owens lacks the clarity of judgment to represent me.

Somebody hand me a stone.