The difference between private property and government property is unclear to some people.

Chris Jones, the art critic for the Chicago Tribune, laments artists' lack of self confidence in the face of increased public criticism. He makes a good point near the end, but mostly his column amounts to a lament that some artists & performers are increasingly out of touch with audiences who are themselves increasingly impatient with vulgarity masquerading as humor, and performers who demand that we accept their puerile politics as Wisdom handed down from the Gods.

America's cultural professionals have lost their confidence...Good art -- and lively entertainment -- sets agendas. Defensive art typically is unwatchable. Exhibit A: the Academy Awards last week.

Cowed host Chris Rock offered nothing so much as a portrait of raw fear...Even Sean Penn substituted a new kind of impotent, childish surliness where anger once blazed.

Sean Penn, the authority who so famously went to Baghdad days before the invasion and declared that we had no business invading- because Saddam told him so? We are supposed to accept this idiot's ravings because he is an Artist? We are supposed to feel our world is endangered because Sean Penn, who is both a good actor and for practical purposes an apologist for Saddam Hussein, might be feeling a trifle chastened? I don't think so.

Rock was mainly unfunny because he was in purely reactive mode. He'd been attacked the entire previous week on the Internet for what his critics deemed his inevitable profanity, his inevitable homophobia, his inevitable political bias.

OK, I didn't watch, so I won't comment on what Rock did or didn't do. I will ask a question tho: Doesn't this sound like Jones thinks Rock can't be funny if he isn't profane, homophobic, and politically simplistic? This isn't much of a defense.

....To see how things once were -- and not so long ago, at that -- you needed only to watch the Academy's archival clips of former host Johnny Carson, tripping merrily and brilliantly over the script and ad-libbing with aplomb about the indecency of his ex-wives.

The main difference between Carson and Rock? Confidence. Carson always set his own agenda.

Confidence? Sure, but that isn't the real difference. Carson had class. Carson didn't need to be profane. Carson didn't need to be vulgar. And his audience understood he was an equal opportunity skewerer. Carson stayed on top for decades because he understood his audience and changed his performance to appeal to them as they changed. Ppl like Rock- and Jones- believe that the audience has an obligation to applaud.

This is not a matter of partisan politics, it's a matter of free cultural expression.

Sorry, Mr. Jones. You're wrong. When performers express their partisan politics from the stage, it is explicitly partisan politics. Some of the audience agrees with those political views, some disagree vehemently. And many think that the Academy Awards ceremony is not the proper place for partisan politics. Mr. Jones seems appalled that those latter ppl express their views. He wants them to shut up, declaring the result of their criticism "dangerous."

If the Academy allows them to, they have the privilege- not the right- to use the Academy Awards as a platform for announcing their political views. If the Academy allows them, they have the privilege, not the right, to use the Awards ceremony to be vulgar and profane. What they do not have is a right to be free from criticism.

Last week, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) said he would push to apply broadcast decency standards to cable and satellite...On the face of it, Stevens' argument has some logic. At a time when most of us get broadcast media via cable or satellite, the average family makes little distinction on the remote.

As a matter of fact Stevens' argument does not have any logic at all. The federal government regulates what is said on broadcast television and radio precisely because the government owns the airwaves. I happen to think that the government shouldn't own them- they should be sold off to the hightest bidders, privatized- but the case is that right now the feds own them. Owners call the shots. Period. Stevens doesn't like that tho.

Jones is suggesting that those who rent or lease (in this case broadcasters) should have the same rights as owners, simply because those who sub-let (listeners/viewers) use the property in much the same was as owners do. Try telling that to Hertz and Avis, or a landlord. Should a renter be allowed to have the car painted, free from Hertz' control? Should a renter be able to take a sledge hammer to the bathroom fixtures? Perhaps more to the point, should Hertz be able to tell not only their own customers how they may use their rental cars, but also tell the private owners of automobiles how to use their own cars? What color to paint them? Where they may drive them? Who may ride in them?

The feds don't regulate cable content because they don't own the cables. That is why Ted Stevens is totally out of line: he thinks that the feds should control the political and cultural use of private property. Stevens is wrong. The shame is that Chris Jones don't even understand the underlying issue, which is control of property: who has the right to do so, vs who has the power. Stevens wants the later, and I think that is anti-American.

If you'll read Jones' column, he makes it clear that he doesn't understand the difference between regulation of one's own property (in this case the government regulating government-owned broadcast spectra) and regulating property which is private and owned by others. He thinks they are the same. Witness this:

And then what's the difference between Netflix and the movie theater itself? It's only a matter of geography, surely, not morality.

Neither geography nor morality have anything to do with it. There is no difference: Both are private property, both are used soley by ppl who are paying for the privilege of doing so. The difference isn't between two varieties of private property. The difference is between private property and government property. Again, I wish the broadcast spectra were private, but they aren't and until they are the government has every right to regulate content. What they should not be allowed to do is seize control of private property for political purposes, and that is exactly what Stevens wants to do.

"There has to be some standards of decency," Stevens said this week, before adding "but no one wants censorship."

Rubbish. That is exactly what he wants, and the public should stand up and call Stevens what he is: A power-grabber and a Liar. If he wants to make the case for censorship, fine. But don't allow this lie to pass as truth. If Ted Stevens doesn't understand the difference between private and public property he doesn't belong in the Republican Party, much less the US Senate. At least Jones understands censorship:

It may well be desirable censorship from some people's point of view, but politicians such as Stevens should at least call it by its proper name.

Ending government regulation of broadcast content is one of the better reasons for privatizing them. Ted Stevens seems to think he has a right to treat other ppl's cable just like federal property. He's a bad guy. Unfortunately Chris Jones is making the wrong arguments against him.

Click here: Chicago Tribune Playing defense