Showing posts with label gay rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label gay rights. Show all posts

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Paul Siegel: Gay Rights as a Free-Speech Issue



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 23 -- June 5, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #118, June 8:

Paul Siegel:
Gay Rights as a
Free-Speech Issue

In brief

Civil-liberties activist Paul Siegel has advice for people--particularly gay people--considering challenging discrimination in court. Base your challenge on the 1st Amendment (freedom of speech, right to assemble), not on the 14th (equal protection, privacy).

This sounds technical & legalistic, but in fact this intelligent and often funny talk should have wide appeal.

Highlights include a funny account of what Pacific Telephone & Telegraph would & wouldn't allow into that compendium of decency and good taste, the Yellow Pages, . . . stories of clueless high-school administrators who think the 1st Amendment does not protect students wearing T-shirts that say, "I Support My Gay Friends," . . . and a sad story of a gay student suspended and "outed" to her parents by the school principal for the crime of kissing her girlfriend on school grounds.

Paul Siegel will often go weeks or months without reminding anyone
of Benito Mussolini. Still, every once in awhile . . . . Photos by K.D.
All photos: Click to enlarge.

Notes, credits, & links

Recorded live (by moi) at the University of Hartford, on April 27, 2010.

Paul Siegel is a longtime civil-liberties activist. His day job is Professor of Communication at the University of Hartford.

http://www.aclu.org/

http://www.aclu-ct.org/

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "East-of-the-River satellite studio and skunk works") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. "East-of-the-River" is Hartford-ese for "Podunk."

New World Notes' main audio archive is at radio4all.net. Installments beginning with #90 are archived also at The Internet Archive, in a variety of file formats. Either link should get you a reverse-chrono listing of available installments. Or browse the show's Web site: Each installment has a page, and each page has links to the recorded audio.

Series Overview: Political and social commentary in a variety of genres. Exploring the gap between what we want ... and what they're trying to make us settle for.

Bottom: The talk's concluding slide

Coming Soon -- Tuesday debut date shown:

  • June 15 -- Is It Time to Impeach Obama? Racist, right-wing crackpots are loudly denouncing the President. That shouldn't stop Progressives from doing the same--though on different grounds.

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):


A-Infos Radio Project http://www.radio4all.net



Friday, January 22, 2010

Lenny Bruce and The Meaning of Obscenity



New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 4 -- January 23, 2010


This Week in New World Notes, radio program #99, Jan. 26:

Lenny Bruce and
The Meaning of Obscenity

Pink-collar summary

"I learned the truth from Lenny Bruce,"
-- Paul Simon, "A Simple, Desultory Philippic"

"This show is all about Lenny Bruce. Well, not just about Lenny. It's also about obscenity, American-style. Dirty words, oral sex, and the fatal stabbing of two women--one in Brentwood, one in the Bates Motel. All of the above, and Lenny Bruce too, are intricately connected."

Featuring a handful of Lenny's greatest routines, recorded 1963-64. (Sorry: no room this week for "Christ and Moses." Soon, though!)

OOPS!

Owing to technical difficulties--that's bureaucracy-speak for "I screwed up"--station WWUH in West Hartford, CT, was unable to air NWN #98 ("Cheap Junk and the Deindustrialization of America") last week. They did have #100, "Merchants of Fear," on hand and so played that. Next week, when the rest of the world is enjoying "Merchants of Fear," people in central Connecticut can settle for "Cheap Junk." Sorry 'bout that!

This week's songs

  • Incidental music: The Trashmen, Surfin' Bird
  • Outro: Supertramp, Goodbye, Stranger

Coming Soon

  • February 2 on WWUH -- Cheap Junk and The Deindustrialization of America -- Welcome to the Third World! (Hope you had your shots!)
  • February 2 elsewhere -- Merchants of Fear

Nicole Brown Simpson, June 12, 1994. Click to enlarge.

What makes the photo especially sad, to me, is the riot of
green plants, blooming away in mindless vitality, quite unaware
of the dead woman at the bottom of the stairs. "Where the dogs
go on with their doggy life and the torturer's horse / Scratches
its innocent behind on a tree" (Auden,
Musee des Beaux Arts).
I hope somebody is watering them.

Notes & Credits

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "long-suffering sighs") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request.

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