Season 4 Episode 7 February 5, 2023

Well, hello! We’re halfway through season 4 already! Thank you for putting your ear to The Listening Tube! I’m your host, Bob Woodley. If anyone tells you I’m relatively unknown, you tell them they underestimate my obscurity. On this episode, we’ll hear about Earth’s other moon, packing the Supreme Court and social justice. But first (not the headlines)!

Have you ever been sitting in your living room one late afternoon or evening, just minding your own business, reading or watching a nature documentary on television, and it’s a tranquil moment and you’re just happy to be you, oblivious to outside forces, secure in your cocoon of comfort and peace. Then a car comes gliding down the street in front of your place and even before you recognize it as a car, you felt its presence. It started as a low and faint vibration, then grew more evident every moment until it felt like you were being assaulted by some sonic weapon they developed in Cuba! It has no rhyme or reason at first. You’re consumed as it becomes more encompassing. Then, suddenly, you realize there may be a rhyme to it, as it appears to be some type of song. But still no reason. Your little cocoon was ripped apart by a passing car with the music turned up so loud it rattled the candlesticks on the table behind your couch. Up until that moment, you were in nirvana. Not the band Nirvana, because that would also be loud. Now you’re totally rattled by some kid driving by your place who has a car full of speakers and might be deaf by the time he’s 30. He has a preference for a lot of bass, and wants the whole world to know it. He’s already had to replace his windshield because the sound waves broke the first one. This time, it’s your neighborhood with which he shares his love of loudness. But what are you going to do about it? Unless it’s the same car driving through your neighborhood at the same time everyday, the police are never gonna catch him. The odds of you even getting to the window in time to identify the vehicle, let alone get a license plate number are slim to none. But wait. Is the driver of the loud-mobile even breaking a law? Well, that depends on where you live, and what time it is. Most municipalities have their own noise ordinance, and quite often it becomes more strict at night, when people are presumed to be sleeping. But the state of New Jersey’s Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee has plans to expand the noise ordinance for the entire state. New Jersey would make playing the radio in your car too loud a mild fracture of the law. According to an article in Inside Radio, several New Jersey cities that are all within 15 miles of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, have complained about the practice of people driving around playing the radio too loudly. The bill, if it becomes law, would cost you 250 bucks for the first offense, 500 bucks for the second, and a third offense would cost you 750 bucks and two naughty points on your Driver’s License. So, why does New Jersey have such a problem? Well, it might have something to do with Philadelphia, which recently enacted its own noise ordinance to address the issue of what is commonly referred to as “boom cars.” These boom cars are the ones you can hear coming from blocks away, but in the case of New Jersey cities, miles away. The people in New Jersey are complaining about the boom, boom, boom of cars that are across the river in another state! The odd part is, practically nobody on the Pennsylvania side of the river is complaining. Is it the topography there that makes the sound travel into another state, or is it the sensitive ears of the people of New Jersey, having grown up with Bruce Springsteen and the sounds of slot machines? Whatever the cause, noise ordinances are being updated to address traveling sound sources as well as stationary ones like construction sites and a person playing their home stereo too loud. This isn’t the first time loud cars have been a subject of legislation. Anchorage, Alaska has a law about loud cars, as does Phoenix, Los Angeles, Omaha, Nebraska, and Houston. Most of those laws have more to do with the sound of the car, not the volume of the radio, but some do! 

But this is the first time a State has recommended action against loud radios. The whole state of New Jersey will limit the amount of noise coming from a moving vehicle to 50 decibels. The problem, as one New Jersey Police Chief pointed out, is that no matter what laws New Jersey has, if the sound is coming from across the river in Pennsylvania, there’s still nothing they can do about it. New Jersey cops can’t just drive across the river and arrest people in Pennsylvania for playing their radios too loud. The more I dug into this story, the more I realized the only thing that made it newsworthy is that it’s a noise ordinance that covers a whole state rather than a locality. Almost anywhere you go has rules about noise. This story caught my eye because of the headline, “NJ Lawmakers Target Drivers Who Play The Radio Too Loud.” I’ve been in the radio business for most of my life, so if it’s a law being created that limits how a radio can be used, I’m interested. There are new ways to listen to content, this podcast being one of the millions of options today. But as I’ve already mentioned, this article was from Inside Radio, a trade publication that comes to me through my email every day. As an extension of the radio industry, they have an agenda to support and promote radio listening. They don’t need a lot of help, as more than 90 percent of Americans listen to one or more of their local radio stations, but the unidentified author of this story took the opportunity to fill the blank as to what is the actual source of the sound with the word “radio.” Now, it’s true that most of the time, the sound coming out of the speakers in a car originates from a radio station, but I think it’s safe to say that the boom, boom, boom sounds grabbing the attention of people miles away are not originating from a radio station. The people who have invested thousands of dollars in car sound systems are probably listening to the radio when they’re just driving to work, but when they’re participating in late night activities that require a certain level of showing-off, you can bet they’re not relying on the local radio station to play the right bass-intensive sounds that will impress those in the immediate vicinity as well as those in another state. The author of the story may think that the proposed New Jersey law will have a negative effect on radio, but the reality is that it isn’t the radio that’s bothering the people of New Jersey. Even for something as seemingly benign as loud noise, you must consider the source of the story and how it’s written to determine its credibility. We can believe much of what the media tells us, it’s how they tell it that needs to be examined closely. This story has literally nothing to do with radios. The word radio is simply being used as a generic term for any audio coming from inside a car. But it seems that Inside Radio is happy to take the blame for the need to enact new laws governing noise in New Jersey.

Another example would be the story that claims to tell how white parents did away with diversity programs in a Missouri school district. The Grio published a story attributed to the entire staff that wants to explain to you how evil white people are. The headline of the story reads: Step by step, this is how white Missouri parents wiped out 3 diversity programs. The story starts out by telling us that a parents group started in early 2021, about a year into the covid era, had become concerned about what they’d learned by watching their children participate in online classes. But the Grio staff didn’t put it quite as elegantly as I, saying, “...as COVID-19 cases began to decline, the group’s criticism shifted to classroom instruction and teachers.” Among the curriculum that caught the attention of the parent’s group were three programs the authors detailed. One is called Sistakeepers, and the article says 65 pupils participated last year. If it’s called Sistakeepers, why didn’t the article say it served 65 girls? Were some of the pupils not girls? Would that ruin the name if word got out that not everyone in Sistakeepers is a sista? Well, the story says Sistakeepers serves primarily black students who have chosen to take a bus from Saint Louis to a very swanky district called Rockwood for school. They probably need a little support on the side, considering that they may be in an unfamiliar environment. But Sistakeepers takes that support to another level, which is clearly stated on a website associated with the organization about a movement called “I define me.” There, it says that Sistakeeper is a God Given Mission, developed to empower, inspire and develop the mind, body and spirit of young women into women with a purpose.” Well, we all need inspiration and purpose. Their mission statement describes a lot of attributes anyone would agree are valuable for a person to have when developing social skills and relationships. Those types of social skills weren’t taught in school when I was a kid. Even in school, there was a lot of stuff you needed to figure out on your own. But I can see why the parent’s group was critical of the program, as it’s both racist and sexist. In the first paragraph of the I define me website, it clearly states the curriculum is designed for African-American girls. Now, I feel like I should have a problem with that, because if somebody were to start a school program that was specifically designed for caucasion boys, that, too would be racist and sexist. The second diversity program the authors mention in the story is the L.O.V.E. Project. An internet search of the title provides several possibilities, but I think I found the one the story is talking about. It’s such a lovely word, love. Oh, did you hear that? The word lovely has love right in it. It’s a great word to use as an acronym for your organization. In this case, love stands for Leading Our Voices Equally. They kind of had to stretch a bit for that one, didn’t they? Anyway, the L.O.V.E. Project’s stated goal is to understand what matters most in the BIPOC MSM, trans, and non-binary community and promote access to prevention services. I’m pretty sure BIPOC means black indigenous people of color. I don’t know what MSM stands for, but I think it’s nice that there’s an organization that wants to learn more about them. As far as promoting access to prevention services, what are they trying to prevent? They’re not really clear on that. Another goal of the organization is to “remove any barriers that may hinder individuals from receiving access to sexual health services.” To some people, that may mean you’ll be allowed to get a shot if you catch a venereal disease, but to other people, that means you can change your gender. These are school programs we’re talking about. I can see why some parents don’t want tax dollars being spent to promote the issue.

The third program the evil white parent’s dismantled is a mentoring program by a man named Tony Thompson. Thompson is a motivational speaker, and his program served about 70 students last year, according to the Grio story. He was recently the keynote speaker at Stonehill Colleges Intercultural Affairs’ Martin Luther King Days of Celebration. He also gave a speech at St. Louis Community College called “Establishing a Fire On Campus.” Anyone could interpret a speech called Establishing a Fire on Campus as a dog whistle for starting a riot. That’s really not a good title in today’s social climate. The first 40 students who showed up got a free lunch. He might be good, but his facebook page hasn’t been used since September of 2021. 

Clearly, all three of the programs that were canceled had questionable motives. And it’s not like a lot of students were effected. The school district has about 20-thousand students, and each of these programs served less than a hundred. The cost of the three programs? According to the story, more than 86-thousand dollars for the academic year. So, it doesn’t sound like a wise use of taxpayer money. The headline of the story called them diversity programs. Nothing I saw in my research would indicate that they’re diversity programs at all. All three are clearly programs developed for a particular group without diversity being a part of the plan at all. Unless your definition of diversity is, “anyone but white people.” The headline also promised a step-by-step guide on how the white people got the racist programs removed. So, how did they do it? What evil plot did they unleash? Did they descend upon a school board meeting in pickup trucks with gun racks in the rear cab window, flying confederate flags and wearing red hats? No. They wrote letters. They sent e-mails. They posted stuff on social media. Now, as with most social media, you don’t know if what it says is true, but that’s why you take it with a grain of salt, or find another source to confirm the claim. But those letters and e-mails didn’t get sent without a plan. The parents knew who in the administration was responsible for these so-called diversity programs, so an early goal was to get them removed from decision-making positions. Three administrators have either resigned or retired under the pressure of the parent’s group. They elected to leave rather than face the possibility of charges for violating the federal civil rights laws of the white students who were excluded from the programs. But it seems like the staff at the Grio are alright with white students being excluded, because, after all, white students don’t add to diversity like other students. You can’t call something a diversity program if it excludes anybody! Racism is not a one-way street. Look at these programs from this perspective: If a black family moves into a white neighborhood, they bring diversity to that little part of the world. But if they only invite other black families to their summer barbecue, they’re not bringing any diversity into their own little part of the world. That’s what these programs did, and didn’t do. Plus, the Rockwood School District had to pay for them, which is like the white people paying for the neighborhood summer barbecue to which they didn’t get invited. 

Let’s go back liner 

This week in 1355, The St. Scholastica’s Day riot breaks out in Oxford, England, leaving 63 scholars and about 30 locals dead in two days of clashes that brought armed gangs from the rural areas to defend the townspeople from the nerds. It all started in a bar, of course, when two students felt the quality of their wine was inferior. The townspeople and the Oxford students were at odds for decades. Cambridge University was founded by Oxford alumni after two students were lynched by the town folk. Six years before the riots, Oxford was devastated by the Black Plague. Wikipedia says nearly a quarter of the scholars there died, and many of the townspeople either died or left. The University itself was on the brink of collapse. It would recover, and produce some the of modern world’s most recognizable thinkers, like Oscar Wilde, Sir Walter Raleigh, Edmond Halley of Halley’s comet fame, plus political figures like Edward Heath and Harold Wilson, immortalized in the Beatles song “Taxman” as well as Margaret Thatcher. Hobbit writer J.R.R. Tolkien was also associated with Oxford. Luckily, not all of them were inclined to start bar fights. 

This week in 1497, the bonfire of the vanities happened in Florence, Italy. If you thought this was just a movie, it wasn’t. In 1497 Italy, a Dominican fryar was assigned to Florence, and he didn’t like what he saw. This was Renaissance Italy, and great things were happening. Scientific and artistic and social advances were taking place, but the fryar had other plans. He considered any excess, let alone luxury, as a sin. This wasn’t the first bonfire of the vanities, but it would be the last. The bonfires were a way to dispose of anything the fryar found to be objectionable. Thousands of objects were burned, including cosmetics, paintings and books, manuscripts and ancient sculptures, tapestries, mirrors, and anything to do with astrology or magic. He got away with it because he had many supporters who called themselves weepers, which was a moniker given to them as an insult. But a few months after the last Bonfire of the Vanities, the Pope excommunicated the fryar on charges of heresy and sedition. A year later he was hanged on a cross and burned to death at the same spot where his bonfires took place.

1752

Pennsylvania Hospital, the first hospital in the United States, is opened by Benjamin Franklin. Is there anything Benjamin Franklin couldn’t do?

1812

Massachusetts governor Elbridge Gerry signs legislation to adopt new constitutionally mandated electoral district boundaries. The districts had been redrawn to give the Republican party an advantage in the next election. He didn’t like the partisan redistricting idea, calling it “highly disagreeable” but went along with it. The result was voting districts with odd shapes, and one of the districts was said to look like a salamander. A local newspaper called it a Gerry-mander, after Governor Gerry. Since then, the act of drawing electoral districts to give one political party an advantage over another is called “gerrymandering.” 

1825

After no presidential candidate receives a majority of electoral votes in the election of 1824, the United States House of Representatives elects John Quincy Adams President of the United States. He was the son of the second President of the United States, John Adams, and the first to become President without winning the electoral college. He was also the second president to not win re-election. His father was the first. It was also during the J.Q. Adams administration that the Republican-Democrat Party split in two, creating the Democratic Party and the National Republican Party. Unlike today’s Presidents, who more or less retire from politics after reaching the pinnacle, John Quincy Adams was elected to the House of Representatives in 1831, and would serve until his death in 1848. To this day, he is the only President to go on to serve in the House.

1913

A group of meteors is visible across much of the eastern seaboard of North and South America, leading astronomers to conclude the source had been a small, short-lived natural satellite of the Earth. The reason they believe this is because most meteors come from a specific point in the sky, or radiant. But the meteors on this night didn’t seem to have one. An astronomer named Clarence Chant gathered the available data from hundreds of observers from Canada to Bermuda. It was determined that the path of the meteors were not from a point in the sky, but along a great circle arc. It’s generally accepted that the meteors seen on this night, which took up to five minutes to cross from horizon to horizon, was almost certainly a body or group of bodies that had been captured in Earth’s orbit. Nobody knows how long it was there, but for at least a little while, the Earth played host to more than one moon as recently as the 20th century. 

1937

President Franklin D. Roosevelt proposes a plan to enlarge the Supreme Court of the United States. At the time, the Supreme Court was rejecting parts of his New Deal. So Roosevelt proposed having as many as 15 Supreme Court Justices. He proposed that anyone on the court over 70 years old would get full pay if they retired. If they didn’t retire, they would be assigned an assistant who would have full voting rights in Supreme Court cases, and of course, Roosevelt would appoint the assistants. This was the first instance of what we now know as “Court packing.” The idea was brought up again recently, when President Donald Trump had a string of Supreme Court appointees that tipped the scales of the court in favor of conservatives. The plan was eventually abandoned both times, and the number of Justices remains at nine.

1993

General Motors sues NBC after Dateline NBC allegedly rigs two crashes intended to demonstrate that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. NBC admitted it used incendiary devices to make sure the trucks would catch on fire when hit by another vehicle, and settles the lawsuit the next day. According to a story in the Los Angeles Times, NBC News co-anchors Jane Pauley and Stone Phillips read an apology that said, “We apologize to our viewers and to General Motors. We have also concluded that unscientific demonstrations should have no place in hard news stories at NBC. That’s our new policy.” That apology was still being negotiated five minutes before air time. I think it’s a shame that they called what they did an unscientific demonstration when it was clearly manipulating the science to get the desired result. 

1996

The IBM supercomputer Deep Blue defeats Chess Champion Garry Kasparov for the first time. They would play again. Today, not only would deep blue beat a chess champion, but it would also use Artificial Intelligence to write an essay about how easy it was. 

1998

Washington National Airport is renamed Ronald Reagan National Airport. I find this to be hilarious, as you may recall that President Reagan fired more than 11-thousand Air Traffic Controllers in 1981 when they went on strike. Reagan ordered the striking controllers back to work within 48 hours with a promise to fire any who didn’t. Two days later, he carried out the threat, and 11,359 air traffic controllers were not only fired, but were also given a lifetime ban from ever being hired again. 

Phone and email liner

I’d like to take a moment to talk about social justice. It sounds like a good thing. It’s got social in it, which means we do things together, and justice, which means everything we do is done fairly. Those are two good things, so if you put them together, they must add up to something even better! Everyone working together under the same rules. But what exactly is today’s definition of social justice? 

Look that up liner

Well, the definition of social justice depends on where you look. Back in the day, there were just one or two dictionaries you could use to find the definition of a word or phrase. Today, everybody seems to have their own definition of the words we use. Sometimes the various sources have similar definitions, sometimes they don’t. One of those trusty sources, Merriam Webster, says social justice is “a state or doctrine of egalitarianism. I had to look that up, too. There are different forms of egalitarianism, but it basically means everybody has the same rights; the same fundamental value. It’s what Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I think it’s important to point out that the current vice-president of the United States recently quoted that line and left out the word “life.” But I digress. Social justice has other definitions than egalitarianism. 

Dictionary dot com, which you might think would have the most definitive and trustworthy description of the phrase puts it like this... fair treatment of all people in a society, including respect for the rights of minorities and equitable distribution of resources among members of a community. That’s a bit different than life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It specifically points out the rights of minorities, as if minorities have different rights than everyone else. It goes on to include equitable distribution of resources. That, by definition, is socialism. Britannica dot com, which older people might remember as Encyclopedia Britannica, has a much deeper exploration of social justice. It admits at the very start that its definition is focused on contemporary politics, social science and philosophy, so it’s clearly not describing the origin of the phrase. But it, too, mentions equitable status of all individuals and social groups. Britannica goes on to include other descriptions like fairness, inclusion, self-determination. But it goes on to narrow those deserving of social justice to “currently or historically oppressed, exploited or marginalized populations.” So, in other words, social justice can be a leg up for those who have been held back by rules and regulations that violated America’s Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. But the newer definitions seem to abandon egalitarianism, which treats everyone equally. Instead, we get lists of words like fairness, inclusion and equity as descriptors of social justice. How is equity the same as fair? If you’re super smart, athletically talented, or have some other quality that has value, you are a target of social justice. By the modern definition of social justice, everyone else deserves a part of what you have. A part of what you’ve earned. More specifically, marginalized people, minorities or people who have been exploited in the past deserve some of what you’ve accumulated because they were treated differently than groups of people with more members. Social justice means that if you’re a part of a marginalized group, you deserve more than you have. Maybe that’s why more and more “marginalized groups” seem to be popping up all the time. Black and white isn’t a good enough divider anymore. We need to split ourselves up into as many slivers as we can in order to take advantage of the benefits of being a marginalized group. It’s true that minorities have historically been marginalized. Not just in America, but all over the world. Apartheid South Africa being one exception. But social justice, whatever the definition, won’t solve anything. 

First of all, if social justice means equity, then it’s not fair to anyone who worked hard to earn what they have. Equity, or an equal outcome, simply means you get as much as everyone else regardless of your effort. That’s not fair to the people who work harder, or learned more, or took more risks. Now, equity can work if those of us who sit on the couch all day are also responsible for the burdens of society, since we’re not contributing. But that’s only in theory. We don’t actually expect you to get up. Social justice is a philosophy with many interpretations, from the basic rights we have as people, to special recognition of minorities and other marginalized groups as they define themselves. Practically anyone can find a way to marginalize themselves. I’m a Polock with translucent hair. Based on the number of Polish jokes I’ve heard in my life, and my translucent hair, I feel I’m being discriminated against! Somewhere along the line, we began rewarding ourselves for being different from everyone else. There was value in claiming segregation. Our government put programs in place to try to correct past bigotries. If you’re familiar with this program, you know I’m not a fan of bigotry. I know bigotry is a problem in America, just as it is in the rest of the world. But when you marginalize yourself, you set yourself up to be a victim of bigotry, and give yourself the opportunity to claim oppression. Too many people have marginalized themselves and now call on social justice to rescue them from the clique they joined. 

But if you go back to the early definition of social justice, we arrive at Aristotle. Born almost 400 years before the time of Christ, Aristotle was a Greek philosopher who put a lot of thought into all things related to justice. He saw it in two ways; as an individual virtue and a responsibility of government. But in either case, there should be higher reward for those with more responsibility. That’s not equity as defined by today’s definitions. In its original definition, equity was more of a way to describe equal pay for equal work, and not equal pay for equal existence. The Aristotle definition of social justice recognized your contribution to society with a reward equal to your contribution. Today’s definition of social justice and equity is far different. Today, social justice and equity are words used by special interest groups to justify racism and condemn true equality. As long as we divide ourselves into different groups, be they by race, sex, skin color, national origin, or any other way we can think of to divide ourselves, we will find ways to claim discrimination. Some of our groups get more attention than the others. You would think that white people have the most influence in politics. That’s probably true on a national level, simply because there are more white people. But on a local level, that’s not always the case. There are areas of the United States that are majority black people. There are even more areas that are majority Hispanic people. Que pasa mi amigo?! You may have already figured out that I’m a white guy. Over the years I’ve been asked to sign many petitions for politicians to get their names on the ballot. I always ask them the same question: What do you plan to do for single, white, heterosexual men with good jobs? Every single one of them just stood there staring at me as if they just saw ghost. I have never met a politician who had a platform that gave any advantage to white people. Or single men with good jobs regardless of skin color. 

If you want to support social justice, at least be aware of what it is you’re really supporting. There are many definitions of social justice, and you might agree with some of them. That’s ok. But the term social justice has been hijacked by special interest groups and advertising campaigns that have a specific agenda that may not have anything to do with social justice or the definition of social justice you accept. The modern definition or the original. 

The important thing is we’re not fed the contents because we were fooled by the label.

Unfinished business liner, China edition, gong

You may recall a past episode of the Listening Tube where we heard about farmland bought by a Chinese food manufacturer to build a corn mill. It was in North Dakota, near an Air Force base there. Well, the United States Air Force deemed it a security threat, and the Governor of the state agreed. The state welcomes foreign investors, according to an article in Ag Daily. It says 40-million acres of farmland in the United States is owned by foreign investors, and the Chinese company still owns the land it bought in North Dakota, but it’s no longer allowed to build anything on it.

Speaking of China, if you had any doubts about America’s relationship with the Chinese Communist Party, you might still be confused after the debacle of a Chinese balloon floating over the United States. It was shot down by a military jet after it had already crossed the continent, flying over sensitive military sites and America’s heartland. Questions need to be answered by the Biden administration as to why this Chinese balloon was allowed to continue its mission. Right now, the excuse is that it was too much of a risk to shoot down over land. The debris field would be too large, and somebody on the ground might get hurt. But even the Governor of Montana, where the balloon entered the lower 48, said there’s plenty of space in his state where it could have been brought down safely. The Biden administration needs to explain to the American people why a Chinese spy balloon was allowed to travel across the United States. They say we took immediate measures to prevent the apparatus attached to the balloon from collecting valuable data. But we have no idea if it worked. The Biden administration’s reaction to a spy balloon flying over the country is equivalent to not answering the door when the landlord comes to collect the rent. The Chinese say it’s a civilian agricultural balloon. Now that it’s been shot down, off the Atlantic coast, maybe we can determine exactly what it was doing. But the fact that it was allowed to cross over our country is another example of the disregard the Biden administration has for the security of our borders. 

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly. Copyright 2023. Thank you for putting your ear to The Listening Tube. I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.