While the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) cannot outlaw the use of the name Redskins for NFL teams or individual conversations, the agency can rule the word “indecent” and prevent it from being uttered on television and radio. And that’s exactly what it is considering thanks to a George Washington University law professor.
Reuters reports that the FCC, which enforces broadcast indecency violations, has received a petition from legal activist and GW University Professor John Banzhaf III asking that regulators strip local radio station WWXX-FM of its broadcasting license when it comes up for renewal because it uses the name “Redskins” to refer to the Washington NFL franchise. Banzhaf says the word is racist, derogatory, profane, and hateful, making its use “akin to broadcasting obscenity.’
A long time activist for removing personal freedoms, Banzhaf’s other efforts include forcing his students to lobby their local governments to ban 16-ounce-plus sodas
To demonstrate that even undergraduates can likewise have a significant impact on public health problems, students in the standing-room-only class in the Jack Morton Auditorium [Media & Public Affairs Building, 805 21st Street NW, Washington, DC 20052] will be asked to propose, to a state or local governmental body, legislation to deal with obesity, especially that caused by sugary soft drinks.
Banzhaf will explain how at least ten fat law suits have already been successful, including the one targeting McDonald’s brought by his law students, which started the new movement to use governmental action as a powerful but largely untapped weapon against obesity.
Banzhaf is most famous for convincing juries that people who have smoked for 30 years and have seen all of the warnings bear no responsibility for their smoking-related ailments because those evil tobacco companies are controlling them.
Banzhaf has perfected a legal strategy for taking on companies that have traditionally been seen as harmless, normal entities — as cigarette manufacturers once were. Banzhaf managed to convince a few juries that smoking wasn’t just a habit — it was a full-out addiction that no reasonable person could ever escape. Tobacco wasn’t simply something that everybody knew wasn’t healthy — it was diabolically unhealthy, and because cigarette companies didn’t fully disclose everything they knew about it, smokers couldn’t be responsible for their own actions.According to Banzhaf, cigarette companies trap and manipulate smokers like marionettes, especially children.
In another case, Banzhaf filed a charge with the DC Office of Human Rights in which he claimed that Muslim students at Catholic University were being discriminated against because of lack of adequate prayer space.
According to Charles Krauthammer, by “adequate prayer space,” Banzhaf meant areas without Crucifixes and other Catholic symbols. Banzhaf admitted he brought the lawsuit without complaints from the school’s Muslim students.
Mr. Banzhaf acknowledged to The Post’s Michelle Boorstein that he had received no complaint from Muslim students but was acting on the basis of a 2010 Post article (which, to our mind, painted an overall positive experience of Muslim students at Catholic). The university has received no complaints from Muslim students and, in fact, reports a doubling of its Muslim enrollment since 2007, from 56 to 122. “Muslim college students are not hothouse flowers that need protection. If they had concerns, we would have heard them,” Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American-Islamic Relations told us.
So this self=appointed arbiter of political correctness believes that government can tell people what they can eat and drink, that adults are too stupid to make their own decisions about smoking, and that any Muslim student who applies to Catholic University has so low an IQ he would have no idea that a Catholic University would have a crucifix on the wall.
Now Banzhaf wants to decide for all Redskins fans what the team should be called by radio and TV stations, because like most progressives he knows much better then the rest of us.
NOTE: In an interesting coda to this story, when The Hill reported the story about the FCC and the Redskins instead of using the team’s full name, they printed “R*dskins,” which if you ask me is f**king rid*culous.
Cross-posted at The Lid
