So you take your complaint to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The FCC is entrusted with monitoring indecent behavior on radio. You log on to the FCC's Web site to learn how to file a complaint. You are told you "may submit a significant excerpt of the program describing what was actually said or a full or partial tape or transcript of the material."
In other words, if while you were driving down the road you weren't taping or transcribing the offensive program, you're out of luck.
What about the FCC? Can't it afford to do this? Apparently, its $278,092,000 annual budget doesn't allow that luxury. Can't it mandate that radio stations keep a tape file of all their programming for, say, 60 days? Yes, but it won't.
Let's say that by some miracle -- your daughter had her tape recorder on -- you do have the evidence. Now what? You turn it over to the FCC and … wait. And wait. And learn while you're waiting that there's no time limit for FCC action. The agency can take years to investigate a complaint -- and does. You also learn that with $278,092,000 allows only a staff of five to handle all investigations dealing with radio, television, telemarketing, telecommunications issues -- in short, anything the FCC handles. Five.
And if it will make you feel any better, you learn that even FCC commissioners who have filed complaints find their staffs still working on them a year later.
What if the Red Sea waters part and the FCC does finally render a judgment, where a fine is levied? As things now stand, the maximum fine the agency can exact is -- ready? -- $27,500. To a multi-billion dollar empire like Viacom or Clear Channel, that's less than a hiccup. That's a joke.
And they are laughing, too. From the lewd anti-FCC rants from Eminem in his "music," to the verbal broadsides from Howard Stern on his radio program, the industry is taunting the FCC, that big, bad $278,092,000 monument to bureaucratic impotence.
In the final analysis, they're laughing at you, dear reader, the taxpayer. You pony up almost a quarter of a billion dollars every year to an agency that has no intentions of protecting your rights. Ultimately, the joke's on you.