Day: May 16, 2005

Telephone Company Promotes Anti-Gay Agenda

Buck Banks

“He who has ears, let him hear.”
– Jesus

The image of the boy with his fingers stuck in his ears to the right says a lot about what United American Technologies is up to. The company provides “filtered” internet access to the pious who are either so computer illiterate as to not understand simple parental controls, or who think that the Internet is Satan, period, and the only way to keep him off the family computer is through divine intervention.

Are you beginning to feel like you need to be protected when on the Internet? United American Technologies is dedicated to providing the luxury of the Internet without the hassle of unwanted content and information. We provide a clean outlet to the Internet for family, friends, employees and students.

UAT offers “DSL speeds at the price of dial-up,” as well as “filtered web browsing from pornography and other unsuitable content; filtered email from pornography and other unsolicited marketing emails; pop-up protection available with our High Speed Dialup service; unlike many of our competitors, we do not offer unfiltered Internet access for a single subscriber. We do not have double standards and do not support pornography in any way.”

But it is in the company’s telephone solicitations that their true intentions become clear. A fellow named Eugene Merman called an anti-gay marriage group and learned about UAT. For quality-control purposes, he recorded his conversations.

Merman called in to something called the Faith, Family and Freedom Campaign, whose prerecorded hold message says, in part: “Please do not hang up. Listen to my brief message and find out how you can help. This information will explain how the ACLU and gays are getting gay marriage in every state.”

The operator breaks in at this point, identifies herself as what sounds like “Kewpie,” and asks, “Eugene, did you press one to oppose same-sex marriages?”

After Merman has her on for a bit, and it’s clear that he is playing it to the hilt, Kewpie gets to the real pitch: “Mr. Merman, also, our organization is dedicated to people such as yourself that want to stop same-sex marriages and to quit doing business with companies that promote and profit from the homosexual lifestyle.”

She then goes on to smear the competition, claiming that AT&T owns the Hot Network, “which is a hard-core pronography channel,” and “they also give millions of dollars to the gay and lesbian alliance groups.”

Then Kewpie gets to the point: “Mr. Merman, there is a Christian-based telehone company in your area called United American Technologies … UAT, Mr. Merman, is the only carrier taking an active stand against same-sex marriages and hardcore child pornography.”

Kewpie goes on to explain how MCI “sponsors child pornography” through a Montreal-based “pedophile” Web site called MenWhoLoveBoys, and Verizon “trains their employees to accept the gay and lesbian lifestyle.”

All of which leads the feckless Mr. Merman to breathlessly exclaim, “Basically, God hates AT&T, MCI and Verizon!”

“Yes,” accedes Kewpie.

And Jesus said, “For this people’s heart is waxed gross, and their ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed; lest at any time they should see with their eyes and hear with their ears, and should understand with their heart, and should be converted, and I should heal them.”

Study: Public Says Press Bad, Freedom Bad

Buck Banks

A study released today by the University of Connecticut Department on Public Policy found (surprise!) a significant gap between the public and the press on details like freedom of speech and the government’s right to censor the press. Editor & Publisher offers an executive summary of the study, which found that 43% of the public says the press has too much freedom, while only 3% of journalists agree (who are those guys?). Shockingly (or not), only 14% of the public respondents could name “freedom of the press” as a guarantee in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

While many of the other findings are as predictably depressing as those, the study did mine some interesting data on blogs, and since this is a blog, we’ll concentrate on those data. The widest gap between the 1,000 regular folks and the 300 journalists polled opened between the 8 in 10 journalists who said they read blogs and the less than 1 in 10 others who read blogs. A majority of the news pros polled do not believe bloggers deserve to be called journalists (editor’s note: because they fear the POWER). But, of course, the journos’ greatest fear is irrelevance — the study found that 61% of non-journalist average Americans get most of their news from television (Thanks, Bill O’Reilly!), while only 20% read newspapers (Thanks, Wall Street Journal!).

A full 83% of journalists reported using blogs, with four in 10 claiming to use them at least once a week. Fifty-five percent of blog-using journalists said they use blogs when gathering news. And while 85% of the Fourth Estaters believe bloggers should enjoy First Amendment protections, three-quarters say bloggers are not journalists because they don’t adhere to “commonly held ethical standards” (whatever those are).

Finally, in what can only be seen as the triumph of technology over truth, “61% of the news pros say that the emergence of the Internet has made journalism better.”

We here at Pensito Review, unburdened as we are by commonly held or uncommonly held ethical standards, and blessedly protected as we are by the First Amendment, will continue to do our part to make journalism better, or, more to the point — make better journalism.