The fear of literature

Imagine, 50 years later, the same old shit!

clipped from www.nytimes.com ‘Howl’ in an Era That Fears Indecency Those who happened to click on Pacifica.org yesterday could hear Allen Ginsberg intoning, “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” along with the rest of his classic poem “Howl.” The occasion was the 50th anniversary of a court ruling that found the poem had “redeeming social importance” and was thus not obscene. Yet Ginsberg, who died in 1997, was heard online and not on the New York radio station WBAI-FM, affiliated with the Pacifica network, because the station, according to an article on Wednesday, feared that by broadcasting “Howl” it could run afoul of the Federal Communications Commission’s interpretation of indecency and incur bankrupting fines.