Anne of Green Gables Flap, Space Marines Silliness and RIP Pepper Paire-Davis

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of February 17, 2013



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Anne of Green Gables                                                                                                         

A couple of stories this week having to do with publishing in this new digital world.  Both show the power of the consumer to influence the market.  The first has to do with the perils of the modern publisher.

You may have heard of the uproar over a new volume of the stories of Anne of Green Gables.  Last fall a new ebook edition hit the shelves at Amazon.  It brought together all three of the books by L.M. Montgomery (Anne of Green Gables, Anne of Avonlea, and Anne of the Island) in a single volume.  Sounds great right?  Well fans of the books aren’t happy at all.  Turns out there were a couple of problems.  One small and one large.  

The first thing you need to know is that Montgomery’s classic girls novels have lost copyright protection and are now in the public domain.  This means that you and I could, if we so desired, publish our own versions of the books.  And that’s just what happened.  Using Amazon’s self publishing program someone had created their own edition.  The problem was they don’t seem to have done their research.

The small problem was that the publisher listed the author by her full name - Lucy Maud Montgomery.  She never did that herself because she didn’t much like her full name.  So properly it should have been L.M. Montgomery.  A silly mistake that should have been caught.

But the most serious error is the cover.  Which shows Anne as an attractive, rather nicely shaped blonde.  Anne, as described in the books, is a skinny twelve year old with bright red hair.  The young lady on the cover of this version is decidedly, um, more Harlequin Romance. This is actually something of a trend with classic women’s novels.  Several Jane Austen novels have suffered the same awful artwork.  Now upsetting the core audience for the product was always bad choice.  At last count there were no less than 395 one star reviews out of a total of just over five hundred reviews.  And all that outrage has worked.  The original cover is gone and a very safe cover has taken its place.

In the end the idea behind such a trend is just insulting to female readers and the great books they love.  You’ll either tick off the existing fans or upset new readers when they’re looking for a bodice ripper and instead get great literature.

Space Marines                                                                                                       

Here’s one of a couple of stories about the challenges of the modern publishing world.  Beyond the Anne of Green Gables Blonde-gate we also have a case of corporate bullying.


Late last year independent sci-fi author and artist MCA Hogarth received word from Amazon that her book “Spots the Space Marine” was being removed from their shelves due to a claim of trademark infringement.  Seems that UK games company Games Workshop had claimed a trademark on the term “space marines”.  Now if you’re a long time sci-fi fan your head probably just exploded.  That term has been around since at least 1932 when it appeared in the great science fiction magazine “Amazing Stories” in a short story called “Captain Brink and the Space Marines”.  Since then it has been used by a great many of the legends of the science fiction genre.  But Games Workshop was claiming that their game based trademark extended beyond it’s use in games and into all print material as well.  Given the long usage prior to the creation of the game company itself it seems pretty silly that any such broad based trademark should have been issued.  

But the real problem was that the company had lawyers and Hogarth didn’t.  What was going on is called trademark bullying.  It’s a tactic used by companies large and small.  And it’s fairly reprehensible in the view of a great many people.  Threaten an individual or small company with back breaking litigation to coerce them into giving up legal rights they may possess.  Once word got many authors and organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation, requested that Amazon review the complaint.  They did and promptly reinstated the book.

Of course while that allows Hogarth to sell her book it doesn’t resolve the whole question of the use of the term “space marines”.  My bet is that we’re going to see more of these kinds of stories popping up.  It’s silly and a truly bad business concept but that never seems to stop anyone.  In the end our best defense is to use the tools of the Internet to push back hard against this kind of intellectual bully boyism.  When the time comes, fight back.  Defend what’s right.

It’s what the space marines would do.

RIP Pepper Paire-Davis

I love movies for a wide variety of reasons.  I love them because they make me laugh and make me cry.  I love them because they help me escape from my day to day routine and they can help me appreciate that day to day routine.  I love movies that are all about the story but I love the ones that are all about the characters too.  One of the other things I love about movies is that they can help me discover things I never knew existed.  Like Women’s Professional Baseball.

I’ve been a baseball fan since I was about 10 years old.  That’s longer ago than I care to admit right now.  I love the history of the game.  I knew about the greats like Ruth and Foxx and Honus Wagner and the Waner boys, Big and Little Poison.  But it took a movie to introduce me to the All American Girls Professional Baseball League.  Admit it, you probably had never heard of it before the movie “A League of Their Own” either.  The league only existed for 11 years, a product of so many of baseball’s male stars going to fight in World War II.

What brings it to mind recently was the passing of one of that league’s stars Lavonne “Pepper” Paire-Davis.  She was the inspiration for Geena Davis’s character in the movie.  Paire-Davis was a catcher and a shortstop who racked up 5 league championships in the years she played the game.  Her statistics show her to be a smart hitter who must have been a gap hitter.  In over three thousand at bats she had more than 700 hits and 400 RBIs.  All this with a grand total of just two Home Runs!

She had loved the game from early in life.  Paire-Davis grew playing ball with her brothers in California then played softball three nights a week as a teen. Following High School she went to UCLA to study English, then when the war began she took a job as a welder.  But when she heard the call for female ball players she was ready to go bouncing from Minneapolis to Racine, Fort Wayne and Grand Rapids.  When the Baseball Hall of Fame recognized the league with a permanent display in 1988 Pepper Paire-Davis was included in it.

Oh and one last tie to that movie as well.  Do you remember the league song that the girls sang?  Well that was the real thing.  And Paire-Davis co-wrote it.

Lavonne “Pepper” Paire-Davis was 88 years old.

Call that the View From the Phlipside

Movie Reviews - Crash, Mystic River, Reign Over Me

Been a busy boy and the movies are backing up.  Three this week.  Two I really liked and one that was...eh.

Let's get the disappointment out of the way first.

Reign Over Me - (2007) There were three little words that put this movie in a hole right from the start.  "Adam Sandler Movie".  I can't tell you why but Adam Sandler just makes me want to walk the other way.  Looking at his career I have to be honest I've watched two of his movies the whole way through ("Spanglish" and this one) and they were both OK.  I've seen parts of several others and hated what I saw.  So is it fair for me to dislike Sandler?  Absolutely not.  But what can I say?  He's part of what I call the "Moron Humor" brigade (Will Ferrell, Jim Carey et al).  The basic premise is that the portray characters who are idiots (not nerds or clutzes or the socially inept but full on morons) and this is supposed to be funny.  Hasn't ever worked for me.

So I'm not sure why I put this in my movie queue.  Maybe it was Don Cheadle's name.  I like pretty much everything I've seen Cheadle in.  Never the less here is this movie about a man struggling after the death of his family at 9/11 (Sandler) and his old college roommate (Cheadle) who tries to re-connect.  Sandler does a pretty nice job with Charlie the former dentist who has checked as far out as he can get without becoming catatonic.  He lives in his own little world and tries to reject the memory of his family and their deaths.  Cheadle's character gets sucked in trying to help his old friend sometimes at the expense of his own wife and family.  There's more than enough cast talent here (Cheadle, Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland, Robert Klein, Melinda Dillon).  The problem is that the characters are too often cardboard cutouts.  Liv Tyler is utterly unbelievable as a psychiatrist.  Klein and Dillon are as one dimensional as Charlies in-laws as it may be possible to be.  And at the end Sandler just doesn't have the acting chops to pull off the final emotional scene of the movie.

Not bad.  But not good.

Rating - ** Save It For a Rainy Weekend

Mystic River - (2003) Now you want to see some acting chops?  Here's a movie for you.  Three Boston boyhood friends Jimmy (Sean Penn), Dave (Tim Robbins) and Sean (Kevin Bacon) are re-united as adults when Jimmy's daughter is murdered and Sean, now a homicide detective, gets the case.  Each of them has gone their own way since the day Dave was abducted by two pedophiles and held captive for four days.  Dave's never really recovered, Jimmy was the tough kid who became a tough adult with a criminal record and Sean became the cop.  There's enough emotional baggage between these three for a half dozen movies.

Penn and Robbins won Oscars for their work here.  The story twists and turns through a half dozen suspects and a fabulous supporting cast (Laurence Fishburne, Marcia Gay Harden and Laura Linney) under the direction of Clint Eastwood draws you right in.  Don't expect a Hollywood ending.  What you get is a great story told against the almost claustrophobic backdrop of lower middle class Boston.

Rating - **** Recommended

Crash - (2004) Here's the description of this movie from the folks at Netflix:

In post-Sept. 11 Los Angeles, tensions erupt when the lives of a Brentwood housewife, her district attorney husband, a Persian shopkeeper, two cops, a pair of carjackers and a Korean couple converge during a 36-hour period.

That description is criminal.  This movie is about race and bigotry.  It's about being human and American.  If the first 30 minutes of this movie don't make you sick to your stomach there's something wrong with you.  This movie is intense and brilliant.  The cast is outstanding headlining Sandra Bullock (who as the DA's wife is in just about 6 minutes of the movie but makes the most of them), Don Cheadle (DON CHEADLE!!!), Matt Dillon (who plays a cop that will just turn your stomach only to have him become a real person with real dimensions as the movie goes on), Brendon Fraser as perhaps the weakest of the main characters the DA.  Their stories intertwine in unexpected ways and it's fascinating to watch.  Must give this movie this credit as well.  There's one scene where I knew what was going to happen (a little girl gets shot) and I still gasped audibly when it happened.  The direction, cinematography and acting pulled it off.  A truly amazing, disturbing, thought provoking and challenging film.

Rating - **** Recommended

Movie Reviews - All About Eve, The Game, The History Boys

All About Eve (1950) A young woman manages to work her way into the entourage of an aging star.  What' begins innocently enough eventually takes on a decidedly different turn as time passes.  Long friendships will be challenged before the final act.  Margo Channing (Bette Davis) gets it right when she utters the classic movie line "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night".
  This is one of the great classics of the movie world.  The dialogue crackles, the cast is spectacular (Davis, Anne Baxter, Celeste Holm, George Sanders, Gary Merrill, Hugh Marlowe, Thelma Ritter, even Marilyn Monroe in a very small role), Joseph Mankiewicz wrote and directed.  Bring all that talent together in the same place and you shouldn't miss.  This one doesn't miss on any point.  The story of ambition and deceit reads every bit as true today as it did 60+ years ago.
   How good is this movie?  It was the first movie ever to rack up 14 Oscar nominations (the next one would be "Titanic") and the only movie to score 4 nominations in the top female categories (Davis and Baxter for Best Actress and Ritter and Holm for Supporting Actress.  Legend has it that Baxter angled to have her nomination placed in the Best Actress role rather than Supporting echoing the role she played.  In the end some historians believe that the two cancelled each other out resulting in the win for Judy Holliday in "Born Yesterday")
   This was a title that I knew but had never seen before.  It lived up to its reputation.

Rating - **** Recommended 

The Game (1997) - This movie presents me with an interesting variation.  The cast is wonderful, the director does a wonderful job, the story is intense, intricate and gripping.  The only problem is that periodically the script just gets really dumb.  There are some serious plot holes (I love when huge numbers of people appear then magically disappear and nobody notices, indiscriminate use of automatic weapons that nobody notices and quite possibly the dumbest idea for a business imaginable) that are so astounding that rather boggle the mind.  But somehow director David Fincher manages to just blast by.  The ending is a bit contrived and brings the movie to a limping conclusion.
   Investment banker Nicholas Van Orton (Michael Douglas) is a man accustomed to getting what he wants when he wants it. His ne'er do well brother (Sean Penn) gives him a birthday present of an all expenses paid entry into a "game" that is tailored to Nicholas' personality.  What it turns into is a trip down the rabbit hole.  What's real, what isn't and just what the hell is going on will take over Van Orton's life.
    Interesting bit of casting - Van Ortan's housekeeper is played by veteran actress and movie sex symbol Carroll Baker.  Baker was still a striking woman at 66.  They even pay her a quick wink when Daniel Schorr (playing himself and harassing Van Orton via the TV.  You'll understand when you watch the movie) is distracted by her when she walks through the room.  It's a cute moment that is also completely out of place in the movie.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

The History Boys - (2006) The story of a group of highly intelligent but unruly boys trying to figure out how to get into Cambridge or Oxford.  They've been taught by two unconventional teachers and have to find their way between the freedom they've learned and the conformity that may be required to achieve their goal.

This is a fun and startling movie.  It reminds us that the core of education is supposed to be about teaching young people how to think rather than rote memorization or learning marketable skills.  The dialogue is quick (if occasionally too quick to get past some of the accents) and very funny.  The cast is filled with familiar names and faces (Frances de la Tours and Richard Griffiths of Harry Potter fame plus lots of others from British TV and movies).  While the movie focuses on the boys and the last minute "polish" teacher (Stephen Campbell Moore) it really is Griffiths and de la Tours movie.  This is a movie in the tradition of "Dead Poets Society" or "The Paper Chase".  This is what I love about British film at its best.  Thoughtful script with a sense of humor, fabulous acting and just a certain "feel" I'm not sure I can describe.  American movies too often think that bigger is better.  The Brits tend to go small and do it well.

Rating -**** Recommended

Review - Sherlock

Sherlock (Seasons 1 and 2) - (2010, 2012) I approach adaptations to the screen of my favorite books with great trepidation.  It is so easy to fall short.  When you're plowing a field that has been so thoroughly explored as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes (I just reviewed "The Complete Sherlock Holmes" e-book) you face even greater challenges.  Trying to find a way between just the same old interpretation and going completely over the edge is tough.

On the whole this version, created by Mark Gatiss and Dr. Who's Steven Moffat, does a remarkably good job.  With two exceptions.

The high points first.  They choose to bring Holmes and Watson forward to today.  Always risky since Victorian England is an integral part of the original stories.  But Moffatt and Gatiss love the canon and are astoundingly respectful even as they make the needed changes.  Benedict Cumberbatch is wonderful as the Great Detective and Martin Freeman is absolutely scene stealing as John Watson.  Watson tells his stories now via a blog and just like the originals Holmes becomes a star even though he doesn't wish it.  The two leads absolutely sparkle together, the dialogue and characters are just amazing.  The updates of the stories ("A Study in Pink", "The Blind Banker" and "The Great Game" draw from "A Study in Scarlet", "The Naval Treaty" and "The Five Orange Pips" among others) are done with great fidelity to the originals while being completely of the 21st Century.  Really well done.  In the second season they take on three of the best known stories - "The Hound of the Baskervilles (The Hounds of Baskerville), "A Scandal in Bohemia" (A Scandal in Belgravia") and "The Final Problem" (Reichenbach Falls).  That last episode is absolutely brilliant.

There are two places where Holmes interpretations almost always step wrong.  They are Irene Adler and James Moriarty.  And Sherlock gets both of them badly wrong.

Irene Adler is always played as the great unrequited romance of Holmes's life.  Sadly that's just wrong.  Adler fascinates him but there is no romance there.  But no one can resist.  They want it there and so they put it there.  To make matters worse they decide (for no good story telling reason I can discern other than titillation) to make her a dominatrix and have her wander around semi-naked or completely naked for long stretches of the episode.  Adler is also supposed to be one of the great beauties of the age and I just don't think Lara Pulver pulls it off.  Interesting note that Oona Chaplin, granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, has a supporting role in the episode.  Adler appears in exactly one story where she shows herself to be the completely modern woman.  Smart, in control, able to rumble with the big boys and capable of beating Holmes.  Why does she need to be anything else?

Then we have Dr. James Moriarty.  The greatest criminal mind the world has ever known.  A man with a genius that even Holmes acknowledges as his equal.  Or as "Sherlock" presents it, Jim Moriarty.  A chattering psychopath who preens and prances and just generally embarrasses an other fine version of the classic stories.  I could tolerate Adler but most of Moriarty is just repellent and wrong.  From a cold and cunning mind we are left with the currently popular psycho-sadist villain (what is wrong with us that we seem to insist on these kind of characters?)  I called the final episode of Season 2 brilliant but it nearly gets derailed by the awful character created by Moffat and Gatiss.  No disrespect for Andrew Scott who plays him.  He gives his all in the role.  Beyond that we have the apparently irresistible urge to make Moriarty the great recurring villain.  While he is mentioned in passing in a couple stories the great criminal mastermind really only appears in "The Final Problem".

Oh and they get Mycroft physically wrong.  Most versions do.  Holmes's elder brother is described as "...heavily built and massive..." and Mark Gatiss who plays him is anything but those.  But a trifle.

So in the end where are we left?  If you know nothing but the basics of Holmes (and most of us do) you will almost assuredly love this version.  On the other hand if you know and love Holmes in detail you will still probably love the series but your viewing will be interrupted periodically by angry shouting at the screen.  Watch it anyway.

Rating - **** Recommended (and highly so)

Movie Review - Four Brothers, Girl With The Dragon Tattoo

Four Brothers - (2005) - This was a weekend movie channel discovery.  Nothing better to do, saw Mark Wahlberg in the credits and thought "Why not?".  The movie is about four troubled boys adopted by their foster mom.  She raises them to be honorable if not exactly law abiding.  They are family, first, last and always.  When their mom is killed apparently as an innocent bystander during a store robbery.  The four brothers (played by Wahlberg, Tyrese Gibson, Andre Benjamin and Garrett Henderson) decide to hunt down the shooters and take justice into their own hands.  Things get complicated and violent from there.  Under normal circumstances this movie wouldn't have much to appeal to me but I found myself continuing to watch.  It is the relationship between the brothers that makes this movie watchable.  Between the violence and the almost constant obscenity I kept thinking about the movie "Boondock Saints".  "Four Brothers" just seemed to have more warmth, more soul than the other.

Is this a great movie?  No.  If you like lots of shooting with a little character (plus Sophia Vergara walking through the shot periodically) then you just might enjoy this movie.

Rating - *** Worth A Look

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (2011) - A magazine publisher accepts an invitation to investigate the disappearance of a young woman 40 years before.  It involves him with the secretive dysfunctional family of the missing girl and a strange young woman with secrets of her own who agrees to work with him on the mystery.  Based on the best selling novel by Stieg Larsson and a 2009 movie version done in Sweden this is a claustrophobic murder mystery.  From the moment that Daniel Craig's character meets the family in question you know something is wrong with them.  Just how much and what kind of wrong slowly unfolds.  Rooney Mara plays the girl in the title (As a football fan it is required that I note her NFL pedigree.  She is named for her family lines.  She is a grandchild of both the NY Giants Mara family and the Pittsburgh Steelers' Rooney family.) and is incredible weaving her way between the insanity of the character's life and the deeply rooted troubles of her personality.  At the same time she creates a young woman that you want to root for even when she needs to do some truly terrible things.  The cast is spiced with some fine actors - Stellan Skarsgard, Christopher Plummer, Joely Richardson and Robin Wright.  Great story, acting and overall look.

Rating - **** Recommended

Rant on Phones, Corman at Sundance, Radio and Social Media

 "The View From the Phlipside" is a media commentary program airing on WRFA-LP, Jamestown NY.  It can be heard Tuesday through Friday just after 8 AM and 5 PM.  The following are scripts which may not exactly match the aired version of the program.  Mostly because the host may suddenly choose to add or subtract words at a moments notice.  WRFA-LP is not responsible for any such silliness or the opinions expressed.  You can listen to a live stream of WRFA or find a podcast of this program at wrfalp.com.  Copyright 2013 by Jay Phillippi.  All Rights Reserved.  You like what you see?  Drop me a line and we can talk.

Program scripts from week of January 28, 2013



My name is Jay Phillippi and I've spent my life in and around the media.  TV, radio, the movies and more.  I love them, and I hate them and I always have an opinion.  Call this the View from the Phlipside. 

Radio and Social Media                                                                                                         

I need to offer a tip of the hat to my friend and former co-worker Julia Ciesla-Hanley for tipping me to this story.  She linked to the blog post by Social Media Strategist Lori Lewis on her Facebook page.  It made fascinating reading for someone with a background in radio who is now exploring the world of Internet communications.

Fascinating in a sort of traffic accident/train wreck kind of way.

Along with print radio has taken the greatest beating from our new digital age.  Streaming music services like Pandora, Spotify, Slacker Radio and last.fm have taken the core of the music radio industry (the music) and stripped away all those things that so many listeners find annoying (commercials, repetitive playlists and yes, bad disc jockeys).  What’s left is a station that theoretically plays only songs you like (well maybe) and nothing else.  And that’s pretty attractive.

What’s really astounding is how resistant to fighting back radio can be.  Here’s where the blog post from Lori Lewis comes in.  She notes the big news in the industry over the last couple weeks has been the return of a big time Country station to the New York City market.  When she checked out their website she saw the listed both a Facebook page and Twitter feed.  Since she’s a social media specialist she checked them out.  And discovered that neither one of them existed.  In fact the Twitter handle they publicized turned not to have been claimed yet.  So Lewis grabbed it.  This a major move from one of the biggest broadcast companies in the nation, Cumulus.  And no one bothered to actually create the social media presence that they were promoting.

How many different kinds of stupid do you have to be to pull that off?  For my brothers and sisters still toiling in the radio industry salt mines here’s the fundamentals.  At bare minimum you MUST have a web page where you stream your station, a Facebook page and a Twitter feed.  It is vital if you’re going to survive the next decade.

Otherwise an entire industry is going to end up asking if you want fries with that.

Corman at Sundance                                                                                                        

This is one of those stories that you end up scratching your head wondering how it could possibly be true.  For the first time ever independent film making icon Roger Corman appeared at the Sundance Film Festival which ended this past weekend.
Sundance is one of the largest independent film festivals in the United States.  It’s probably done more for raising the profile of indie film makers than any other event.  And somehow Roger Corman, one of the most prolific and beloved indie filmmakers of the last half century has never made an appearance.  Mind boggling.

If you’re not a film fan the name Roger Corman may not mean anything to you.  When you find out that he has almost 400 movies to his name you may wonder why you’ve never heard of him.  That’s easy.  Corman has made a career out of making films on tiny budgets.  With all the sacrifices that might be inevitable along the way.  It’s easy to dismiss him as low budget schlock till you remember that he has mentored directors like Francis Ford Coppola, Ron Howard, John Sayles, Martin Scorsese, James Cameron and Jonathan Demme among others.  He helped launch the careers of Jack Nicholson, William Shatner, Peter Fonda, Talia Shire, Robert De Niro and more.

If you really want to see where he made his reputation take a look at the adaptations of a variety of Edgar Allen Poe stories in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.  8 films, 7 of them starring Vincent Price.  Also appearing in some of the titles were Ray Milland, Peter Lorre and Basil Rathbone.  All of them are low budget classics.

In 1970 Corman funded his own independent movie studio New World Pictures and brought such cult classics to the screen as “Death Race 2000”, “Rock and Roll High School”, “Children of the Corn” and “Piranha”.  Roger Corman is what every indie film maker wants to be even if they’ve never heard of him.

At 86 now Corman is still working and creating low budget movies.  The film that premiered at Sundance “Virtually Heroes” was made for less than a half a million dollars.

It was about time that the premiere indie film festival and the premiere indie filmmaker finally were introduced.

Rant on Phones

A bit of a rant today, so you have been warned.

The first great modern mass communication media was the telephone.  The phone is the single most commonly used appliance in the developed world.  It’s been around since 1876 and is, in one form or another, an indispensable part of most of our lives.

But think about this.  The phone is actually a service more than a device.  You can have the device in your house and it doesn’t do a thing till you pay to get it hooked up.  Then you pay a monthly charge to have that service in your home.  Let’s go over this one more time.  It is an option YOU choose to have and YOU pay to have it.  I would assume that virtually everyone would say that we do so for OUR purposes.  So that we can make calls and receive calls from the people of our choice.

Which is why tele-marketers really tick me off.  Where do they get off running their business through my service?  Yes, I know that the incoming call doesn’t cost me a penny.  That’s beside the point.  I didn’t pay for the installation and monthly service charge so that someone else can make money by annoying me.  Tele-marketers are the epitome of marketing.  They are trying to convince you that you need something that you have no desire for intrinsically.

No doubt someone is now wagging thier finger at the radio to remind me that this is a public utility.  So is the electrical service.  How would you feel about a business coming in and saying “Oh we’re going to tap into your electric to run our business.  Thanks so much”.  If they are on my phone then they keep me from using it.  What gives them the right?

In the world of the Internet we have a word for folks who do this sort of thing.  They’re called spammers.  Spammers rank down there with trolls in the hierarchy of web society.  Yet somehow the person who spams my phone is supposedly different.

I shouldn’t have to put up with people denying me the ability to use a service I pay for.  I shouldn’t have to come up with elaborate ways to get them off the phone.

It’s my phone, dang it.

Call that the View From the Phlipside