Sept. 30, 2003 - 20:58 MDT

THE WONDERING JEW

FIX IT

So much unholy blather and obfuscation going on now about the No Call Atall thingy. It might eventually overshadow Operation Iraqi Freedom, if anything can, it might.

Coming on from all sides now, should be under the jurisdiction of the FCC instead of the FTC. Yeah right. Now some hold it is a violation of free speech. UH HUH . . . . .

It is my contention that a private residence has a right to undisturbed privacy, at dinner time or any other time.

They want to shilly shally around, okay, why not make it illegal for commercial, political or religical phone calls to private residences to be placed at any time of day or night ? Turn it over to the FCC. Blow out the loopholes and make it work. It is doing well other than the exceptions. Heather fielded a call from "unknown name - unknown number" out of curiosity. Her reason was to find out if she could why there has been a huge increase of this type of call recently. In this instance it was an unidentified someone calling from and unknown number who wanted to know how I was going to vote on a certain amendment on November fourth.

Makes me guess that the politicos are some of the dead ringers infesting our woodwork.

Neither one of us are the type of person to be driven batty by noise, having raised five kids - noise is a given condition. But it does irk us that one of us has to go to the phone, look at caller ID and make the decision of whether to give some one an open door, so to speak, to come in and take more time than we wish to spare.

It seems to me that printed material such as magazine type periodicals or newspapers give a person a prerogative of ignoring commercial poof. Just turn the page or look over a column or back a column. Same way with radio and TV -- a quick retreat from objectionable material is easy by a channel change or a flick of the switch. Rental videos, folks can fast forward to the feature rather than suffer through all the fol de rol that is pushed at us. But the phone, the phone, that insane creature that lurks in the background ringing now and then, startling one or another of us who is prone to panic into thinking, "oh it must be terrible news about (insert the name of your choice) I better answer it quick."

Maybe someone should invent a small implant to the brain that gives caller ID on the phone that happens to be ringing in the house. Then the phone could merely be background noise, blending in with regular city or farm noise that surrounds us and could thus be totally ignored.

Ah, but that is why big money is being passed around, the attempt to make us sitting ducks waiting to be shot by the next commercial, political, polling or proselyting, phone call that happens.

As a citizen, a rather dense one I admit, it seems to me that the No Call List and the legalities bolstering it should have been molded to be challenge proof and now maybe reworked after the fact of being beaten to death something should be done. About the only thing I can say today is damnit, FIX IT . . . . . . . . . . .

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