[NJ Spotlight; March 11, 2013]
Working as I do at the Eagleton
Institute of Politics, I have been receiving a number of inquiries about the
meaning and impacts of sequestration. After saying “I don’t know” and
sprinkling in a few phrases like “It wasn’t supposed to happen,” and “uncharted
territory,” I struggle for a relevant analogy or example that might be
illuminating. Now, I think I have found one.
Suppose
sequestration applied to the radio. More specifically, how would it change the folk
music and bluegrass program I host on Sunday evenings? Since the show is on
WPRB, the FM and internet station affiliated with Princeton University, it
probably would be covered under a set of guidelines for Broadcasts of Reasonably
Obscure Music Emanating from the Basement of College Dormitories.
If
we assume an across-the-board cut of 5%, my three-hour program would face a
reduction of nine minutes each week. No big deal, most would agree. Cut one
song off the beginning and one off the end and who will even notice? True, the
resulting silence for the first four or five minutes might lead some to
conclude that the program had been entirely eliminated, but if they really need
the musical services I offer, they ought to be willing to stick around to wait
for the show to open.
The
solution is simple and might end the conversation, but in this case simple
solutions were deliberately defined to be against the law. Sequestration was
designed to loom as such a complicated and unattractive threat that it would be
unthinkable for Congress not to act to prevent its implementation. As a result,
now that the unthinkable somehow became inevitable, merely cutting two songs
from my playlist would not be sufficiently disruptive to comply with the letter
or spirit of sequestration.
Instead,
I would need to make reductions to each of the services housed under the
program’s antenna – that is, each song would need to become 5% smaller. Since I
get to play about 50 songs and tunes per show, it follows that each would need
to be reduced by 10.8 seconds. The program would still be reduced by a total of
nine minutes, but the impact would be felt in every track. This policy could be
labeled as No Cut Left Uncut.
Critics
of sequestration will say this is an insane and unworkable outcome, but they
may have been turning a deaf ear to the extent to which waste, fraud and abuse
permeate much of the music we have long taken for granted. To begin with, choruses
are by definition repetitious. They are remnants of a bygone era when the daily
time deficits most of us now experience were not even on the horizon. Scrap one
or two and some songs could easily fit within the sequestration guidelines.
Others
could be shrunk by removing the virtually identical lines and verses that,
perhaps unknowingly, have been transplanted from one folk song to another literally
for centuries. This redundancy is often carried out under the guise of
continuing some sort of “folk tradition.”
Additional
savings could be realized by focusing on instrumental breaks. Removing any
number of seconds from a banjo or bagpipe solo, for example, would probably be applauded
as a public service, even by many who normally support generous appropriations
for those needing the services radio provides.
Thus,
despite all the uproar, a program could be brought into conformance with
sequestration requirements merely by eliminating duplication and waste. That,
however, is but one of three areas where further reductions are essential.
Identifying
lyrics that focus on any type of fraud or abuse must also remain high on the political/musical
agenda. Countless studies have identified old songs that seem to exist only to
lionize bank robbers and other outlaws or simply to chronicle the violence inflicted
by would-be, present and former lovers on one another. Most of these so-called
ballads could be rescinded in their entirety.
In
conclusion, sequestration could be considered a laughing matter -- if only it
didn’t apply to thousands of programs even more important than the one I do on
the radio.
*
John Weingart, Associate Director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics at
Rutgers University, also hosts Music You
Can’t Hear On The Radio on WPRB (103.3 FM & WPRB.com) on Sundays from
7:00-10:00 pm.
