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This DCist lives in an apartment building that not only has a PA system but keeps that PA system tuned to the satellite radio 80s station. We begin our day with Depeche Mode no matter what. When you think about it, you’re forced to listen to music in many places, whether it’s the staple jazz bleating from Starbucks speakers or the minstrels of the metrorail stations. But it’s one thing when “Banana” provides you a bossa nova soundtrack for your BoBO shopping and quite another when the government has its hand on the dial. Because everything is government here in D.C., and not just government but the federal government, the Supreme Court had the chance to take up the interesting free speech questions involved in the case Public Utilities Commission v. Pollak.
Before the days of red lines, and green lines and blue lines -- oh, my! -- D.C. was a streetcar city. Beginning in the 1910s, trolleys and buses began a sort-of-peaceful coexistence on the D.C. roadways. The Capital Transit Company operated a bus and streetcar company, under a franchise from Congress. In 1948, the company decided to experiment with an in-car radio program. The local radio stations would pay Capital Transit to play its feeds in its street cars and buses, on the condition that the programming met certain standards of quality, taste and minimal advertising. Capital Transit initially made $15,000 off the deal, and stood to make over $100,000 (think Uncle Scrooge’s money vault in 1948 currency) if it installed the receivers in all of its cars.
The Public Utilities Commission, which regulated the transit company, decided to investigate whether the program was “consistent with public convenience, comfort and safety.” After conducting a survey that found that only 3% of passengers were staunchly against the radio system, the Commission gave the program a green light. But Franklin Pollak, an angry passenger -- obviously unhappy with the Bing Crosby he was subjected to day in and day out -- intervened in the case and appealed it to the federal district court. That court ruled in their favor, at least with respect to the commercials and other announcements.
Pollak’s arguments, which the Supreme Court curtly rejected, were based on the First and Fifth Amendments. The radio program interfered with his free speech rights to make conversation and to listen only to what he wanted to hear. Moreover, he argued, the government -- insofar as it controlled the transit company -- was invading his right to privacy.
When the case hit the Supreme Court, Justice Frankfurter, the eminent legal realist, sat this one out. He was concerned he would be impartial because "[his] feelings were so strongly engaged as a victim of the practice in controversy," i.e., he hated having to listen to the radio. The rest of the court, however, told the plaintiff passengers to, in a phrase, deal with it. The commercials did not constitute “objectionable propaganda” sufficient to sustain a First Amendment violation. On the Fifth Amendment issue of privacy and liberty, the court argued that, outside the home, the majority rules:
This position wrongly assumes that the Fifth Amendment secures to each passenger on a public vehicle regulated by the Federal Government a right of privacy substantially equal to the privacy to which he is entitled in his own home. However complete his right of privacy may be at home, it is substantially limited by the rights of others when its possessor travels on a public thoroughfare or rides in a public conveyance. Streetcars and busses.. are for the common use of all of their passengers. The Federal Government in its regulation of them is not only entitled, but is required, to take into consideration the interests of all concerned.
Back then, people liked having the radio. Today's metrorail system, by contrast, is almost eerily quiet. People listen to their iPods and read the Express and generally keep to themselves. Nevertheless, the distinction between public and private spaces, on which this opinion rests, continues to drive the court’s jurisprudence to this day. Recent cases on everything from drug-sniffing dogs to gay rights have turned on the idea that a man’s home is his castle, but you might have to listen to someone else’s muzak while you cross the moat.
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This is a great post, but I have yet to ride on an eerily quiet metro train. Even riding late at night I seem to get the car with loud headphones guy or let me tell everyone on the train what I'm doing this weekend girl.
Question: many other subway systems have buskers all over the place, in stations and on trains. Is DC more strict in keeping street musicians out, or am I just not riding the trains that they're on?
I'm sure buskers have been chased off the trains enough times to never want to risk coming back. The most I have experienced in three years of riding Metrorail is folks clandestinely selling pirated CD's and Duracell knock-offs. They do so silently, further proving that Metro's rules have become deeply engrained customs that residents will overtly seek to uphold.
Ok, Stare DCisis is now my officially favoritest weblog series evar. This entry, like all others before it, rules.
And RavenT, if I'm not mistaken WMATA has pretty strict rules about keeping buskers out. Every once in a while I'll come across someone singing or playing harmonica, but I think it's happened twice in two years of riding. They're also pretty strict about keeping panhandlers out of the stations themselves, something that I'm appreciative of- from the perspective of how they impede the flow of the stations.
Judy's so fun!
This was a great piece! The comments about the current metro system did bring something to mind. While I kind of enjoy street musicians, and wish there were more in the metro system, I absolutely dispise the public service announcements that regularly blare through the loudspeakers in the stations. You know the ones: "In town like this, no one wants to leave a paper trail..."
While I respect and appreciate the need to keep riders updated on legitimate issues, I really don't want to ride a transit system that broadcasts Orwellian messages telling its passengers not to eat on the metro or leave your newspapers behind. I mean, if they really have to air those messages, at least stop trying to be witty about it. After hearing the message 30 times, sure, I won't leave my newspaper on the car, but I just might rip the speakers out of the wall. Anyway, sorry for the rant and thanks for the great post!
I am a minstrel of the Metro myself (and man, I wish I had thought of that moniker myself). The reason you see so few musicians in our stations is that it's illegal here, whereas other cities, notably NYC with its "Music Under New York", have programs that musicians can audition for and then sign up for time slots at stations where there are designated spots. As a result, there is some competition over the more lucrative - and less patroled - stations among buskers in D.C., and we are frequently warned to leave or issued citations. Some regulations, such as keeping a certain distance from outdoor escalators, are warranted. But it's curious and frustrating that Examiner and Express doler-outers are given free reign. The former tend to use it to bombard passengers as they arrive at the top, and to block access to our instrument cases. Ah well.
Washington, D.C. the final colony. We've pushed
demo-crazy around the world. When will we begin to fullfill our own ethics of freedom.
Self governing and esteem. July 12, I will report to D.C. Superior court to undergo the charges of musical pan-handeling, (there is no violation code as we know it), Sorry,.
This will be the third trial for me in fifteen years of bucking the system. My rights as native born Wasington, D.C. United States of America, will be challenged and rendered a verdic, hopefully as the jury did in 1987, and 1993.
NOT GUITY!!! ???
The real intent is to keep the home folks at a distance from the tourist and to fulfill that capitolist greed within the apartied systems of the federal city act of the congress and friednds. I write this from the beutiful city of Leipzig (music capitol of Bach, Mendelsohn and Chopin. I'll time from my music life to render my contribution to Hollywood of the east.
see you there. MAYBE! Raycurt.com
apartied? You mean apartheid? You really mean to tell me that laws prohibiting busking are equal to enforced segregation, racial slaughter, and systematic exclusion of native Africans from employment?
Perhaps this is governed by a lesser known corollary of Godwins Law