Toss the Tam in Honor the Life of Mary Tyler Moore

Actress Mary Tyler Moore died at the age of 80 in Greenwich, Connecticut from complications stemming from pneumonia.  Moore had battled adult onset diabetes for decades and in 2011 she had undergone elective brain surgery to remove a benign meningioma.  

While Moore had several notable silver screen roles, including an Academy Award nominated performance in the drama Ordinary People (1981), she is best remembered as an actor for starring in two extremely successful television situation comedies, The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961-1966) and the eponymous Mary Tyler Moore Show (1970-1977).  

Moore and her husband Grant Tinker ran a production company which spawned many successful television series, such as the Mary Tyler Moore Show and its spin offs Rhoda, Lou Grant, Phyllis along with The Bob Newhart Show and WKRP in Cincinnati. 

The Mary Tyler Moore show depicted a thirty something news writer working in a television newsroom in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  At the time, it was daring to feature a career woman trying to make it on her own.  The opening credits famously finished with an exhuberant Moore tossing her tam in the air in a crosswalk, as a valedictory gesture that "you're going to make it after all".



The iconic sequence was immortalized in bronze by TV Land in 2002 as street art near a shopping center.  The statute is currently on location at a Visitors Center in Minneapolis while the sidewalks are being repaired.

In honor of Ms. Moore's passing, it is right to figuratively toss our tams and fondly remember one who turned the world on with her smile and know that she made it after all.

Ajit Pai on Federal Weed Whacking

Ajit Pai, who is poised to be named Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission by President Trump, will take a more free market approach to the FCC than his predecssor Tom Wheeler.  


This would involve whacking away at the unauthorized expansion of FCC regulatory authority, such as regulating the Internet through the guise of Net Neutrality.  Such a move, however, will be controversial, especially with those who favor the bureaucratic nanny state.

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Trump Poised to Name Net Neutrality Critic Ajit Pai as FCC Chair

[N.B. This article was originally published February 10, 2015]

Ajit Pai, a Republican member of the Federal Communications Commission, has become outspoken in his objections to the political imposition of Net Neutrality by what is supposed to be an independent Federal commission.

Commissioner Pai noted that: “It’s no wonder that net neutrality proponents are already bragging that it will turn the FCC into the “Department of the Internet. For that reason, if you like dealing with the IRS, you are going to love the President’s plan." 

Many progressives have rallied around the concept of Net Neutrality thinking that it is hurting corporations and encouraging competition.  What Commissioner Pai points out is that applying Title II regulation to the internet, which was designed for railroads and Ma Bell, will stifle competition and favor behemoth businesses because of the regulatory burdens.

Congressional critics such as Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) have likened Net Neutrality as being Obamacare for the Internet, regulations sold to lower prices and improve delivery but which in reality do the opposite while making Uncle Sam the undisputed middle man.

Another alarming feature of such broad regulation by the FCC is the relative obscurity in which the rules are being cobbled together.  President Obama pressured the FCC in November 2014 about Net Neutrality.  Chairman Tom Wheeler, who had been a big Obama fundraiser, is complying but promises to make some changes in Title II to make it better.  Oh, so a regulatory schemata which was drawn up in 14 can be tweaked to apply to the internet age.  Right. FCC Commissioner Mike O'Reilly warned the public about the dangers of forbearance as applied to Title II Common Carriers. 

There is the larger issue, however, about whether Congress ceded its legislative mantle to the FCC to strictly regulate the internet. If we hold fast to living in a constitutional democratic Republic, shouldn't our elected representatives, not bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people (or for that matter Men in Black) be crafting such momentous law?

UPDATE 01/23/2017  President Trump is poised to name Ajit Pai as Chairman of the FCC, replacing Democrat activist FCC Chair Tom Wheeler.  Pai has been a critic of the Commission's impetus to impose net neutrality and thereby expand the FCC's role into regulating the Internet. 

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