Happy CB Radio day - a good 10-4 for that!

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Used to have CB rigs in my cars back in the 70's and 80's - a lot of fun when driving around. I was living in New England at the time and when driving the interstates, it was handy to avoid the speed traps. I still have two in my radio room - one rack mounted and one in my portable rig.

From Ed Driscol at PJ Media:

10/4! It’s National CB Radio Day
“Regardless of your feelings toward Jimmy Carter, I think we can all agree that his finest act as president was the creation of National CB Radio day. Carter designated October 4, 10/4, as a day to honor the citizens band,” Road and Track notes.

CB radio was hated by elites back in its faddish heyday, of course. Near the end of his mammoth (22,000 words!), otherwise beautifully-written profile of Johnny Carson for the New Yorker in 1978, Kenneth Tynan noted that while Carson was glad millions of America tuned in every night to make him exceedingly wealthy in the limited mass media era of only three national commercial TV channels, he loathed the idea that just anybody could have access to the airwaves as well. And of course, the man writing his profile for the New Yorker* concurred entirely:

Before I go, Carson takes me down to a small gymnasium beneath the module. It is filled with gleaming steel devices, pulleys and springs and counterweights, which, together with tennis, keep the star’s body trim. In one corner stands a drum kit at which Buddy Rich might cast an envious eye. “That’s where I work off my hostilities,” Carson explains. He escorts me to my car, and notices that it is fitted with a citizens-band radio. “I had one of those damned things, but I ripped it out after a couple of weeks,” he says. “I just couldn’t bear it—all those sick anonymous maniacs shooting off their mouths.”

I understand what he means. Most of what you hear on CB radio is either tedious (truck drivers warning one another about speed traps) or banal (schoolgirls exchanging notes on homework), but at its occasional—and illegal—worst it sinks a pipeline to the depths of the American unconscious. Your ears are assaulted by the sound of racism at its most rampant, and by masturbation fantasies that are the aural equivalent of rape. The sleep of reason, to quote Goya’s phrase, brings forth monsters, and the anonymity of CB encourages the monsters to emerge. Not often, of course; but when they do, CB radio becomes the dark underside of a TV talk show. No wonder Carson loathes it.

As Glenn Reynolds wrote back in 2003 at Tech Central Station (where I was also a regular contributor), Weblogs in their early days were often sneeringly compared to CB radio by elitist leftwing outlets such as Columbia Journalism School. Glenn added that  while “Citizens’ Band radio gets a bum rap nowadays... CB was a revolution in its time, whose effects are still felt today”

CB was a great leveler. If you didn't like what someone was broadcasting, you (and a bunch of friends) could shout them down. You could run your own channel on a different frequency or you could drive ten miles and get a new audience.

There were some a-holes but we pretty much policed ourselves.

For the canonical list of the 10- codes, see here: The Truckers Place

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on October 4, 2014 6:18 PM.

Losing the argument and getting desperate - climate change was the previous entry in this blog.

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