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Net Neutrality: "Its a fetish" per Chairman Stevens

Submitted by Scott Cleland on Thu, 2006-09-21 17:46

I have to give National Journal's Tech daily and Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Ted Stevens (R-AK) the quote of the week award. In talking to reporters today after a brief visit to the PFF luncheon I attended today, Chairman Stevens had this to say about the Net neutrality supporters:

"There's no way you can appease the people" that support net neutrality, he said. "It's a fetish -- it's really something that doesn't exist. But they want to stop this bill because it might exist."

I couldn't agree more. After debating "these people" for several months the word fetish is apt. See the dictionary definition for fun: 
fet·ish also fet·ich (ftsh, ftsh)  Pronunciation Key  Audio pronunciation of [P]
n.

  1. An object that is believed to have magical or spiritual powers, especially such an object associated with animistic or shamanistic religious practices.
  2. An object of unreasonably excessive attention or reverence: made a fetish of punctuality.
  3. Something, such as a material object or a nonsexual part of the body, that arouses sexual desire and may become necessary for sexual gratification.
  4. An abnormally obsessive preoccupation or attachment; a fixation.

    fetish. (n.d.). The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Retrieved September 21, 2006, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/fetish

"Fetish" is the appropriate term for "net neutrality" for several reasons:
 
First, how else can you explain over a million supposed supporters of something that none of them can define or explain, but still arouses such great passion in them? 

Second, this term was only coined a few years ago by a law professor and only popped up as a term to be tracked in Google Trends in March; -- and nothing bad has been documented so far -- so I would say it is getting "unreasonably excessive attention or reverence."

Third, I find that liberal activists have an "abnormally obsessive preoccupation or attachment" to an issue that they can't point to in the real world, document, or explain. 
 
If this was a real concern and not a bogus issue, proponents could be rational, define the problem, substantiate and advance their point of view based on the merits, and be willing to compromise.

Unfortunately none of these points are true for net neutrality -- Chairman Stevens is right -- "its a fetish."  

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