Watch for who owns your mind.

Clear Channel owns (at least one) billboard in Times Square. It had agreed to lease the space to a group called Project Billboard; but when Clear Channel saw the billboard drawing, Clear Channel backed out of the agreement. The billboard wias t be a red white and blue bomb- with "Democracy is best taught by example, not by war" written beneith.

Clear Channel contends they are worried only about the bomb imagery, and would allow the sign with a red white and blue dove. Project Billboard tells a different story (fro the Times):

Last night, the president and chief executive of Clear Channel, Paul Meyer, said the company had objected to the group's use of "the bomb imagery" in the proposed billboard. Mr. Meyer said Clear Channel had accepted a billboard that would replace the bomb with a dove.
...
Told of Mr. Meyer's comments, Mr. Wolfson said that earlier, Clear Channel had rejected the ad with the dove as well as the one with the bomb, demanding that the words be changed, too. "It's news to us, and not reflected in any prior communications between Clear Channel and Project Billboard," Mr. Wolfson said last night. "This contradicts Clear Channel's demand that the copy be changed."

Who you gonna trust, I reckon.

Of course, Clear Channel did, in the latest election cycles, donate a bit over $300,000, almost entirely to Republicans.

And the fear of bomb imagery is understandable. But, does a corporation with such fears support pro-war rallies? From the Guardian last year:

They look like spontaneous expressions of pro-war sentiment, "patriotic rallies" drawing crowds of tens of thousands across the American heartland.
In a counterpoint to anti-war demonstrations, supporters of war in Iraq have descended on cities from Fort Wayne to Cleveland, and Atlanta to Philadelphia. They wave flags, messages of support for the troops - and also banners attacking liberals, excoriating the UN, and in one case, advising: "Bomb France Now."

But many of the rallies, it turns out, have been organised and paid for by Clear Channel Inc - the country's largest radio conglomerate, owning 1,200 stations - which is not only reporting on the war at the same time, but whose close links with President Bush stretch back to his earliest, much-criticised financial dealings as governor of Texas. The company has paid advertising costs and for the hire of musicians for the rallies.

Who you gonna trust? If Clear Channel is saying they have no agenda, I'll trust them about as far as I can throw a stick.

postscript. the best line from the Times story reads:

Terry and Jim Baugh, two Californians strolling north on Seventh Avenue, said the image of the bomb bordered on treason. "That looks like they're trying to blow up America," said Mrs. Baugh, 59, a retired dental hygienist.

Indeed.