The Bell Curve -- Joseph N. Bell

I was halfway down our stairs the other day when the phone rang.

Because I was expecting a call on family matters I considered urgent, I

jumped -- as best I can jump these days -- down the rest of the steps to

get to the phone. In the process, I stepped on the dog who was lurking at

the foot of the stairs, barely caught myself from falling, and reached

the phone, gasping, on its last ring.

A woman with an accent I couldn’t define who called me “Joe” was on

the other end. She was, she told me, about to offer me an investment

opportunity no one in their right mind could possibly resist. I asked her

if she knew me, and she said “No,” and I said that normally people don’t

call me by my first name unless they know me. She hung up, then, before I

could make a further fool of myself.

This was not, of course, an isolated event. Because I work at home and

deal constantly with callbacks, I pick up the phone. And about a

half-dozen times a day, often at dinner time, it is someone sitting

before a bank of phones in a telemarketing sweatshop taking dead aim on

my sanity. Perhaps half of those calls come from telemarketers who punch

in several numbers at a time and take the first one to answer, leaving

the rest of us holding dead air.

For me, the most abominable thing about this insidious process is that

it deprives me of reason. When I’m angry, I’m totally ineffectual, and

I’m constantly angry at these people who invade my privacy and disrupt my

work rhythms. So I say hysterical things to some poor slug trying to

scratch out a living. And I don’t even dent the system.

Well, I have good news today. I’ve just been talking with an assistant

to California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer, and help is on the way. It will,

I’m assured, arrive on Jan. 1, 2003. That’s New Year’s Day.

It’s called SB 771, and it offers protection with real teeth in it

from the blight of telemarketing. The attorney general’s staff is still

working out the bugs, but here, basically, is what SB 771 will do: For a small fee per year (probably between $1 and $5) California residents can

be registered on a “do not call” list. This list will contain all of the

telephone numbers and ZIP Codes (but not the names and addresses) of

residential and telephone subscribers who do not want to receive

unsolicited phone calls.

The law requires solicitors to obtain copies of the “do not call” list

and prohibits them from calling protected numbers without written

permission. If they do, the person solicited in violation of this law can

bring a civil action in small claims court, first for an injunction, then

for up to $1,000 in damages. All the details are spelled out and the

terms defined in the bill, itself, which you can read at o7

www.Senate.CA.govf7 (under legislation).

It took three years to get this baby through the California

legislative system, but it’s going to happen. Meanwhile, the Federal

Trade Commission is considering a similar proposal on a national basis --

over the vocal opposition of a number of organizations that either use or

sell telemarketing. The Direct Marketing Assn., for example, says such

restrictions threaten free speech and would jeopardize millions of jobs

and billions in annual sales.

I would refer these people to former Supreme Court Justice Louis

Brandeis, who served when the Supreme Court ruled on constitutional and

not political issues and once observed that “the right to be left alone”

is one of the most sacred of American rights, even if not expressly

declared in the Constitution. I would also suggest to them that they have

their own excesses to blame for these draconian measures against

telemarketing.

Americans have a long history of remarkable patience with growing

excesses of both government and the private sector until they finally say

“enough.” Child labor laws grew out of such excesses. So -- among many

similar examples -- did broad-based labor unions, food and drug

legislation, laws against the poisoning of our air and waterways. Enron

merits the same attention. After telemarketing.

If we’re talking about two freedoms here -- the freedom of

entrepreneurs to use my telephone to harass me and my freedom “to be left

alone” -- it’s no contest. I win. And if these buzzards think that the

people they’ve been harassing won’t make the effort to take them to court

if they ignore the new restrictions, they’re wrong. I’d love to stick it

to the guy who hired that lady who violated my space to tell me about an

investment I couldn’t turn down.

A recent Pacific Bell survey quoted in the San Diego Union-Tribune

found that telemarketing calls are more unpopular than traffic jams or

paying taxes. Lockyer calls telemarketing “the No. 1 complaint of

California consumers.”

At last, help is on the way.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.