Debbie
Does Washington
The echoes of the garbled oath of office have hardly wafted away, but
the Democrats are talking "fairness doctrine".
In an exchange between Bill Press and Senator Debbie
Stabenow, they discuss bringing back the so-called "fairness doctrine".
They are avidly in favor of doing so. Bill Press says we should "bring
accountability to the airwaves." And, he asks Stabenow if she will push
for hearings. Will she? ... "Yep".
There is a lot of talk about transparency in
Washington today. It just sounds so ... well, upright. However, Debbie
does
not disclose a conflict of interest. Her husband, Tom Athans, has
interests in the radio field. In fact, he is co-founder of Democracy
Radio and is a former Air American Radio executive, which declared
bankruptcy. He is now with Talk USA Radio. None of these endeavors has
been very successful, commercially speaking. Getting rid of the
competition would help.
Seems the Dems are not happy with just having their
predominant speech in the Congress, Senate and the Executive branch. It
isn't enough for their President to command the airwaves anytime he
chooses to talk to the citizenry. The bully pulpit is very powerful. It
is not enough to have the predominantly left leaning newspapers in
their corner. It is not enough to have the TV news channels throwing
out their propaganda 24/7. They want to shut up the comparatively few
voices in talk radio. The reason is, of course, that those voices have
points of view that differ from all the lefties, and those points of
view make common sense.
The thought of "fairness" in the TV world is
intriguing. Can you imagine the News With Michael Savage and Wolf
Blitzer? How about the News With Katie Couric and Anne Coulter?
The thought of "fairness" coming to the coven of "The View" is
delicious. It would feature two or three conservatives
and the same number of liberals. As it is now, the cauldron is being
stirred by four liberals and a lonely conservative, who is often
out-shouted.
Think of Hollywood being forced to observe the
doctrine. Half the actors would be out of work if they had to employ
some conservatives. Half the work now given to Susan Sarandan; half the
work to Sean Penn. Maybe the Hollywood conservatives could come out of
the closet and get work again. It would only be fair that the
scriptwriters, producers, and all who work on the films be half and
half.
And, the newspapers. Half the coverage to
conservative news. It would probably save them from the sure bankruptcy
looming ahead for them. They refuse to present balanced news. Maybe if
they were forced to do so, they would get some readership back and make
some money.
In the sixties the lefties were on campus yelling
about free speech. Of course, they had it, or nobody would have ever
heard of them. Once they got into positions of power, free speech was
forgotten for conservatives. Professors now are predominantly leftist.
Time to turn that around with "fairness". All the deans, professors,
etc., would have to be certified half and half.
Can you see SNL with a conservative cast?
How about twelve hours a day NPR/PBS? Subscribers would probably pay
for it, without any subsidy from the U.S. government.
Could this work? No, because the lefties would be in
charge of determining what was fair. We have seen what they consider
fair. They are very good at naming things what they are not.
Now, to transparency. The President promised it.
However, there is a humongous "stimulus", (aka pork), bill in Congress
right now. Nobody really knows what is in the bill, as it is reportedly
about six hundred pages long. However, the president tells us that we
have to get this done right now or we are going into depression. Wasn't
that the same line used in the first bailout? The electorate is getting
fed up with the "wolf" calling bit.
Mayor Daley of Chicago has said his list of projects
will not be made public. He says that they will not put it out, because
once you do that, the newspapers and the media are going to be ripping
it apart. He said it is very controversial. Isn't that the job of the
papers and media, to shine some light on spending given by taxpayers?
Some transparency.
Murdoch and Soros can afford to finance talk radio
shows. They don't seem so inclined. They are hard businessmen and know
that liberal talk radio is not entertaining or even enlightening. Why
lose money on it?
So Bill Press and Debbie can dream on about getting
their leftist views out farther. They have freedom of speech. It's just
that not many want to hear it. This is always the mindset of lefties;
if they can't get it any other way, get the government to mandate it
and force it down the throats of the taxpayers.
Is this the "over-reaching" that the lefties have
always warned conservatives about? From all reports, the taxpayers are
not only getting restless, they are getting steamed.
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