By now, I'm sure many of you have heard of this blogger's effort to subject Daily Kos to FEC regulations. I respectfully disagree with him (and so did the FEC, apparently).

Well anyway, whilst perusing the thread, I noticed a rather laughable lefty pretending that Republicans were trying to use the government to silence media outlets they didn't like. As a well-schooled media practitioner, I couldn't let that stand, and tried my hand uncorking an increasingly rare, civil but nonetheless righteous, rant. Windy, as it were, but righteous.

Enjoy (Comment #155).

I agree with the majority here that this is not only a bad idea, but has been decided upon already.

That said, I saw this old chestnut a ways back up in the thread, and it deserves a tangentially-related response:

"seems like a typical kneejerk response by today's brand of republicans -- instead of analyzing your own failure and trying to improve, you're looking at someone else's success and saying 'we have to get the government (which we hate, of course) to STOP IT.'"

READ THE RESPONSE BELOW THE JUMP; USE IT AT COCKTAIL PARTIES! --->

I just had to chuckle, because it is the Democrat Party that is braying about, voting for, and advocating the return of the Fairness Doctrine, for the sole purpose of shutting down conservative talk radio (talk radio is a programming format in which liberals have traditionally struggled greatly for commercial success due to a saturated media marketplace that already promotes their opinions in a variety of formats and styles, ie. Air America, NPR, PBS, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, newspapers, magazines, movies, music, etc.). For those keeping score, that's using the government to silence political opinions and speech they don't like. In the older days, this was known as the "Hush Rush" Doctrine. It still is.

Don't gimme the BS about "public airwaves." That was written in a day where any one radio dial (radio being the only broadcast medium available) had three or four frequencies TOTAL. It was written to keep frequencies from clashing with one another, and since there were so few, they had to be a bit more "balanced" because of the scarcity of frequencies. There are dozens of radio stations every 50 miles in this country, with all kinds of talk, news, subject matter, political opinion, etc. There is now the Internet, TV, cable, Direct TV, satellite radio, YouTube, print media, etc. There are many choices for media consumers - they are not forced to listen to conservative talk radio. You can find it on one or two frequencies per market, among dozens and dozens of other stations and formats in each market. Its called choice. People choose to listen to it, making it commercially viable. That's freedom. Restricting the choice is not freedom, and using the government to do it is de facto censorship. The Doctrine was struck down because it was overly restrictive and nearly killed the AM band (under a Democrat congress, no less). The threats to return it and to expand the FCC's power to regulate political opinions, programming, and content on the air are violations of the First Amendment, which I've seen quoted on this thread many times.

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press..."

Pretty straightforward. No laws governing speech, opinions, media or the press. If the clowns in government don't like it, they should find another line of work.

Trying to act like "Republicans" are moving to stifle liberal opinions using the government is laughable given the Democrats' recent efforts to "threaten" people with an outdated piece of archaic and Stalinist legislation that Hugo Chavez is implementing in his own country to cement his stranglehold on the government. Simply laughable.

Otherwise, this motion is a bad idea. Let Kos be Kos. Let Red State be Red State. Let Rush be Rush. Let Olbermann be Olbermann. We're all better off with more choices, not less. I think (or at least hope) we can all agree with that.

Posted by: Good Lt. at 10:55 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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