The Liberal Unfairness Principle
A Liberal “Unfairness Principle”
As has been previously posted here, the whiners of the Leftinistra just don’t get it. They have lost their stranglehold on America and are lashing out and grasping for the invisible straw.
CBS News has “borrowed’ from National Review On-Line, an article with the above title. I have “borrowed” it from CBS.
Remember Jim Hightower? We didn’t think so. He was the former Texas state official who was, for a few minutes, the Left’s great hope for a liberal talk-radio host to challenge the domination of Rush Limbaugh. It didn’t work out. Neither did former New York governor Mario Cuomo, another failed radio talker. And neither did, most recently, Air America, the attempt to build an entire network of liberal talk.
Poor Jim Hightower. He and Mario Cuomo doesn’t get it, either. One of these days, hopefully sooner than later, these wanna-bes will finally see that they do NOT have the pulse of America and never have. If they had the pulse of America, folks would be flocking to them and those Big Bad Conservatives that have very successful radio shows which, are broadcasting from LIBERAL owned stations, would vanish. The Big Bad Limbaughs and the Hannitys and the Levins are reflecting what the MAJORITY of Americans think and feel. It really is that simple. Why else would the LIBERAL owned and operated radio stations keep them on the air? Conservatives are good for the Big Bad and Evil Profit Monster that the LIBERAL owned and operated radio stations maintain. Hello?
Nothing has worked too successfully for liberal political talkers. Rush, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham, among others, are as dominant as ever. The only thing that has changed is that liberals now seem less interested in challenging conservative talk radio in the marketplace than in strangling it with government regulation. And that presents a much greater threat than another misguided attempt to find the liberal Limbaugh.
Rush, Sean and Laura do indeed have the pulse of America. Why else would they be so successful on LIBERAL owned radio stations? And what are the LIBERAL owned radio stations doing with all that Big Bad and Evil Profit Mongering, anyway? I smell a Double Standard. And why do the Moonbats constantly attack them?
A new blueprint for a government takedown of conservative talk radio comes from the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, founded and run by former Clinton White House chief of staff John Podesta. In a report entitled, “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio ,” the Center outlines a plan that would, if implemented, do enormous damage not only to conservatives on talk radio, but to freedom of speech as well.
Surveying 257 stations owned by the top-five commercial station groups, the report’s authors found the unsurprising news that 91 percent of total weekday talk programming is conservative, and just nine percent “progressive.” Rather than attribute that imbalance to the generally conceded superiority of conservative programming - most radio professionals would tell you that Rush Limbaugh is simply better at what he does than any of the liberal opponents who have tried to compete with him - the report finds a deeper, more sinister case. “The gap between conservative and progressive talk radio,” it concludes, “is the result of multiple structural problems in the U.S. regulatory system. ” According to Podesta’s Center, those structural problems can only be solved by government action.
“Progressive”. The other name for “Liberal”, “Socialist”, “Leftinistra”. Not surprisingly, the Center for American Progress doesn’t get it, either. “The Gap” they refer to is “The Gap” between their ears. There are no “structural problems in the US regulatory system”. Big Brother helps nothing. More “government action” helps nothing. Unless, naturally, one wants Big Brother to dictate all there is to dictate for the stupid people that cannot help themselves and are 100% dependent on Big Brother for up to and including the proper use of toilet paper and the quantity of sheets per use.
The “problem” missed by yet another socialist “can’t” think tank is the American people are sick and tired of groups like this retarded Can’t Think Tank.
The report proposes new national and local limits on the number of radio stations one company can own. For another, it recommends a de facto quota system to ensure that more women and minorities own radio stations. And finally, it says the government should “require commercial owners who fail to abide by enforceable public interest obligations to pay a fee to support public broadcasting.”
More free give-away crap for folks that cannot make it on their own because NO ONE WANTS TO LISTEN TO THEIR SOCIALIST CRAP!
The two-for-the-price-of-one attempt to have the government both stifle voices that don’t meet “enforceable public interest obligations” while raising money for government broadcasting is certainly a worthwhile strategy for the Left. Not for free speech and free markets, however.
Exactly so.
In addition, the report claims that the Fairness Doctrine - the government rule that, before it was repealed in 1987, required broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints on controversial public issues - might not really be dead, and thus might not have to be reestablished by Congress. Instead, a new administration might simply decide to enforce it again. That point is highly debatable, but it wouldn’t be surprising if President Clinton, President Obama, or President Edwards were to give it a try.
Whatever it takes to silence the voices of opposition to socialism, eh?
The fact is, liberals simply haven’t attracted talk-radio audiences. It’s not their market. But since they still largely have Hollywood, academia, the New York Times, PBS, NPR, a network news division or two … they’ll survive. And we on the Right will, too, if we keep the Center for American Progress’s dangerously wrongheaded ideas off the table.
How about a trade-off. The socialists get the radios and the conservatives take over Hollywood? Any takers?
Related articles of note:
Air America sold: gee, I wonder why
Air America files chapter 11: gee, I wonder why
UPDATE!!
RUSH Limbaugh, the conservative talk-radio pioneer, has been called many nasty things before, but never a “structural imbalance.” That’s the fancy term a liberal think tank uses to characterize his success - and to dress up its proposal for counteracting that success through new government regulation.
The report of the Center for American Progress on “The Structural Imbalance of Political Talk Radio” marks the latest phase in liberaldom’s grappling with conservative talk radio. First came the attempts to create a liberal Limbaugh - Mario Cuomo, Jim Hightower, et al. - that fell flat. Then an entire left-wing network, Air America, was founded, and foundered. So there’s only one option left - if you can’t beat them, and you won’t join them, you can agitate for government to regulate them.
The report looks at a slice of 257 talk stations and concludes that more than 90 percent of total weekday talk programming is conservative. The supposed reason for this is, essentially, that media companies are conspiring to shove conservative radio down the throats of listeners in a way they couldn’t if, among other things, government required broadcasters “to regularly show that they are operating on behalf of the public interest.”
This is a pinched view of radio. There are upward of 2,000 U.S. talk stations that deal with news and issues, according to Michael Harrison of Talkers magazine, and they encompass all sorts of formats from National Public Radio to urban radio to shock jocks, none of which are dominated by right wingers. Conservative talk radio is a vibrant niche within that market, but there are many other places to go for news and opinion.
UPDATE 2: Jack Kelly has a great comment in the last paragraph.
I see this every day at the very liberal newspaper where I work. Conservatives often write angry letters to the editor, criticizing the arguments made in an editorial, or what they perceive as the slant in a news story. Liberals unhappy with my columns often demand that I be fired. They object not just to my point of view, but to the fact that it was expressed. Scratch a liberal, and you’ll often find a fascist underneath.
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I would not trade talk radio for film. I’d prefer to keep talk radio in our camp and grab film in the long term.
This is one excellent article. Two thumbs up!!
I’ll go with that.
We may eventually have to go with underground radio broadcasts as the betrayal continues to unfold…Radio Free America is a foreseeable reality.
The “writing on the wall” was clearly imprinted when Imus took a powder.
Good article Snooper!
When one agrees lock-step and barrel with the Leftinistra, all is well.
I hear the drums.