Two years into the Obamanation reign of terror, brave conservative patriots gather weekly for Radio Free K-Lo and mayonnaise sandwiches.
Mark Steyn, writing at the NRO, is now in full-on black helicopter conspiracy mode, and we have not even had the election yet:
That’s Obama: highbrow enough for Christopher Buckley, Euro-bespoke (not sure where he gets his smokes these days – he’s a bit coy on that), but an old-fashioned Chicago bruiser who’ll order in anyone from Missouri sheriffs to the federal Justice Department if you run a TV ad he finds unhelpful.
An Obama-Pelosi Washington with 60 Senate seats would reintroduce the (Un)Fairness Doctrine, regulate the Internet, and wouldn’t be above oomphing up Canadian-style “human rights” commissions to police speech – especially if he gets to appoint three Supreme Court justices in short order.
The latest mania seems to have been caused by this piece by Michael Barone, entitled The Coming Obama Thugocracy. And what has Mr. Barone in such a snit? This:
That’s what Obama supporters, alerted by campaign emails, did when conservative Stanley Kurtz appeared on Milt Rosenberg’s WGN radio program in Chicago. Kurtz had been researching Obama’s relationship with unrepentant Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers in Chicago Annenberg Challenge papers in the Richard J. Daley Library in Chicago — papers that were closed off to him for some days, apparently at the behest of Obama supporters.
Obama fans jammed WGN’s phone lines and sent in hundreds of protest emails. The message was clear to anyone who would follow Rosenberg’s example. We will make trouble for you if you let anyone make the case against The One.
That is correct. Michael Barone and Mark Steyn, brave patriots each, winded from the past eight years of nobly fighting the Islamofascists as Generals in the 101st Chairborne, are terrified of… a firmly written note.
This is going to be the longest eight years ever. And some of the most fun.
ThymeZone
I think what we have seen in the last week is a shift in the Republican approach to this.
I think that they are no longer trying to get McCain elected, because they know that this is not going to happen.
Instead, they are sending McCain and Palin out to be basically heat shields on a nosecone whose target is not the election, but the coming Obama administration.
Their goal is to do to Obama what they did to Clinton, which is to surround the new administration with a noisy wall of confused but effective angry, nasty bullshit. A background of doubt and dark suggestions that takes the edge off the power of the new president and his ability to get his job done.
In 1992, they didn’t start this before the election. This time, they are starting before the election. They are conceding the election, maybe even assuring it at this point, and plotting for battles that will be fought a year from now.
SamFromUtah
@ThymeZone:
I bet you’re right. So far, Obama has been good at seeing the bullshit coming and handling it. I can imagine that he and his team have made contingency plans of some sort, because his opponents are plenty predictable.
I hope they do, adjusting their expectations to "Like what happened to Clinton, times a million."
You give the rightards more credit for foresight than I do, though. I think their plan is not for a year out, but looks more like "scream and cry until we get our way, starting now, ending, well, never."
demkat620
John,
The 90’s were not fun. The unhinged, raw, screaming, inchoate rage of these assholes was not amusing then or now.
The only thing worse than them being in power is them out of power.
Obama will be treated as an illegitimate president no matter how big his win.
John Cole
@demkat620: This is not the nineties, and most of the people forming the majority of the new Democratic party had their political will forged in the last 15 years by the antics of these jackasses. It will be different.
liberatemeiexinfernis
hey Comrade John,
Post that video of Mooselini getting booed tonight at the Flyers hockey game. its up on Kos. Hilarious!
r€nato
ThymeZone has it exactly right.
These people are dangerous. You know, those of us on the left even managed to resign ourselves to Bush’s stolen presidency in 2000 when, if the shoe had been on the other foot, you better believe there would have been right-wingers picking up guns and I have no doubt Bush and the GOP would not have graciously conceded once all legal avenues had been exhausted.
The right – as presently constituted – clearly will never regard any Democrat as a legitimately-elected president, even if he wins in a landslide.
(let’s not forget the attempted right-wing coup against FDR in the 1930s, something most Americans know nothing about and would regard you as a nutter if you told them about it)
This is anti-democratic and even un-American. Our country is one of the very few which has a strong tradition of the peaceful transfer of power after an election. How can this survive, how can we even move forward to deal with the crises we face, when the right-wing noise machine is preparing to program their sheep to refuse to respect the results of a legitimate election?
MAX HATS
I remember in 2000, when republicans had control of all three branches of government, thinking "now they’ll stop whining." Ah, those were the days.
The republican party is The Fat Kid. An intolerable screaming fit if shunned, a loudmouth bully if appeased.
John Cole
@liberatemeiexinfernis: Nah- Philadelphia fans would boo anything. I am surprised they didn’t throw shit at her. Booing Palin means nothing.
Raenelle
Trust me on this. It will not be fun. One of the reasons I resigned myself to Gore’s defeat with just a whimper was that I just could NOT stand up to their assaults–sheer exhaustion, a draining, after all the bile and hate and, even worse, the sheer illogic. It’s not fun. Remember those dogs greeting the Iraq vet–reverse that feeling, then amp it WAY up. Unreasoning hatred aimed at you and everything you stand for is completely debilitating, a wasting disease.
NonyNony
Well, this finally explains to me why they’re so terrified of Democrats gaining power. There’s nothing like a Democratic controlled Congress for the generation of firmly written notes.
@demkat620:
You have that backwards. The last 8 years has shown is that there’s very little that’s worse than having them in power. At least when they’re out of power all we have to do is listen to their whines. When they’re in power they get to fuck things up and we still have to listen to their damn whining.
Michelle
This is what they are afraid of:
http://michilines.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/obama.jpg
The preview doesn’t show that this image will work but here goes. . .
kommrade jakevich
I don’t know what you’re also taking for your cold my friend, but its side-effects include massive amounts of win.
But!
Oo, shocking. No fReichtard would ever dream of engaging in such scurrilous tactics. Why, those dastardly Dems will be checking counter tops and stalking permanently disabled children next. I feel faint.
By the same people who either think George Bush is the greatest pResident evar or are claiming he’s too liberal. The fact that a bunch of lunatics don’t like Obama will be proof of his legitimacy.
Michelle
I didn’t want that link to my blog, I wanted the image. Oh, well.
JL
We need to support our candidate and just vote early if you can. Here in GA, it would not surprise me if the
folks came down from the hills to cause problems. Vote early if you can.
Just Some Fuckhead
I practically ejaculate at the thought of bringing back the fairness doctrine. I hope Steyn’s right. OTOH, preventing rightwingers from using the intertoobz will leave us with no one to point and laugh at. That would be a tragedy.
demkat620
I hope so. Because some of the rhetoric they threw at the Clintons was beyond ugly. And that was just what they talked about on the floor of the House.
The Moar You Know
With regard to the right, I plan on giving them exactly what they want – four years of furious, uncompromising persecution, jammed phone lines, mockery, bullying, countertop inspections, lawsuits and accusations of treachery. It’s what they want – why should I disappoint?
Hell, I’m gonna order a pack of these, in brown. Hello, second career as a brownshirt!
Jeffro
I told my brother last week that I thought the Rovian high command of the fRightwing had given up on McCain, and were only in it now to set up three themes that will fuel their supporters’ outrage (in addition to many, many think tanks’ fundraising drives and right-wing radio listenership) for the next eight years:
1) McCain wasn’t a true conservative…conservatism cannot fail, it can only be failed.
2) The media was in the tank for Obama from the get-go, and therefore needs to be dumped on at every opportunity.
3) Palin will be – I dunno, what’s the term for a living martyr? Arch-demagogue?
The great thing is, none of these things will reconstitute the modern Republican party (see also, Brooks, Parker, Buckley Jr.)
If Obama can solve even a few of our ever-mounting problems and keep people reassurred of his steady leadership, Repubs will keep losing. LOVE IT.
Dave_No_Longer_Laughing
You assholes. The "fairness doctrine" is totalitarian, un-American shit.
Gold Star for Robot Boy
Good gravy, when did Republicans turn into such pussies?
Just Some Fuckhead
The airwaves belong to ALL the people, you fascist cumbucket.
John Cole
Personally, not a fan of the fairness doctrine, myself.
The Moar You Know
I understand. It’s all good so long as the right and only the right gets to own the airwaves.
Those days are over, my friend. I consider restoration of the Fairness Doctorine to be on the "first 100 days" list.
Leo
This is an opportunity. I know some of you have read Nixonland: How did Richard Nixon deal with the dirty hippies who despised him? He made sure they were on TV as often as possible. By doing so, he helped encourage the fissure between the Democratic activist base and the center-left that has hobbled the Democrats ever since.
We can do the same thing to the right. The bile and hatred will reach fever pitch over the next months and years. And we should make sure that the very worst of it is on the evening news.
I hope that 30 years from now we will still be watching Republican candidates for president ritualistically dissociate themselves from their base. Let’s see them Sister Soulja for a while.
Just Some Fuckhead
Well, you’ve got a long and storied history of being wrong. I don’t, so I’m going with me on this one.
28 Percent
You do not understand the Fairness Doctrine is not fair because it gives time to LIEBERALS to pre-empt the superbowls and the worlds series and the Olympics ALL AT THE SAME TIME. It is unfair because it is not what the people want to see and it is not what the broadcasters want to show if they did they would show it that is called FREEDOM.
You will all shout me down and say nasty things about me just like Mr. Kurtz who is a good man I know that is because you do not respect my freedom of speech enough to SHUT UP.
Comrade Warren Terra
Yup, war by strongly worded letter. Out with "Shock And Awe", in with "Shocked And Appalled".
boonagain
@Just Some Fuckhead:
When you’re right…
Just Some Fuckhead
@28 Percent: lolz, ty.
Xenos
Not a fan of the fairness doctrine either, but when one party is devoted to corporatism, and said corporate masters dominate the airways, some regulation of free speech is better than the destruction of free speech.
And it is a wonderful way to tell Rush and Hannity "Suck. On. This." And that is something that really needs to be said.
It is the liberal ANWR. Does not make a difference, but drives the other side batshit crazy. I think we lefties deserve some fun for once.
JL
I hate to sound paranoid but here goes.. yesterday McCain tried to tone down his audience after a week plus of hatred. We all asked why. Suppose he was approached by an agency who knew that groups were planning violence on election day, who told him enough. Unfortunately, he did tone it down but his vp candidate did not. Who would be responsible according to the MSM. Probably not McCain cause he toned his comments down. Hate to rant but we need to vote early if we can.
Alan
Why bring back the Fairness Doctrine? The unhinged antics of the RW is one of the main reasons I’ll be voting a straight Democratic ticket this year. This after 25 years of voting Republican. The more they’re out there unhinged in all their glory the more they drive people away.
Alan
oops double post
The Moar You Know
@28 Percent: Buddy, if by FREEDOM you mean TITTIES and GUNS, I’m in. Let me know what channel it’s on.
phobos
When it was still in effect, the fairness doctrine was barely noticeable. The opposing view presentations were usually aired in the wee hours of Sunday, at least from what I remember.
El Cid
Just a heads up: Republicans, you can pull out all the anti-Clinton style hate screeches and multiply them.
But you’re not going to get your way this time. This time, we will f***ing stop you.
Unlike 1992, nobody is going to forget what you f***ers did to this country.
And unlike 1992, you f***ers won’t be anywhere near influencing Congress.
F*** you a**holes.
Bring it on. Try your best at "Clinton Chronicles II: the Obamanation" if you like.
But you f***ers are going to lose this time. This time, you will not Gingrich scream and Rush yell and Fox Nooz your way into influence. We don’t give a sh*t how many Wall Street Journal editorials are on your side. YOU WILL EAT YOUR SH*T AND F***ING LIKE IT.
Just Some Fuckhead
Um, so the other half of the political spectrum can get some airtime? I ain’t asking for motherfucking Pravda, just equal time on our collective airwaves.
Ed Marshall
JSFH, have you really thought about the fairness doctrine? I used to be a fan, but when I look at the model of liberal journalism the fairness doctrine is the worst of all worlds.
If there was no fairness doctrine, everyone would be CNN. I say the world is round, fairness dictates I find some dipshit that says it’s flat.
I’d totally prefer a meteor that flattened the whole idea of "liberal journalism". You listen to what you listen to, you know you are imbibing in a certain political slant. It beats the hell out of watching one person claim that 2+2=2 and the other guy claims 2+2=4 and having the consensus explain that obviously that means 2+2=3.
Rick James
And often, bitches!
DaveA
As someone who lived through the Nineties (and for that matter, the Seventies and Eighties), no, we aren’t due for a rerun. Love him or hate him, Bill Clinton brought a crap load of…well…crap with him. From Gennifer-with-a-G-Flowers through Whitewater, the Mena airport, the Rose Law Firm and about 847 things I’m forgetting, there was plenty of grist for the right-wing media mill, even before Monica. BO hasn’t got that. The whole "radical rhymes-with-bigger Muslim" meme will die early on after he doesn’t impose Sharia and appoint some old Black Panther secretary of defense. Obama’s problem isn’t the GOP. At this point, that party (where my sympathies still lie) is a hopeless wreck. His problem is that the global economy has gone to crap and no one knows where the bottom is. Talk about the booby prize: whoever wins just cashed in on it.
NonyNony
The Fairness Doctrine is old news. It might have been a good idea to bring it back in the 90s, but that ship has now sailed.
The important thing now is to keep Net Neutrality. The Intertubez make it very easy for folks to get their own message out right now, but of course the pols and the corps don’t like that, so they want to ditch the nice and easy way that the Intertubez work these days and put something into place that makes it easier for them to control the message (mostly by being able to manipulate the costs of getting your message out – he who controls the presses and all that).
Fighting for the Fairness Doctrine is mostly "fighting the last war" stuff. Radio is a mostly dying enterprise and TV news networks have done their damndest over the last 2 decades to make themselves untrustworthy to their viewers. But keeping the Intertubez free and clear for messaging is where the 21st century battle for the airwaves needs to take place.
Just Some Fuckhead
@Ed Marshall: Ed, I’m quite familiar with the fairness doctrine and both of your examples are horseshit. The fairness doctrine doesn’t apply to science or math.
Comrade Stuck
n a perfect world, I would agree. The problem is the monopolistic thuggery the right conducts on the radio waves. I’ve listened to left wing radio for several years now, especially Ed Schultz and the canard that people won’t listen to liberal talk is bullshit served up by wingnuts to hide their suppression of more stations carrying libtalk. Primarily Clear Channel and other Murdoch operations. Right before the 2004 election, Murdoch had a clause in his contract with XM (he helped fund them initially) that said he could control Talk programming and he did. He pulled Schultz off the air and others until after the election. Whether a fairness doctrine is needed to fix this and other monopolies in the TV and newspaper market, I don’t know. But something has to be done before one or two media giants run the whole fucking show and we swallow what they say or just STFU. And that includes letting Comcast and other wingnut web providers control the net, if a neutrality law isn’t passed.
Ed Marshall
That was not what I was trying to say.
Can you give me a long answer on why the end result wouldn’t be "golden means fallacy"?
ThymeZone
Me either, for a lot of reasons, the biggest of which is that it creates a false basis for measuring information value.
Most importantly, it creates the completely false expectation that the manufacturer of information is responsible for its effects. This is like suggesting that McDonalds is responsible for obesity. If we can just legislate better food, people will be healthier.
Bzzt. Wrong. And most people get that. Yet most of those same people don’t seem to get it when it comes to information. People who understand that they are responsible for their diets when it comes to food, are ready to surrender that accountability when it comes to their information. Nutty. But there it is.
You and you alone are responsible for the quality of the information you process, and for knowing how to judge that quality, and to understand what you are consuming. Asking for "balance" in the flow is the first step in walking away from a responsibility that is inherently your own and must always be your own. As soon as you give someone else the control over your information and the processes you apply to it, you are just another target for manipulation.
Don’t ask for balance. Ask for accuracy in facts, and honesty in presentation. If the presenter is a liberal, ask him to say so and to be forthright about it. Or conservative. Or seeking God’s dominion on earth. Or whatever. Just tell me what you think you saw, and what your own viewpoint is based on, and I will take it from there. I don’t need an interpreter between me and my information, and I don’t need a phony "doctrine" to control the flow.
cyntax
I’d prefer to do away with Fairness Doctrine but substitute stricter definitions of what constitutes a monopoly in the media business. I think when the fairness doctrine is applied on a given topic (as Ed Marshall was describing) you enable the Overton Window effect.
When you look at the effect that Clear Channel can have on what we get to see and hear, the Fairness Doctrine has some validity. But if there weren’t as many media conglomerates, we’d have a better chance of getting multiple viewpoints but without mandating them (which never really works the way you’d like it to).
Xenos
TZ, you forget the issue of enforceability. For all the flaws, the fairness doctrine can be enforced. The honesty or accuracy doctrines can not be measured objectively, much less enforced.
Bruce Moomaw
Barone says: " In September, St. Louis County Circuit Attorney Bob McCulloch and St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce warned citizens that they would bring criminal libel prosecutions against anyone who made statements against Obama that were ‘false.’ "
According to the Sept. 29 St. Louis Beacon, this is flatly false:
"St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce and St. Louis County Prosecuting Attorney Bob McCulloch have denied that they plan criminal prosecutions against those making false statements about Sen. Barack Obama. Gov. Matt Blunt issued a statement on Saturday likening the prosecutors’ involvement in an Obama ‘truth squad’ to the Sedition Acts that made criticism of the president a crime.
" ‘Nobody on this truth squad had any interest in prosecuting anybody,’ Joyce said through a spokesperson. McCulloch refused to comment on Monday. Last Friday, he told KMOX’s Mark Reardon that neither he nor Joyce had any plan to file criminal charges. ‘If there is something that is clearly completely false that has no basis in truth, yeah I’ll be happy to step up and say that just isn’t true.’ McCulloch said he would be taking that stand as a private citizen, not a prosecutor.
"Blunt issued the statement criticizing the prosecutors a day after the conservative blogosphere erupted over claims that the prosecutors might file criminal charges against those criticizing Obama. The News-Leader.com has a story on some of the background. It notes that McCain truth squads also include prosecutors.
"The controversy started after a KMOV report last week that McCulloch and Joyce have joined an Obama ‘truth squad.’ Sen. Claire McCaskilll announced formation of the truth squad. KMOV reported that the squad plans to challenge anyone who claims that Obama is not a Christian or that he doesn’t want to reduce taxes on the middle class.
"The KMOV reporter said that the prosecutors would be looking for violations of ethics laws, although the on-air comments of the prosecutors did not mention prosecutions. Joyce’s spokesperson said that the prosecutors did not plan to look for ethics violations and, in fact, could not act on ethics violations without a referral from the Missouri Ethics Commission.
"The KMOV report was picked up by Matt Drudge and Rush Limbaugh and ignited the conservative blogosphere. A host of conservative bloggers maintained that the prosecutors were clearly implying criminal libel prosecutions. There is no mention of criminal libel prosecutions in the report, nor would such prosecutions be constitutional."
Nylund
Funny how no one seems to mention that the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the board Obama and Ayers both were on, was started and funded by Walter Annenberg, the staunch conservative who served in the US government under Nixon and has raised tons of money for Republicans for decades. Here he is with St. Ronnie in 1981:
I guess that means they’re terrorists too?!
SamFromUtah
@DaveA: Bill Clinton brought a crap load of…well…crap with him. […] BO hasn’t got that.
These days, the wingnuts will just make stuff up, so not sure it matters what Obama’s negatives actually are.
jcricket
I was thinking, on the way home from a park with my 2-year old, how do right-wingers see things the way they do?
I’m not talking about political principles – I understand how someone could come to different conclusions about any number of policy issues (abortion, death penalty, regulation). I may think reality shows they are being foolishly unpragmatic, but that’s just a policy difference.
But the "thug" accusations, "palling around with terrorists" – the fear, hatred, etc. It’s beyond belief, really!
How do they look at Democrats, the most disorganized, weak-kneed bunch of politicians ever (sternly worded letters are our greatest weapon, for crissakes!) and see "thugs" and violent terrorists and so on?
Seriously?
The only thing I ever come up with is psychological projection. They and their leaders are the violent ones. The domestic terrorists. The haters. The dividers. The torture-enablers. They violate the law, rape and plunder the land, hate freedom of speech, etc. – so they project that onto their enemies (us).
Any other ideas?
jcricket
FTW!
Seriously – there is nothing we can do to stop them from whining, from freaking out, from accusing us of being terrorists. So we best get to doing what we know is right. From every poll, on nearly every issue that matters, the people are already Democrats – they just don’t know it.
So fuck bipartisanship. Start by making sure everyone knows Republicans fucked everything up, fix whatever you can, and take credit for it.
Oh, and make sure everyone knows it’s Republicans who are standing in your way when you can’t get shit fixed fast enough.
ThymeZone
Um, this is a really odd response. First of all, I proposed no doctrines. I suggested honesty and disclosure.
Second, I fail to see how "enforceability" enhances the value of a law that sets up the wrong solution to a problem that doesn’t really exist in the first place.
LBNL, fairness is entirely subjective. It’s not quanitifiable. Only time equality is quantifiable. The very use of language here is misleading. There’s nothing "fair" about letting a liar have equal time in a dysfunctional false dichotomy setup, is there? If that is "fair" then fairness has just been stripped of all relevance.
TenguPhule
Provided the mandatory work camps for the GOP are set up on schedule. After two decades of wingnut welfare, it will be interesting to see them earn the bread they put in their mouths the old fashioned way.
Just Some Fuckhead
Ed, the short answer is that we didn’t get the golden mean fallacy the first forty years the Fairness Doctrine was operational so there’s no reason to expect it’ll magically happen in a future scenario.
No long answer. You can do your own legwork on the issue. But I’m sure based on your two earlier examples that you are unclear on how the fairness doctrine was actually applied and enforced.
kommrade jakevich
First they stick their heads w-a-a-a-y up their asses.
Then they view the world through their nipples.
joel hanes
Mark Steyn is reputed to have bloviated :
I assume this is a rightwing up-is-down scare-speech reference to the fact that Obama has stated his strong support for net neutrality.
Just Some Fuckhead
Yes, they are bigger pussies than Democrats.
DaveA
Sam: "These days, the wingnuts will just make stuff up, so not sure it matters what Obama’s negatives actually are."
I hear you, but making stuff up isn’t real useful outside the election cycle. Screaming that Obama is the bastard son of Sauron the Dark Lord while he enacts run-of-the-mill center-left Dem policies won’t generate much more that chuckles. They’ll end up looking like Joe Flaherty on SCTV: "Ohhhhh…scary!"
cleek
if Obama wins, i’m done with political blogs. i have no desire to know anything about the lunatic conspiracy ravings of people like Steyn, Barone and McCarthy. they add nothing to the universe, they only take away.
Just Some Fuckhead
@kommrade jakevich: lol
Comrade Stuck
Recent Reptilian Ancestry (or how the primitive brain rules the roost)
Bruce Moomaw
As for Barone’s claim that "The Obama campaign called for a criminal investigation of the American Issues Project when it ran ads highlighting Obama’s ties to Ayers": this turns out to be a legal debate over whether or not "the group, by engaging in express advocacy against Sen. Obama and engaging in no other activities, is a political committee [but]has not registered as a political committee and has not followed the rules applicable to political committees."
Apparently the problem of answering this question has been very nicely muddied up by an earlier extremely fuzzy ruling by the US Supreme Court on the exact point at which an organization’s political spending has "become so extensive that the organization’s major purpose may be regarded as campaign activity".
Quoting Prof. Rick Hasen: "It would not surprise me that, following the election and an investigation (if we are lucky by late 2009), we will learn that AIP really should have been called a political committee and the contributions found to be illegal. The group, and perhaps [Harold] Simmons [the Texas billionnaire who is its chief funder] could face fines, but by then the election would be over.
"One lesson to learn: a few years ago, the FEC resisted crafting regulations for determining when 527s should be considered political committees, preferring instead to rely on case-by-case adjudications. This situation explains why clear-cut written rules are preferable in dealing with this knotty problem (at least until the Supreme Court moots it if and when it declares limits on contributions to independent expenditure committees to be constitutional; at that point we can expect lots of billionaires to pony up money as Mr. Simmons has)."
So: regardless of the final legal decision on this complex case, Barone’s portrayal of it as Good Vs. Evil is pure drivel.
Just Some Fuckhead
I just know Teez blinked his nipples twice when he read that.
D0n Camillo
I’ll be honest, I couldn’t give a toss if we renew the Fairness Doctrine or not. It wouldn’t have made a difference to the Republican Noise Machine of the the nineties and early noughties. What I’m looking forward to is having an end of Republicans keg party and drinking out of Karl Rove’s skull. I hope to fuck those little shitstains try to recreate their wall of noise from the Clinton years. They’re going to find out what people who have been on the receiving end of their crap for 16 years can be like dishing it out. If they think I’ve forgotten being called objectively pro terrorist they’re in for a nasty shock just like Sean Hannity was last Tuesday.
Common Sense
One little problem with the whole "Obama wants to bring back the fairness doctrine" thing as a reason to fear a Democratic Congress — Obama doesn’t want to bring it back:
I don’t support the Fairness Doctrine either, but I suspect that if it was brought back most of these issues would be in the same bill. I could live with that.
Starburst Pantload
Fairness Doctrine or no, it’s looking like Obama’s set to lay some electoral hurt on McCain, with the ripples extending well downticket.
The American people have gotten a big, fat dose of Wake the Fuck Up over the past few years, and I don’t think it’s a lesson that will soon be forgotten (think of your grandparents re-re-re-using aluminum foil and twist ties because of what living through the Depression did to their psyches). Most people’s bullshit detectors have been sensitized by unending war, an emerging plutocracy and, now, the rumbling of the earth beneath their feet as our global financial system threatens to go tits up.
So, there.
KT
It’s looking more and more like the "October surprise" the McCain campaign has planned is armed conflict, a suspended election and martial law.
Bruce Moomaw
The real question, of course, is whether an Obama Administration would be more likely than the GOP to engage in monkey business against civil liberties in general and the First Amendment in particular. Given the Bush-Cheney Administration’s record and all those screaming faces at the GOP rallies (who have now started booing their own Presidential nominee when he’s belatedly tried to calm them down), you’ll pardon me for suspecting that the GOP is at least as likely as the Dems to do so — particularly if THEY get a few more Supreme Court seats.
(In that connection: notice how Steyn didn’t mention that every one of the likely near-future Court retirees is a non-rightist, which means that the most Obama can hope to do with Court appointments is keep the Court ideologically exactly where it is now? President McCain, on the other hand, could do a superb job of packing it 7-2 with strongly authoritarian-minded right-wingers of the sort who already comprise four of its members. Well, no one has ever accused Steyn of being good at elementary arithmetic — particularly after that bizarre book of his on how the Explosively Reproducing Moslem Hordes are about to take over Europe by sheer numbers, in which he never once bothered to take a look at their actual birthrates and immigration rates, which would have instantly revealed his thesis to be absolutely pure lunacy.)
Krista
Oh noes! I can’t incite hatred against other people without being held responsible! Help help, I’m being repressed!
You ever notice that the ones bitching about restrictions on free speech are usually the ones who are racist assholes and just can’t bear the fact that their spewings are no longer considered acceptable discourse in society?
Notorious P.A.T.
The fairness doctrine was repealed, and not everyone is CNN. In fact I’d say the news networks are lurching towards FOX News today. Except maybe MSNBC, which certainly didn’t know what it was getting when it hired Olbermann.
That’s a good point.
daniel rotter
Why is regulating the internet automatically a bad thing (as Steyn implies)? Wouldn’t authorities prosecuting individuals for running a child pornography website be an example of "regulating the internet"?
Delia
It’s all very unfair. And as we know, wingnuts are very concerned about fairness, at least when it applies to them. If only the economy had refrained from utterly collapsing for a few more months they might have been able to squeak by on the old gameplan. It’s probably a plot by the Illuminati.
4jkb4ia
Perhaps telling this story here will not cause me to be outed. This afternoon I overheard a conversation about assassination threats against Obama. An otherwise very nice lady said, "Can we take out a contract?" I hope she was joking. This was freaking scary, because this is not Strongsville, Ohio, anymore. If Andrew Sullivan and M.J. Rosenberg remember the assassination of Rabin, these are people who have learned nothing from that. And there is no evidence that Obama is a rodef, a pursuer. The only evidence is that he may be slightly naive. You don’t kill people for that.
4jkb4ia
John is lucky. Pitt got the week off.
bago
There’s not two halves. There’s not only two points of view you fuckwit.
What you are espousing would be called a binary sample bias among statisticians and the same Manichean bullshit that got us here in the first place, asshole! Why after 9/11 there always were two conservatives to balance out one remotely sane / liberal on any program for a while. (Invectives tend to ensure a response, by making it personal.)
Has the Internet taught you nothing?
Witness the abandonment of the National Review legacy, even by its own inherited bloodlines (which WFB was a pretty strcit bastard about).
Witness the devolvement of Fox news into a blond terrorist fist jab network continually losing audience share.
Either you believe in the truth, or you believe in Pravda. (You know, what’s said, or what the government thinks you should have heard).
Choose your destiny.
El Cid
I really don’t think it’s the fairness doctrine as much as rapid further consolidation in the broadcast media market which has resulted in a change from a previous right wing orthodoxy in place for the last half century or so to the explicit anti-Democratic / anti-liberal tilt we’ve seen over the past 20 years.
r€nato
put me down as also being against the "Fairness Doctrine". I’m for free speech as unregulated by the government as possible.
r€nato
this is exactly true. Also when we had the FD, most broadcasters simply avoided doing any editorializing at all, to just avoid the whole mess. To the extent they did any at all, they engaged in the most facile editorializing: "We are moderately pro-puppies!" kind of thing.
I don’t want the FCC patrolling indecency on the airwaves – that, thankfully, will end with an Obama administration. I also don’t want them patrolling political speech, even with the best of intentions.
Support, instead,the free marketplace of ideas like the Founding Fathers intended. Support rules which create diversity in media ownership, rather than increasing consolidation. This will do far more to create opportunities for opposing viewpoints than having the FCC try to enforce a slippery definition of ‘fairness’, which is inherently subjective.
(by the way, minds much better than mine have explained why right-wingers dominate AM talk radio. Hint: it’s not a conspiracy, it’s evidence of the difference between how liberals get their information and how conservatives get their information.)
dww44
Though late to this thread, I must offer a h/t to Xenos at 8:56pm yesterday on reinstating the Fairness Doctrine:
Back in the summer I noticed a string of LTE’s in my newspaper by conservatives urging readers to contact one’s Congressperson to put pressure on Pelosi to release a bill from some committe which would outlaw the FD.
Knowing that lte writers here get their talking points and marching orders from somewhere within that conservative broadcast world, I decided to do my own research with the FD, with which I had only a passing and long forgotten familiarity. Discovered that it was primarily conservatives with their panties in a wad about the possibility of its reinstatement and felt that they had to get legislation passed by this Congress. Was not likely to happen with the next.
Realized that the issue was only an issue with them. So I wrote a couple of lte’s which got published and elicited the expected conservative pushback and panic. A couple of the best lte’s I have ever written, not withstanding the bad editing done to the first. It was fun!
Hugh Hewitt's Jiggling Manboobs
Michael Barone is a pathetic hack.
tigrismus
Milt Rosenberg apparently has an hour of his program specifically set aside for listeners to call in and ask questions of his guests or discuss the guests’ views. How shameful liberals are to abuse the rights of the interviewee by calling in to ask him questions or discuss his views.
milhous451
nah, in 1992 it all started with the national media.
the cokie roberts villagers (or kewl kidz as they were
then known) spent the entire decade promoting
republican talking points as if they were news.
it was what gene lyons (fools for scandal, hunting
of the president) called clinton rules. you could
say anything — literally anything — that was anti-clinton,
and it would have no effect on your career. one
jackhole claimed the clintons decorated the white
house christmas tree with ‘implements of self-mutiliation’
(whatever the hell they are). it turned the book into
a best-seller.
Marc
OMG…I’m dying!
Jiggy
The caption text is spot on, I nearly spit out my sandwich.