The "Fairness Doctrine" and Hysterical Myopia

Ben Crystal connects repeatedly with his great take on what looks to be a coordinated attempt by the Dems and the American Left to impose censorship (selectively) on talk radio, virtually the only media genre they don't already dominate.

If your only path to power is to squelch all dissent within a "democratic" Republic, then you obviously don't have faith in the power of your ideas. This is a move better suited to Hugo Chavez or Castro. But--as Crystal points out--it works both ways; one day it might be a Republican in office again (more likely IMO if the Dems in fact do try to silence free speech...):

Of course, as a warning to my Democrat friends, I should be FAIR: a Fairness Doctrine requires an attendant Fairness Doctrinaire. All well and good if you’re a Democrat in a democrat-run America. But what happens when the cycle reverses, as it so often does? For every Carter, there was a Reagan. For every Clinton, a Bush (or even two). In 2009, the Fairness Doctrine Czar might be a hyper-liberal flack like the aforementioned Franken, and judging by how unfunny and unlistened-to his talk radio effort was, he could use the work - and with the right mix of fraud and guesswork, he may have found it in the U.S. Senate. But in 2013? Imagine the horror of a Director Rush Limbaugh - or…horrors…Karl Rove.

To wit: Let’s open our papers years hence and see..

TIMES LATEST TO GET HIT WITH FAIRNESS RULING.
Olbermann waits by phone.

Homogenized Press Reports

September 9, 2016

“DNC headquarters erupted in paroxysms of rage today upon learning the New York Times lead editorial consisted of a studied endorsement of school choice, lower income taxes, heightened military strength and the preservation of the 2nd Amendment. Dennis Kucinich, the current DNC chair said ‘we didn’t deliberately obfuscate the obvious lack of President Obama’s quality and qualifications just to see our media turned against us after only 4 years.’

Kucinich’s comments came as the Times, a redoubtable clearinghouse for DNC talking points, was forced to offer the non-liberal editorial following a Fairness Doctrine complaint from conservative watchdog group “CNN Blows“. When asked about the increase in corporate media outlets being hit with Fairness Doctrine rulings, Fairness Czar Karl Rove said ‘look, this has been the law of the land since February of 2009 - the FAIR application thereof does not change with Presidential administrations.’

RNC chairman Eric Cantor said “Hey, turnabout is fair play. They wanted it when Obama got elected and they used it to hamstring talk radio - now President Palin is forcing the corporate media to play by the same rules. Looks like the hypocritical chickens have come home to roost.’

Surprisingly, the left wing appeared to have been caught completely flat-footed by the new aggressiveness of the Director of the Office of National Speech Control Policy. Rove has been extraordinarily active since being appointed to the office by President Sarah Palin in March of 2013. While the 4 years of the Obama Administration saw the new Fairness Doctrine being used essentially to run talk radio out of business and force Fox News to show 2 hours of Randi Rhodes each night, the new direction has been much more even-and heavy- handed.

And the left is - to turn the phrase - bereft. Once-dependably liberal outlets like the Times and CNN have been forced to not only offer Fairness Czar-approved editorials, they are also no longer allowed to read DNC talking points memos as news copy.

The newest developments promise to incite even more ire from the left. Director Rove’s office has indicated interest in the blogosphere. Although no rulings have yet been issued regarding online opinion comment, ONSCP agents have reportedly been scrutinizing postings on such far-left sites as George Soros-backed Moveon.org, with records requests also landing in the offices of Dailykos.com, a fringe site run by Al Qaeda supporter Markos Moulitsas. Reached by phone in on vacation in Waziristan, Moulitsas said ‘I talked to Osama and Aym….I mean, my advisers..and we are going to bomb….I mean…sue.’

To add insult to the left wing’s deepening injuries, only last week, MSNBC announced the termination of Keith Olbermann. Olbermann’s ouster came after Director Rove’s office ruled the far-left cable net offer a nighttime host who ‘Isn’t a complete no-talent bloviating partisan hack who wouldn’t know the truth if it bit him on his pansy ass and who doesn’t owe his entire career to the much funnier Dan Patrick and the much more important Bill O’Reilly.’

Unable to find an outlet with a right-wing commentator sufficiently lacking in quality, honesty and talent, Olbermann remains unemployed - and possibly unemployable; an ironic icon of the policy he and the rest of the liberal media once championed.”

A Fair forecast, indeed.

Read the whole thing.

Word is that Obama may try to use the FCC and some of those community organizers at ACORN--who are getting paid $2 Billion of our tax dollars out of the "stimulus" package--to make life miserable at the local level for local radio station owners who choose to put a (popular, ad-selling) Mark Levin or Rush Limbaugh on the air rather than (unpopular, non-revenue generating) Air America zeros. But Crystal is right that this sword cuts both ways. And what goes around could eventually come around to haunt them in places like the print media, MSNBC, CNN, etc.

The Democrats need to figure this out: Politically motivated censorship is not only un-American, it's a stupid idea. For one thing, it would not happen quietly--it would be blatantly transparent to every single media-savvy American and it would electrify the Right like nothing else could.

The Democrats should care about that, even though they obviously don't give a damn about this:

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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You would have thought the Democrats had lost the last two elections; right now they are acting more like paranoid Banana Republic dictators than they are acting like a party that the public would otherwise be inclined to support. It is almost as if they are thinking: "uh oh, they are about to find out the truth about us..."

And if they keep up this kind of crap, it will become a self-fulfilling prophecy.