The Liberal Media Myth

As the news spread of the heinous and brutal attack on the Holocaust museum in Washington, onehopes that the Gentle Reader was deeply and sincerely offended. Simply stated, free speech mutated from the rantings of far-right cretins to a cancerous blight on libertarian discourse.

Deep condolences to the family of Stephen T. Johns are inadequate. The nation owes his family a proactive measure as means of beginning a memorial to a man who gave his life protecting a repository of evidence of what happens when extremism replaces sanity. Rounding up extremists and prosecuting them is compellingly attractive, but we are in the position of having to be the Good Guys.

Whatever we do, referring to the collective as those of good will and love for our system of constitutional jurisprudence, it must be informed by an unabiding adherence to the rule of law and the rights of the accused. No matter how distasteful we may find extremism, rounding 'em up and locking 'em down is just terribly George W. Bush-league. A better solution exists.

Repeal the 1996 Telecommunications Act. Get rid of it and salt the land from whence it came so that nothing ever grows there again. This law is an odious act of corporate welfare which has served to stifle dissenting opinion and deprive valid viewpoints of a platform for expression. The 1996 Telecommunications Act has provided fertile ground for breeding far right extremism of the kind which killed Officer Johns and devastated his family.

One station per band per market was the rule until a preliminary deregulatory law allowed companies to begin acquiring multiple stations in the same city. Free-to-air broadcast licenses being a finite commodity, limits were placed upon any entity consolidating large numbers of licenses. Prior to 1996, stations such as WIRY in Plattsburgh, New York, who focused upon the community they served were the rule.

WIRY is now the exception, as many broadcasters move to a business model of satellite-delivered programming. Author Stephen King refers to the most prolific type of music broadcaster as "Robo-oldies." While one is not inclined to focus upon the disgraceful state of oldies radio in America, the same model applies for news and opinion broadcasting: Robo-Republican.

The Robo-Republican nodel works thusly: acquire a potent signal in a medium to large market. Dismiss the news-gathering and local on-air talent. Replace the local talent with Fox News, Beck, Limbaugh, Hannity, Levin, Savage and Noory. Preemptively purchase any signal where a competitor may be established with the profits. Develop friendly professional relationships with entrenched local personalities like Neal Boortz and Mark Davis. Continue until able to throw loss-leader advertising rates against any program which appears to challenge satellite-delivered content. Eventually establish a monopoly upon audience.

Now is where things would most appropriately move in an anti-trust direction. The most egregious of all Robo-Republican megabroadcasters is Clear Channel. Clear Channel also owns Premiere Networks, which owns or distributes most of the content mentioned. While one does not suggest that Clear Channel directly specifies content, 900 signals, a lack of high-profile progressive voices, and the occasional leveraging of a Clear Channel board member (J.C. Watts) as a guest on Premiere Networks programming do indicate a definite agenda and conflict of interest.

The conflict is most easily ascertained when combined with the ability to direct dissent over to inferior signals or reformat entirely. It also helps to be able to elect an inferior rival, such as Air America, which sounded like it was produced on a dorm-room laptop.

The most compelling case for reregulation and anti-trust investigation of megabroadcasters does not lie in conservative rhetoric. As long as megabroadcasters are in a position to obstruct opposing viewpoints, a violent fringe of radical conservatives takes comfort in increasingly angry rubric. This rubric is couched in the idiom of inevitable subservience to a monolithic authority which would violently suppress all dissent. Listeners are encouraged to become active with the tacit subtext that conservative voices will only survive through the implicit threat of sustained violent rebellion.

Therefore, many sincere, decent conservatives been absorbed into the hateful thing that they themselves most fear. Right-wing broadcasters have tiptoed up to the line of inciting the overthrow of the United States Government. That one is pretty much a no-no in the Constitution. They put it right up there in the front. Aggression against a body which has committed no crime or has made no threat and justifying said aggression with fear is not the American way. It is the Nazi way. We are obligated by our constitution to be better than that.

It is time to take the microphone away from those whose acrimony and paranoia would deprive an innocent Stephen T. Johns of his right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

SAVAGES!

The United Kingdom has banned Michael Savage from entry, and the trolls are ballistic. One is certain that the Internet will be on fire with rantings about how the British are opposed to free speech, that the death of liberty is imminent, and the English are opposed to fairness in general. One is also certain of something else.

The trolls will be wrong.

Michael Savage is unquestionably hateful. If an award were given for fulfilling the requirements of any pejorative that the Gentle Reader deems appropriate, little question exists that Mr. Savage would be a finalist if not the grand-prize winner. He is simply not a very nice person.

Savage, nee Weiner, has been quite the firebrand for limiting access to the abundance enabled by the American constitution to white, heterosexual, Judeo-Christian, and English speaking persons who adhere to his particularly strict definitions of "Language, Borders, and Culture." No tolerance exists for those who disagree with Savage's viewpoints, while dissenting opinions are mocked as unworthy of consideration. Savage is the most unusual of creatures: a Jew whose sympathies are more closely aligned with the practices of German National Socialism.

One notes with great amusement that the first well-publicized act impeding the international movement of an individual based upon his politically sensitive speech be directed at Michael Savage. He has made his career upon advocating an agenda which specifies which opinions and groups are worthy of entry into discourse. Savage's infernal hatred of those who disagree with him has resulted in his banishment from the United Kingdom.

The British have a great tradition of discourse. One suspects little challenge to free speech actually exists in the UK, but the differences between the Magna Carta and the Constitution force the British to preclude opinions advocating antipathy for smaller populations coming from abroad. The list included a legion of bigots from multiple societal subsets.

No one is incarcerating the National Front in Britain. There is a big difference between protecting the right to minority opinion and permitting an atmosphere which empowers the same groups to impose their opinions upon others from overseas. The liberty to espouse an unpopular outlook does not bring with it the leverage to import reserves from beyond borders.

The British home office, under the auspices of the Labour party, have moved to restrict entry to radicals of multiple viewpoints. Were all of the affected from a particular, distinct religious and/or political viewpoint, or being culled from the number of British Subjects, then it would be incumbent to question a commitment to liberty of conscience.

The libertarian standard of the United States ends at the border. Michael Savage, and the numbers who agree with his narrow view of acceptable behavior in the United Kingdom will conflate tolerance and endorsement of opposing viewpoints. To challenge the unrestricted entry of persons whose presence may be considered disruptive to the well-being of societal structures is not unknown in this country, either, and Savage has been an advocate.

The real point that the British made was that if one chooses to be outspoken about one's intolerance and vehement regarding one's conditions of acceptability, then one is also expected to abide by the same standard.

There is nothing so unfair as being asked to live up to one's most bigoted criteria.