Fascist Fairness

It's Not Fair ... Sniff

Problem: Limbaugh has huge ratings, Al Franken had none and went off the air.  Solution: Pass a law that forces any station giving Limbaugh 3 hours to also give 3 to Fidel Castro.  Then the message is equally distributed.  That's how Democrats think, as espoused by Lord Kerry above.  We will have to euthanize them one day, you know.  “ It is no news that America has become a big backyard pool of opinion, awash with Sean Hannity, Hugh Hewitt, Ann Coulter, Dennis Prager, the Drudge Report and, I'm told, Al Franken. Contrary to myth, Roger Ailes didn't do this. Ronald Reagan did. Ronald Reagan may not make it to Mount Rushmore for winning the Cold War. But he secured his place in the conservative pantheon for tearing down another wall: the Fairness Doctrine. The Fairness Doctrine was a federal regulation, dating to 1949, which mandated "contrasting viewpoints" from broadcasters. In reality, the Fairness Doctrine ensured that incumbents got "free" TV coverage across their terms while challengers got crumbs. The Fairness Doctrine was also an early nuclear option: If a local broadcaster's news operation made the local congressman or his party look bad, Washington could threaten to blow up his broadcast license. Ronald Reagan tore down this wall in 1987 (maybe as spring training for Berlin) and Rush Limbaugh was the first man to proclaim himself liberated from the East Germany of liberal media domination. It wasn't obvious that conservatives soon would dominate talk radio. Radio programming has always been a soulless decision based on ratings. If programmers thought they could win the drive-time slots with Don Imus reading "Das Kapital," that would be on the air and advertisers would support it. But it's not. What worked after speech became free in the spectrum ozone was hyper-articulate conservative hosts opening their microphones to millions of hyper-angry conservative voters--not least in such liberal bastions as New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. [Rush to Victory] ”