Posted on 11/30/2001 11:59:11 AM PST by pollwatcher
"That traitor!" exclaimed Mr. Rather(biased), excusing himself before calling the author a name "you normally only hear aboard merchant ships or on late-night cable TV."
Will Danno forgive and forget? "You can sooner expect a tall talking broccoli stick to offer to mow your lawn for free."
[This message brought to you by fond memories of Ratherisms, googlesearched and pilfered from http://www.mediaresearch.org/columns/newscol/col20010322.html]
I'm SHOCKED!!! gambling at Ricks?
Maybe he's just having a temper tantrum.
Don't know if it's a big enough reason, but it is a reason. :^)
I do not disagree with your other more general observations about the hubristic choices offered (imposed, really ...) by the media elites . . .
I agree that "fictive" is definitely part of the story. But that begs the question, "Why is the profession of journalism anticonservative?" My best answer is that "objective truth-telling" is the sizzle journalism sells, and novelty and fear is the steak that journalism actually delivers.
That "sizzle" has a powerful allure; I refer you to the story of the Sirens in The Odessy. Ulysses was tempted by them "to know all"--and would have sailed his vessel to certain destruction in pursuit of such knowledge, had he not previously put wax in his crew's ears and had himself lashed to the mast.
The power of that allure, and the imprimatur which the federal government (in the form of the FCC) places on broadcast journalism, combine to make us think that those "choices" are "imposed on us."
Well, I'm an ME not an EE, but I can tell you that, even within the frequency band alloted to broadcasting, the number of stations which can be created without interference depends on the power you allow each individual station to transmit. Thus, it would have been possible to create a lot more stations if each one had been limited to a lower power. But of course it was a novelty to be able to receive word from the big city in real time, even when you were in your car--so people thought it was wonderful to have these powerful stations. Failing to consider that they were ceding political power to those stations in the process.
And that is just looking at past history. In the here-and-now we can look at our communications system as a whole and see that the Internet allows anyone to set up a web site, allowing anyone else in the world access to whatever you want to put up on your site. At this point the broadcast stations are merely preferential addresses. You can access your local TV station, or CNN--or you can access FR. But it takes a lot more of a rig to access FR, and plenty of people who would enjoy FR don't even know it exists--whereas anyone with a TV and cable will stumble on CNN soon enough.
So the truth is that the FCC formatted the spectrum and created those preferred addresses--even the extended ones on cable or satellite tv. And the FCC licenses all those channels, one way or another--if you consider that they depend on satellite transmission licenses even if they are not broadcast directly to your set.
But it is the broadcast licensees such as ABC and CBS which most obviously have their preferential positions courtesy of the Federal Government. They are exploiting a preferential treatment by the government, and if they stopped getting it everyone else in the country would still have the same rights to publish their opinions as they do now. And it is the right of the people to publish (within the limits of their individual wallets) which the First Amendment protects. The dirty little secret is that the preference granted to my speech if I have a broadcast license downgrades the effectiveness of your speech if you don't. So you have a cause to object.
The FCC could legally shut them down instantly by revoking their licenses--and "First Amendment" objections would be hollow.
Forgive me, but that sounds like Bill Clinton refusing to let the CIA field officers pay seedy people to become informants and provide needed intel.
Add another one. I just bought a copy.
Since when did blanket tolerance become a virtue.
The law does not tolerate murder, rape, theft etc., etc.
Parents don't (shouldn't) tolerate their children lying, cursing, breaking curfue etc., etc., etc.
Coaches don't tolerate players' insubordination, unpreparedness, etc., etc., etc.
So, is a viewer that doesn't tolerate media bias, spin, lying and left leaning news non-virtuous? I think people that take a stand ought to be comended. Bill Press is an idiot and everytime he opens his mouth he proves it.
Amazon ranking 10 hours later: 15.
Amazon.com Sales Rank(20 hours later): 4
Meow.
To suuport the author, make him rich, and encourage others to come forward and tell the sheeple how it is.
Meow...
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