How come I never get to play with the trolls? I'm always too late! 
Posted on 11/18/2002 12:21:52 AM PST by JohnHuang2
Desperate Democrats have now come up with a magical solution to all their problems: suggesting the launch of an ambitious new television network to assure proper exposure for the liberal point of view.
One week after GOP victories in the midterm elections, the inside-the-Beltway journal The Hill reported that Democratic leaders believe that they need to find a "counterweight to what they call the vast and well-funded infrastructure of conservative ideology" – in other words, that hoary, horrid bugbear of a vast right-wing conspiracy that's haunted liberal nightmares since Hillary evoked its fearsome power during the impeachment crisis. In order to balance such ferocious forces of reaction, the despondent Dems now "are calling for stronger liberal think tanks" and "even entertained the possibility of a liberal television network to offset Fox News."
The best way to come to terms with the insanity behind this suggestion is to try to imagine what this bold new venture might look like.
How might you program the liberal network to ensure its earnest ideological appeal? Perhaps you'd consider talk shows hosted by Phil Donahue, Larry King, George Stephanopolous, Bryant Gumbel, Katie Couric, Sam Donaldson, Geraldo Rivera, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Moyers or Barbara Walters and the other women of "The View."
Or maybe you'd recruit Dan Rather (or Jennings, or Brokaw) as your news anchor. For entertainment, you might consider a prime-time drama like "The West Wing," or a light-hearted (but tolerance-teaching) comedy like "Will & Grace." Barbra Streisand could provide musical specials (oozing leftie nostalgia, of course) for the holiday season – and for Election Day.
The network also might broadcast enlightened liberal movies by filmmaking titans like Oliver Stone, Michael Moore, Robert Altman, Stephen Spielberg or Spike Lee. If future programmers for DEM-TV truly wish to let their imaginations soar, they might even fantasize about luring such luminaries as Rosie O'Donnell and Bill Maher out of their temporary retirements.
In other words, you could fill up the entire schedule of the new network with precisely the same sort of show that is already readily available, around the clock and across the dial. Only the looniest leftist could nourish the notion that today's broadcast or cable-TV networks shortchange or suppress liberal views.
Fox News triumphed precisely because it provided a forum for opinions seldom aired on the established channels, allowing the likes of Bill O'Reilly and Britt Hume to connect with an eager audience. The undeniable rightward tilt of Fox may undermine its claims of "fair and balanced" reporting, but the network does preserve the lively liberal perspective of personalities like Geraldo and Greta van Sustern.
By contrast, its "mainstream" competitors present self-consciously right-wing viewpoints only within the context of their dueling wonk shows (Crossfire, Buchanan and Press), and never as part of their entertainment line-ups. When in its history did television ever offer a show as unabashedly conservative as "The West Wing" is unabashedly liberal?
The day after the election, in fact, I wrote a commentary for USA TODAY suggesting that the precipitous ratings decline for "The West Wing" may have stemmed in part from its shrill, tiresome and predictable partisanship. In response to this observation, Michael Brecklin of Peoria wrote a letter to the editor declaring: "Pop-culture pundit Michael Meved is a hoot … One wonders what sociopolitical conclusions Medved draws from the ratings free fall of shows starring Drew Carey and Kelsey Grammer, two staunch Republicans …"
In answer to that question, I'd suggest that Carey and Grammer draw far less attention to their GOP affiliation than Martin Sheen attracts for his tireless left-wing activism. Moreover, if "Frasier" and "Drew Carey" contain regular Republican messages, those signals remain so stubbornly subtle as to count as invisible.
The talk of new networks and "stronger liberal think tanks" (as if Yale, Harvard, Stanford and other elite schools don't provide enough of an incubator for left-wing ideas) serves as an excuse for Democrats to avoid serious self-examination. Lamenting libs fret over the mechanics of communicating their message, rather than considering the shortcomings of the message itself.
Rather than suggesting that they could turn their political fortunes around with a few more big media stars who share their point of view, they might recall the eternally trenchant analysis of Cassius:
"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves …"
Best regards,
How come I never get to play with the trolls? I'm always too late!
I am laughing so hard I moistened my undies, I think.
If the government were objective, logically elections are unnecessary and subversive.FOX may drift over the line past the center sometimes, but they never present NEWS (not talking talk show/editorial context her) from a hopelessly biased conservative stance the way the alphabet nets do their liberal-bent news casts -- day in and day out.That is of course a parody of American freedom. Thus we understand the principle of the First Amendment--that the government does not have the right to enforce its idea of objectivity, does not legitimately have the right even to claim to be objective.
Many have difficulty with that crucial distinction between NEWS and commentary. In truth, its significance lies solely in the legal fiction that FCC licensees broadcast "in the public interest."Editorial pages didn't even exist when the Constitution and bill of rights were adopted. That does not mean that there was no commentary in newspapers, quite the contrary--it means that newspaper content was not presumed in law to be unbiased. Now (as related to campaign finance regulation and to broadcast licensing) it is. If you read the front page of The New York Times into a microphone you are "objective."
Yet the Times itself is protected by the First Amendment from any government requirement to be objective. Not only in the editorial page but on the front page.
The "objectivity" of journalism is merely the consensus of journalists. A consensus which is defended by the common interest of journalists. Journalism's business model is to purvey interesting reports under the banner of of "objectivity" supported merely by that internal consensus. That is, if the Times and the Post don't argue, each derives legitimacy from agreement with the other.
They already own PBS--isn't that enough for 'em?
--Boris
The suggested name for the new network is PC BS and the premier news show will be..."Left OUT".
What's nice about this is that the level of buy-in necessary to perpetuate the myth of the "conservative" media is such that this sort of contraindicatory evidence will be disbelieved, denied, and ascribed to some sort of conspiracy. Perhaps I'm wrong and this network will become a smashing success, but I won't be buying any IPO stock.
Have you seen C-SPAN's call-in programs lately? They've sunk so far into a Leftist pit that the topics they prompt their audience to comment on are now more bizzare than an Art Bell show.
Funny thing is that they left on enough music programming that they can still get listener contributions to stay on the air.
Even some liberal Rats have confessed to me that they used to like it when the station played music. The more left these programs get, the more the democrat base is offended. There's no point to calling in to the programs to talk issues with these lefties. Many of the programs don't even field calls, they run 15-40minute speeches by Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, and British socialists you haven't heard of. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Biggest reason that these Dems would rather hear music.
Beings a liberal means "if it feels good, do it". They don't like to be preached to. They've been brought up to believe that they should watch the news everyday (it's like eating spinach, it's good for you) but it isn't as healthy as people are led to believe. Some yellow dogs would be suprised to learn that they are really Red pinkos.
I listened to King's radio guests in the 1980s (often authors and entertainers buy sometimes Rat politicians or activists). I was very relieved when I caught Rush Limbaugh on a CBS tv talk show filling in for Pat Sajek. Of course, Larry King was p'ed off at this up and comer. In the early 1990s I first heard Rush on radio here in Houston and now you know the rest of the story.
When it fails to draw an audience, the Rats can scream how there is no large support for Republican ideas.
Why is it Algore, Mikey Moron, et al get softball questions and lovefests, while Republicans are thrown hardballs and curves?
On my mid-western campus in the sixties, the anti-establishment hucksters would inevitably be quoted in the campus rag the day after they suffered yet another humiliating loss in student elections.
Now, after 30-40 years of extensively peddling their counter-culture junk to us, thanks in great part to their successful infiltration into and autocratic rule of the predominant media, universities, one whole political party and parts of another, these crybabies think the sole reason they're losing has been insufficient propaganda.
Despite the gloating by some on our side, it's not nearly over folks.
With God's blessing, VIVA THE SPIRIT OF FREEREPUBLIC.COM.
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